INSIGHT
Optimising the Mobile
Channel as an Affiliate
Michaela McNamara, Editor at CasinoAffiliatePrograms.com, explores some of the tools available to
affiliates to help better manage their mobile campaigns.
Ever since online marketing
entered the mobile space, there have been
problems with tracking user behaviour
effectively. And ‘effectively’ is the
keyword here.
Basically, the problem with mobile is
that there are many possible actions every
user can do with their device. For instance,
there’s browsing the web through a mobile
browser, there’s installing an app, there’s
even calling a certain number after seeing
an ad. Tracking all of that requires a
specific set-up and software that’s dedicated
to mobile and can handle various types of
incoming information.
To give you a counter example, when
we’re talking about standard online
marketing, almost every action imaginable
happens within a web browser, and thus, is
much easier to track.
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Even if your goal is to convince the user
to download a piece of software you’re
offering, you can still track such downloads
through standard methods and scripts. This
isn’t the case with mobile.
Over the years, we’ve seen a number of
different solutions for the mobile web, so
let’s talk about a number of them and how
they can be used to help you better manage
your campaigns.
behaviour and use this data to deliver
tuned promotions accordingly.
The downside for mobile is that a
cookie is tied to a single web browser.
This means that if a cookie is set on, say,
mobile Safari, then it won’t be visible
anywhere else. And even though a user
might take some initial action within
the browser, it’s impossible to track any
subsequent actions that might take place
elsewhere (not within the main browser).
Cookie tracking
Cookie tracking is one of the more
traditional methods when it comes to all
kinds of online tracking. It works very well
on desktop, but not so much on mobile
devices (at least not in all cases).
A ‘cookie’ is a small file that a website
registers on the user’s device. Through
this file, the site owner can monitor user
Device fingerprinting
This mechanism works by creating a
profile, if you will, for the device that a
user is using when interacting with your
website or app. Various characteristics
of the device are stored to be used when
determining whether certain actions came
from the same device and, therefore, the