It's approximately a year since Moonpull started adding Publisher clients to join our portfolio of network clients. We now have a significant body of knowledge on how we've helped publishers develop their businesses to face and conquer many of the challenges to good publisher-advertiser relationships that occur due to tracking issues.
Publishers and Moonpull
Moonpull audits have been used by a number of publishers ranging from smaller content affiliates, email marketers to loyalty websites. The platform offers the flexibility for anything from individual link checks through to more strategic auditing, including via API for larger Enterprise users.
The more successful users have set up regular audits of their most important advertiser partnerships, to ensure full understanding of any changes in tracking.
Enterprise Publishers
> "Tracking is such an important topic — and we've put together some really good teams internally at TopCashback to work out how we monitor and improve it — so great to bring Moonpull officially into the mix here." > — James Little, TopCashback
Our larger publisher clients typically have good BI systems for analysing conversion rates over time by advertiser, offer and many other metrics too. One of the concepts we explain to publishers is that we help them see tracking matters that will not be in their BI, however hard they look. This is down to how the Moonpull audit process works.
Decisions Are Needed
During 2024, the environment around tracking is changing and, as these changes are impacting the whole industry, there is no avoiding them. Businesses are becoming Moonpull clients to get some visibility on any issues — rather than flying blind. Moonpull enables them to have visibility on:
- Which advertisers have a high quality first party tracking implementation - Which advertisers currently require consent for first party tracking - Which advertisers have a highly reliable and carefully managed first party tracking implementation
A good set of decisions may mean a publisher can maintain their revenue trajectory by the end of the year. Without decisions, it may be a reduction in revenue by, perhaps, 30%, possibly with increased administrative costs too. These decisions combine to become a Flight to Quality for the publisher.
Key Themes Publishers Learn
> "We need to arm ourselves with the right information and the Moonpull reports mean we're giving constructive information to clients about their tracking rather than potentially being viewed as your typical moaning affiliate" > — Chris Said, Genie Group
- Advertisers usually have both first party and third party tracking in place; it's not an either/or - Third party tracking is actually very reliable, as it usually utilises a cookie being set on the network redirect - Basing one's thinking about tracking around the "memory cookie" demystifies tracking and makes it understandable - Tracking can be broken due to actions at any stage, by the user, publisher, network, agency or advertiser - Most advertisers have implemented first party tracking. It's the quality and reliability of the implementation that is key - The quality of a conversation with an advertiser is a good additional datapoint on whether the advertiser is one to commit to
First Party Tracking Vulnerabilities
First party tracking is much more sensitive to actions on the advertiser's website than third party tracking. It can and does break for reasons such as:
- JavaScript accidentally removed - Redirects changing - Offers not being tagged properly - Home page URLs being changed - Typos in parameters - Cookies being set on the wrong domain
> "When you only have a limited amount of space to promote your 'top' picks, you want to be sure that they are going to convert properly or you are just throwing away revenue." > — Tricia Meyer, Sunshine Rewards
How Publishers Use Moonpull
A typical approach over the initial months:
**Getting started** — publishers select links across a mix of networks, territories, advertiser sizes, home pages and deeplinks.
**Important advertisers** — scheduling audits of important advertisers' links weekly, identifying those with consistent first-party tracking and understanding which to double down on.
**Ongoing monitoring** — continuously auditing specific advertisers for new offers, newsletter inclusions, new deeplinks, or those flagged by BI alerts.
Flight to Quality
The flight to quality is taking pace and will continue. With first party tracking needing always-on monitoring and the consent framework still evolving, the need to have quality relationships has now become an ever present of the channel.
Enterprise publishers are already making decisions and using Moonpull to illuminate their blind spots, and enable more informed commercial conversations and stronger relationships with their most important advertisers.
If you would like to see more of how Moonpull can benefit your business, we'd love to hear from you. Please get in touch via our [contact page](/contact).