In business intelligence, a blind spot refers to missing or overlooked information in the data. It’s like gaps in your understanding of how your business is performing or what factors influence its success. These blind spots can occur due to incomplete data, biased analysis, or limitations in the tools or methods used to gather and interpret information.
Addressing blind spots in business intelligence is crucial because it helps businesses make more informed decisions and avoid potential pitfalls. By identifying and filling these gaps in knowledge, organizations can gain a clearer picture of their operations, market trends, and customer behavior, leading to better strategic planning and improved performance.
Off-site Events
We refer to off-site events as events that we do not directly control and are provided by a third party.
As a business intelligence tool for affiliates, our first step is to integrate affiliate programs or portals seamlessly.
We are committed to providing our clients with a clear and concise reporting system that accurately displays the data they see on their portals. To achieve this level of accuracy, we have built a highly flexible and scalable stats aggregator that can integrate almost every affiliate program. We use a variety of data pipelines, ranging from crawlers to API and postbacks, and even allow user file uploads via our web interface or API. Examples of such events are sign-ups, first-time deposits, qualifications, etc.
Rest assured that Routy allows you to track and monitor your affiliate programs with us quickly.
On-site Events
On-site events are a set of user engagement with the site and ads. In most cases, the affiliate controls where and what events he collects.
Page View
A page view is the user’s first engagement with the affiliate website. This event informs our server whenever a user lands on a page with an affiliate link.
If you ever use Google Analytics, this is one of the first events Google guides you to send.
Routy page view is not a replacement for Google Analytics events but a comprehensive feature for the following KPI.
Clicks
Click is the user engagement with the ad or affiliate link. Clicks are essential metrics in ad tech because they provide insight into an advertisement’s level of interest or engagement.
Unlike server-side events, such as registration, FTD, or CPA, clicks are inconclusive. It’s nearly impossible to be accurate with a click KPI.
Why are clicks inconclusive?
When you log in to different affiliate portals, you might come across two types of click metrics: ‘Clicks’ and ‘unique Clicks.’ However, these metrics can be inconclusive due to several reasons. One of the primary reasons is the presence of bots. According to tracking solutions, many affiliates receive up to 40% of bot traffic. These bots can come from various sources, such as SEMRush, SimilarWeb, DeepCI, and AI Marketing Platform for iGaming & eCommerce .
Now, if one affiliate program counts bot traffic without considering its uniqueness, and a second program uses Cloudflare with a bot filter enabled to ensure unique counts, it might not be wise to compare their EPC (Earnings Per Click) rate. This is because the click metrics are not standard, and the bot traffic can affect the EPC rate significantly. Hence, it is essential to consider the click metrics and the presence of bot traffic before comparing EPC rates between different affiliate programs.
Why do we need to join on-site and off-site events?
Our approach to providing highly detailed reporting involves combining both on-site and off-site events into a single report. This tool is absolutely essential for providing clients with the critical insights they need to answer important business questions related to traffic funnel analysis.
As experienced BI analysts and software architects, we have carefully examined the data requirements for conducting such an analysis. Our aim was to determine precisely where the funnel begins and identify the essential data required to provide clients with the necessary insights. We have conducted an in-depth analysis of the client’s website and off-site channels to ensure that we capture all relevant data points. This includes tracking user behavior, clicks, and conversions, among other metrics.
Through this rigorous process, we are confident that we can provide clients with comprehensive and actionable insights that will help them optimize their funnel and improve their business outcomes.
How do we join between on-site and off-site events?
We start by integrating it with the first step of the user journey. Whether it’s SEO or PPC, the first user engagement is when the user lands on the landing page. We call this a Page view (PV).
How can I answer a question such as:
- What brand, on which page, drives more clicks to FTD on my second-largest website?
- How many registrations and FTDs did I make from this low-volume page?
- What will the outcome be if I switch the CTA on my hero banner from brand A to brand B?
Our research has led us to conclude that while a statistics aggregator may address 90% of the pain points associated with affiliate marketing, the available data on affiliate portals lacks the granularity required to provide a business-critical solution. Although the user journey or funnel commences with the search engine, social network, or email service provider, affiliate reporting presents data only from when a user clicks on the affiliate link. The data is usually at a low granularity, such as per day or marketing source.
Since we could not answer those business-critical questions with a stats aggregator. We had to enrich the affiliate program reporting with our data, so we added more data. Exactly. We did not have enough data, so we added more. We had to take our business a few steps further. From pulling third-party stats, we started to collect on-site user events. In other words, there were no more blind spots in the data.
How do we do this?
At Routy, we understand the importance of accurate reporting when measuring our performance. That’s why we have implemented a robust tracking solution from page view to click.
This solution ensures that we have reliable data that we can use to make informed decisions and optimize our strategies.
To ensure that our click count system is accurate, we use two layers of filters: a Cloudflare bot filter and an internal bot filter. The Cloudflare bot filter protects our system from malicious bots that can skew our data. In contrast, the internal bot filter eliminates any internal bots that may inadvertently trigger our click count system.
By using these filters, we can be 100% confident that our reporting system uses a click KPI that has been counted consistently across all platforms. This not only helps us make accurate decisions but also gives our clients the confidence that they are receiving reliable data that they can use to optimize their campaigns.
Despite implementing two layers of bot filters, we observe an average of 4% bot traffic on our platform. However, we have taken measures to ensure this does not affect our key performance metrics, such as EPC (earnings per click), click-to-sign-up rate, and click-to-FTD (first-time deposit) rate. We accurately record and account for the exact number of clicks, taking into account the bot traffic since we know that this ratio is consistent across all platforms.
