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Our business has ads on the local news channels website and mobile app. I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to track if a visitor came to your website from a 3rd party app?

csmiddy
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  • You need to ask the mobile app developers if they specify the "referer" HTTP header when the user clicks on the advert to get to your site. If so, then yes. – paulmorriss Feb 16 '12 at 12:38

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It is very common for advertisements to be directed through a tracking redirect. Let me give a fictional example. There could be three sites involved:

  • news-site -- shows your advertisements
  • ad-tracker -- tracks clicks on the ads
  • my-site -- landing page

When an ad is clicked on "news-site", the user is taken to "ad-tracker" which records the click and then redirects the user to "my-site". The "ad-tracker" site would then provide you a dashboard where you can count the clicks and see other statistics about the advertising.

Stephen Ostermiller
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