• Home
  • Contact
  • FAQs
    • What is Webcomics.com?
    • Member Benefits
    • How To Post an Article or News Item
    • How to Post a Webcomic on the List
    • How to Post a Comic
    • Terms of Service
  • WebComics List
  • Benefits
    • Print Vendors: Get multiple quotes
    • Banner stand: Discount
    • Consultation discount
    • “How To Make Webcomics” book: discount
    • “Webcomics Handbook”: discount
    • ALL benefits
  • My Account
    • Welcome
    • What is Webcomics.com?
    • My Subscription
    • Join us!
  • Account
  • Membership List
Twitter Email RSS

Webcomics.com

How To Make WebComics

Webcomics Handbook

‹ Jetpack adds protection against brute force att... FTP tutorial ›

Archive Dive: Tracking Ads

You don’t need a subscription to read today’s Friday Archive Dive!

Even if you’re not a member of the site, you can read the entire post, which originally ran March 10, 2010. If you’ve ever been curious about the kind of information, tutorials and advice that you’ll get as part of your subscription to Webcomics.com, this is a good sample.

If you’d like to join the site, you can get a 12-month subscription for $30 — or you can get a one-month Trial for $5 … with no obligation after your 30 days expire.  

Tracking adAs part of a continuing effort to use Google Analytics to its fullest, I’d like to talk about using its tracking abilities to chart the performance of an ad that you create for your comic.

To do this, we’ll set up a landing page for the ad (as discussed here).

Goals

First, go into Analytics and do the following:

  • Click on Goals in the left-hand column
  • Click on Set up Goals and Funnels
  • Under Goals, click on + Add Goal.
  • Give your Goal a name
  • Next to Goal Type, click URL Destination
  • Choose Exact Match
  • Enter the URL of your landing page

Whenever a visitor from your ad gets to this landing page, it registers as an “acheived goal” with Analytics. If you need more information on setting up Goals, you can check out Google’s guide.

This is nice, but it’s not spectacular. So let’s go a little further.

Tagging an ad

To track your ad’s performance, you’re gonna tag the URL you submit for your ad to point to. You’re going to add the following:

  • Source: Where the ad appeared
  • Medium: What kind of ad it was (banner, skyscraper, etc.)
  • Name: Which campaign was this. You may as well start naming them, because you’ll probably be doing a few until you find some that work consistently.

Now we’ll go to a handy tool called the Google URL builder.

  • Enter the URL for your landing page and then fill in the blanks for the three fields (if you’d like, you can enter terms for the other ones like Term and Content, but that’s up to you.
  • Hit generate URL and the tool creates the new URL that you will use for your advertisement.

Now, I would suggest the following. For this to really rock, you’re going to have to be somewhat specific. For example, wouldn’t suggest a source of “Project Wonderful.” The source should be the Web site on which you’re advertising through Project Wonderful.

If you’re advertising on three different sites through Project Wonderful, you can set up three, different tagged links using the URL builder. In other words, any time one of your variable changes, you need to build a new tagged URL to reflect that change.

Checking Your Results

So, assuming your advertisement used the tagged URL, Analytics will begin gathering data based on when that landing page is hit — and from which source/campaign/ad style. To view your results, go to Analytics and look along the left-hand column:

  • Click on Traffic Sources
  • Click Campaigns
  • You’ll see your new goal under the fever chart, next to Site Usage
  • You can also get tons of great metrics under the Goals sections, such as Conversions and Conversation Rate.

Now you can begin to compare how certain types of ads with certain types of content play on certain types of sites. And you can see which ones are working best — and where they work the best.

 

Share this:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
  • Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X
by Brad Guigar on March 20, 2015
Posted In: Archive Dive
Comments available to logged in users only.



Recent comments

  • rpmichel on Humor Writing — One Step at a Time
  • Stan! on Should you do a 2025 calendar?
  • Jaycee Knight on Some brilliant marketing advice — and a warning
  • Brad Guigar on Some brilliant marketing advice — and a warning
  • Jaycee Knight on Some brilliant marketing advice — and a warning

Search



Webcomics.com Poll

I design my comic specifically for smartphones and digital tablets.

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...
  • Polls Archive

Categories

  • Archive Dive
  • Articles
    • Advertising
    • Art
    • Business
    • Community
    • Conventions
    • Creativity
    • Crowdfunding
    • Digital publishing
    • Image prep
    • Lettering
    • Marketing / Social Media
    • Merchandise
    • Print publishing
    • Tech
    • Web site
      • Web Site Design
    • Writing
  • ComicLab
  • Edited and Ready
  • Events
  • Guest
  • Hot Seat critiques
  • Information
  • Interviews
  • Livestream Chat
  • Mail Bag
  • Member Benefits
  • Promos
  • Site News
  • Surviving Creativity
  • To-Do List
  • Uncategorized
  • Video
  • Webcomics Confidential
  • Webcomics Weekly
  • Webcomics.com Poll

Tags

ad revenue AdSense advertising Comic Easel comments composition contract copyright creativity exercise credit cards Crowdfunding digital lettering digital publishing Facebook holiday Humor IP KDP Kickstarter Kindle legal lettering line weight Longform comics Manga Studio merchandise NCS panels Patreon Promotion PulsePoint readers revenue SEO shipping social media Square taxes trademark Twitter typography Web design word balloons WordPress writing

Recent Posts

  • ComicLab Ep 392 — Special Guest: Jarad Greene
  • What to post between comic updates
  • Webcomics Confidential: Putting ideas on paper
  • The vertical-scroll eBook
  • ComicLab Ep 391 — Alaska Comics Camp

Recent Comments

  • rpmichel on Humor Writing — One Step at a Time
  • Stan! on Should you do a 2025 calendar?
  • Jaycee Knight on Some brilliant marketing advice — and a warning
  • Brad Guigar on Some brilliant marketing advice — and a warning
  • Jaycee Knight on Some brilliant marketing advice — and a warning
  • My Subscription
  • Store
  • Terms of Service
  • Account
  • Membership List

©2007-2025 Webcomics.com | Powered by WordPress with ComicPress | Subscribe: RSS | Back to Top ↑