In our experience, nothing raises as many questions on the part of advertisers in the setup process
as the High Traffic Landing Page, or HTLP for short.
This “mystery” has rarity value outside of affiliate marketing and also within the campaign it requires a consistent application scenario: It is used when post-view tracking is implemented in conjunction with a tracking switch.
Very simply broken down, tracking switches trigger certain scripts or tags based on the origin of a user. For example, if a user clicks on an affiliate to enter the store, the switch will use this information to trigger affiliate tracking in the order process. If the click came via Google Adwords, only the corresponding Adwords conversion tag is triggered. If several paid channels are involved, the logic is usually applied that the last channel gets the nod. This principle works well as long as there has been a click.
But what happens if there has been no click, as is the case in the post-view environment?
In retargeting and display campaigns via affiliate marketing, tracking via post-view is a common practice. Here, sales are tracked whose contact with the affiliate did not come about via a click, but via a “view”. This is not a challenge for the tracking of the affiliate networks, but it is for the tracking switch. Due to the missing click, the switch had no possibility to mark the origin of the user.
If it now comes to order completion, the contact with the affiliate is treated as if it never took place!
This is where the HTLP comes into play.
The HTLP serves the purpose of ensuring contact between the tracking switch and the user in the view environment. For this purpose, the HTLP is loaded invisibly in the background each time a post-view ad is displayed, enabling the switch to get to know the user. In theory, any page of an online store could function as an HTLP as long as it contains the tracking switch script.
However, the name “High Traffic Landingpage” already suggests it: for the webshop’s server, this would mean a tremendous traffic load.
All texts, images, scripts, designs, etc. would be loaded with every call. With tens, if not hundreds of thousands of pages being displayed every day, this would quickly take on proportions that could bring the entire store to its knees.
To cope with this “high traffic”, a content-empty page is usually created, which contains nothing else but the switch script. Also, any container tags from affiliate networks have no place on the HTLP.
As mentioned at the beginning, the usage scenario is very specific. However, this does not mean that it is rare or complicated at the same time.
Why every advertiser should also use a tracking switch independently of Post-View, you will learn next week.
Do you feel your tracking could use an inspection?
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