Noob question: Clickthrough tracking

**androo** · 11-19-2008, 01:06 AM

Greets...
My client wants to start banner ads on his site.

The banner should be placed between the top navbar and the thread or forum list. Banner should go on every page. I've never implemented this kind of thing before but I'm fine with installing plugins and reasonable at editing templates.

Questions:
1. What is a good plugin to achieve clickthrough tracking?
2. Should I be asking more questions?

Edit: Plugin should work with 3.7.4

**Sheen** · 11-19-2008, 02:00 AM

This is something I would like to find out too.

I would like to use this feature for people to advertise on my site (with a small fee of course) but I feel it would come in handy.

**veenuisthebest** · 11-19-2008, 04:30 AM

Why don't you try openx, it has all the features of an ad server plus its free.

Look at the header of this site, the ad banner you see above on right corner is done via openx.

Because its a different application and not at all related to vb, it would work on all versions of vb.

**Cerberus** · 11-19-2008, 08:12 AM

Just use analytics to do it..it is rather simple to set up

Track visitor clicks on Banners, Files, Javascript and Flash objects - Digital Inspiration

Read that

**ArnyVee** · 11-19-2008, 08:35 AM

Thanks Blake! I never knew about that.

Gotta read about it a little more, but looks like a great option for this!

**popowich** · 11-19-2008, 08:53 AM

I see the $ stats in analytics. Is there a way to have analytics report which pages are being clicked for my ads? I already have channels and know which ads, but I don't know from which pages.

-Raymond

**androo** · 11-19-2008, 11:42 AM

Thank you very much, I'll have a look into both of those suggestions!

**ArnyVee** · 01-12-2009, 08:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blake2181

Just use analytics to do it..it is rather simple to set up

Track visitor clicks on Banners, Files, Javascript and Flash objects - Digital Inspiration

Read that

Okay, so I was reading about OpenX and remembered we had discussed it (and other options) before here on the site.

With regards to this link that Blake posted, where do we add these codes? I'm assuming that they are to be added to each item/link that would lead someone off of your site to track it? Then, where does the reporting show?

Track which advertisers are popular by tracking clicks on banners ads where visitors click on to leave your site.

To track outbound clicks on an animated GIF or other type of static banner ad, add the following code within the <a> tag (You may use any folder/filename structure that you desire)

<a href="http://www.advertisersite.com" onClick="javascript:urchinTracker('/bannerads/advertisername/bannername');">

The equivalent code for a Flash banner is provided below:
on(release) {
getURL("javascript:urchinTracker('/bannerads/adname/bannername');");
getURL("http://www.advertisersite.com");
}

Track clicks on outbound links that lead visitors away from your site.

You will need to tag the link itself with the urchinTracker JavaScript. For example, to log every click on a particular link to Example Web Page as a pageview for "/outgoing/example_com" you would add the following attribute to the link's <a> tag:

<a href="http://www.example.com" onClick="javascript:urchinTracker ('/outgoing/example_com');">

**Cerberus** · 01-12-2009, 10:20 AM

<a href="http://www.example.com/files/map.pdf" onClick="javascript:urchinTracker ('/downloads/map'); ">

As you can see in the example, you are just adding the code to the link itself. Whatever you would like tracked you add

onClick="javascript:urchinTracker ('/downloads/map');

The red shows the tracking code, and the blue, shows you what you want it to show up as in analytics. You can define the blue as whatever you want. And then when you go in Analytics, you will see that link is now tracked.

Basicly for anything you want tracked you would add that code to the end of the code, and analytics will track it. It is much easier than installing all kind of 3rd party stuff.

**ArnyVee** · 01-12-2009, 02:29 PM

Cool...thanks for the clarification Blake!

So, I am going to use this code to add it to some of my sponsor banners and make sure that they are reporting the same numbers as far as clicks.

Thanks again!

**Brandon Sheley** · 01-16-2009, 04:25 PM

Great info Blake!!
I'm going to do some playing around now

**fattony69** · 01-16-2009, 07:54 PM

Make a forum that uses a link. Like a redirect. Make it so only you can see it, but the link available, so when people click, you can see how many clicks and they get to count and such.