Tracking Costs

• Setup: Select the CPM option.

  

• Trigger: Impression (when an ad is displayed to a visitor).
• Cost value: Provide the value that you pay per thousand impressions.
• Additional settings: Setting up tracking impressions is necessary. Read the Tracking Impressions in Voluum article to learn more. Note that not all traffic sources support impression tracking and their support is required. If you do not set up tracking impressions, tracking costs with this model will not work.
• Reports: You can view the value you provided in the CPM column in Voluum. Take into consideration that the cost tracked by Voluum when using this cost model might differ from what you pay to your traffic source if it uses the second price auction bidding model. To learn on how to check how much you actually pay for thousand impressions, check the eCPM column.

• Setup: Select the CPC option.

  

• Trigger: Visit (when a campaign URL is clicked).
• Cost value: Provide the value that you pay per single click.
• Additional settings: None
• Reports: You can view the value you provided in the CPC column in Voluum. Take into consideration that the cost tracked by Voluum when using this cost model might differ from what you pay to your traffic source if it uses the second price auction bidding model. To check how much you actually pay for a single click, check the eCPC column.

• Setup: Select the CPA option.

  

• Trigger: Conversion (when a postback URL or conversion tracking pixel is activated).
• Cost value: Provide the value that you pay per single conversion.
• Additional settings: Setting up tracking conversions is necessary. Read the Track Conversions article to learn more. Note that there are two methods of tracking conversions and not all of them are supported by every affiliate network platform. If you do not set up tracking conversions, tracking costs with this model will not work.
• Reports: You can view the value you provided in the CPA or Cost column in Voluum.

• Setup: Select the Revshare option.

  

• Trigger: Conversion (when a postback URL or conversion tracking pixel is activated).
• Cost value: Provide the value of the percentage fraction of your payout. The cost is calculated regardless of if you set the Auto or Manual payout option in the offer's setup.
• Additional settings: Setting up tracking conversions is necessary. You also have to set up payout tracking in the offer's setup, either Auto or Manual. Read Track Conversions and Tracking Payouts articles to learn more. Note that there are two methods of tracking conversions and not all of them are supported by every affiliate network platform. If you do not set up tracking conversions and payout, tracking costs with this model will not work.
• Reports: You can view the value you provided in the Cost column in Voluum.

• Setup: Select the Auto (CPC/CPM) option.

  

• Trigger: Cost value is read from the {cost} token when a campaign URL is activated.
• Cost value: No cost value to provide.

• Additional settings: You have to match the traffic source's cost parameter name and token with Voluum's cost variable in the traffic source's element advanced section.

  

  In this example, a traffic source's parameter, consisting of the cost parameter name and the {cost} token, is used to pass the cost value. This parameter will be included in the campaign URL that you submit to your traffic source value. Once the campaign URL is activated, Voluum will read the value that substituted the {cost} token passed in the cost parameter name. Note that this parameter name and token are specific for each traffic source platform and you have to refer to their documentation to get them or add a traffic source element from a template. In the latter scenario, all parameters will be configured automatically.

• Reports: You can view the value you provided in the Cost column in Voluum.

• Setup: Select the Auto (CPI) option.

  

• Trigger: Cost value is read from the {cost} token when an impression pixel is activated.
• Cost value: No cost value to provide.
• Additional settings.

• Setup: Select the Not tracked option.

  

• Notes: If you select the Not tracked option, cost information will not be recorded, even if you pass them in a token from your traffic sources. All other financial indicators, such as ROI, will not be calculated due to missing cost information.

  For fully integrated traffic sources via API, as described in the Full Integration article, values passed via the integration will override the Not tracked setting.

You can pass on the conversion cost information from Voluum to the traffic source, if only the traffic source supports this functionality. It means that the traffic source should deliver the parameter that can be matched with the {conversion.cost}  token in the pixel redirect URL.

Yes, you can track costs without Automizer if your Traffic source is in the list of our Integrations. If your traffic source supports cost token, pass cost data using this token to track cost automatically. If it doesn't that you can select an appropriate cost model during campaign setup in Voluum and provide cost value to track costs manually.

These are cost models used to settle down costs with a traffic source. CPC stands for 'Cost per click' and CPA stands for 'Cost per action'. Remember to choose the same cost model as is used in a traffic source campaign setup.

CPM stands for 'cost per mille' (thousand) views (impressions). So in order to correctly track CPM, you need to set up impression tracking. Note that not all traffic sources support impression tracking.