How Spider AF counts clicks

Spider AF uses JavaScript to capture signals from where the traffic originates, but it relies mostly on the page URL to track clicks. When measuring click-through rates, it's important to keep in mind that there may be a breakage rate between what the ad network reports and what we see on our end. This is because Spider AF data is based on landing page views, and in order to measure data accurately, the JavaScript on the page must be executed.

If the user has JavaScript disabled, or if there are issues with the page loading, then some clicks may not be captured in our data. It's important to take this into consideration when analyzing click data. Clicks are determined by tracking parameters in the landing page URL string.

These parameters help Spider AF to attribute the clicks to the correct networks.

One such parameter is the utm_source. This parameter provides information about the source of the click and allows Spider AF to attribute the click to the appropriate network.

For example, if the utm_source parameter indicates that the click came from Network A, then Spider AF will attribute that click to Network A.

If there are no utm parameters, but an ads_id exists, Spider AF will do a best effort attempt to attribute the traffic to the appropriate network based on the name of the ID. For instance Google Ads appends GCLID to its urls.

However, in some cases, there may be no utm parameters or ads_id in the URL string. In such cases, Spider AF will not attribute the traffic to any network and it will be captured as organic. This data can be viewed in the Traffic Analysis section of the dashboard.