Tracking impressions, clicks and conversions in iframe on external site

May 5, 2015 8:58 AM

My company sells digital music. We have starting offering some of our partners the ability to embed an iframe widget with an audio player in it. I'm trying to figure out the best tool to use in order to track page impressions, clicks and conversions. How do I do that?

For example, say there is an album review on our partner's site. Embedded in the page is our audio player widget in an iframe with previews of the album. The player is linked back to our site where the user can buy and download the album or tracks. The content in the iframe is hosted on our site.

I currently use a dedicated Google analytics tracking code in the iframe source to measure impressions and referral sources, but this is just a temp fix to get an idea of what is going on and we want to move away from Google Analytics due to data privacy issues.

Some of my research has led me to believe that this is done or can be done with an adserver tracking software like DoubleClick, but due to the use of adblocking software, a lot of adserve trackers are blocked. We'd like to avoid that as much as possible. Plus, plus the content is not banner advertising and it is not targeted, so I am not sure if this is the kind of solution i am looking for. Although, i guess i am trying to gather the same kind of data.

I guess another good example would be a Soundcloud player embedded on an external site. How do they track where the player is embedded and the page impressions? I see in the source for soundcloud players that there is a tracker in it hosted at ScorecardResearch.com, but after reading up on it I think they are possibly using it for something else.

Is a tool like OpenX Source or its recent open source fork Revive the kind of thing that I am looking for? Maybe, Orbit Open Ad Server?
Optimally we would like a solution hosted on our server, due to data privacy concerns.

Can somebody please point me in the right direction? Thank you in advance.

posted by chillmost to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Maybe look into Snowplow Analytics? They have competitors too, but if data privacy is a major concern I'm loathe to recommend them as they're mostly tools that host data. But with Snowplow (which is, if you want, totally free, and then you figure out how to store the data on your end -- that will be your only cost. You can also pay them for support) you can just embed whatever trackers you want on whatever events you want.

It's very likely that Soundcloud has written their own tracking code -- I don't know what they're using, one possibility is via Apache Kafka messages which are ingested internally, but there are others. If you're not going to completely roll your own solution (which it sounds like you're not equipped to do or you would have mentioned it), Snowplow or something like it might be a good middle ground.
posted by brainmouse at 10:05 AM on May 5, 2015

Response by poster: Thank you for the answer. I will look into it.
Data privacy is a concern, but we are not completely adverse to the data being hosted on another server, it just needs to be safe and adhere to the EU data laws.

I guess my main question is: Are solutions like Revive, OpenX Source or Orbit Open Ad Server the right kind of tools for accomplishing what I'm trying to do? Or am I looking for something else? My lack of experience and industry vocabulary are sending me down unsure paths.
posted by chillmost at 3:13 AM on May 6, 2015

Unless I'm misunderstanding, no those products are completely not what you want. They're ad servers. You are not talking about serving an ad. You want a product like KissMetrics or Omniture/Site Catalyst or MixPanel... something that competes with Google Analytics (which you should dump because it's really inaccurate, not just because of their data practices).
posted by brainmouse at 11:12 AM on May 6, 2015