Hosting / cloaking ad network pixels

[Spades]

Anyone know if it's possible to host and/or cloak your ad network conversion pixels? We basically want to serve the pixels from our own server. The only issue I guess is that most affiliate networks require it to be served as an image. Otherwise we could just serve it as a page and include the image.

Example:

ourtrackingserver.com/pixel1.gif -> ad-network.com/conversion.gif

 

[PITTJRS]

Try an i-frame pixel. If the advertiser will accept an i-frame and the network has the capability to offer it - this will give you some flexibility for cloaking.

 

[ihategoogle]

it depends on the advertiser but for my offers I will host both the network pixel and the publisher pixel which i feel gives the pub more insight to how the offer performs and more confidence that the network isn't scrubbing. so just ask the network if the advertiser will host the pixel too and if not go directly to the advertiser and get a better price anyway

 

[webtrend]

Yeah, iframe would be way to go.

You can use javascript for cloaking (which can be reverse engineered) or put a boatload of fake pixels from various traffic sources along with your real pixels just to deceive them

 

[MaxSteve]

Anyone know if it's possible to host and/or cloak your ad network conversion pixels? We basically want to serve the pixels from our own server. The only issue I guess is that most affiliate networks require it to be served as an image. Otherwise we could just serve it as a page and include the image.

Example:

ourtrackingserver.com/pixel1.gif -> ad-network.com/conversion.gif

Based on my interpretation of your question, you are an advertiser and you are looking to serve pixels from a server to prevent fake fires of the pixel? If that's the case, then you can't fire a pixel from your server using any HTML code that's displayed on the brower. You will need to modify the code on your server so that your server calls the ad network's pixel code on your confirmation page. This is pretty straightforward stuff if you are using a dynamic scripting language (i.e. PHP, ASP, CF, etc.)

If I misread your question, then my answer might not work for you.

 

[Spades]

Thanks guys, I guess my question was a bit vague. We are promoting affiliate offers via 3rd party ad networks and utilizing their pixels for optimization. The goal is to place a pixel that appears like its on our server to hide our traffic a bit. We all know that people like dig through pubs pixels every now and then.

Most of our affiliate networks only allow image pixels (not iframes) so we are forced to serve an image file. I think we figured it out using mod rewrites, doing some testing now.

 

[MaxSteve]

Thanks guys, I guess my question was a bit vague. We are promoting affiliate offers via 3rd party ad networks and utilizing their pixels for optimization. The goal is to place a pixel that appears like its on our server to hide our traffic a bit. We all know that people like dig through pubs pixels every now and then.

Most of our affiliate networks only allow image pixels (not iframes) so we are forced to serve an image file. I think we figured it out using mod rewrites, doing some testing now.

Ad-network conversion pixels are fired from the merchant's confirmation page. So it's the merchant's confirmation URL that will show up as the referrer on your pixel and not the source of the initial click-through. Your traffic sources shouldn't be exposed.

 

[Compound]

I think OP is talking about preventing the affiliate networks from seeing which traffic sources he is using.

 

[Spades]

I think OP is talking about preventing the affiliate networks from seeing which traffic sources he is using.

Right on man, I was talking about the traffic sources and not the exact placements. Thanks for the input guys. I guess the more you actually control in-house the better. Like DickArmy's old golden posts encourage, having your own ad server and optimization is probably the way to go.

For those of you using networks to optimize for you just setup SSL on your server (if your offer requires it) and do mod rewrites to your pixel. At least your ad networks are not sitting in your affiliate account in plain site.

There is a proxy flag for mod rewrite redirects but think the server actually loads the pixel first and then the client (guess that's a "proxy" by definition.)