It seems that each time I see an ad that is served by an ad manager application there is always a bunch of parameters added to the URL of the product.
Say for instance one random stackoverflow ad :
http://ads.stackoverflow.com/a.aspx?Task=Click&ZoneID=4&CampaignID=474&AdvertiserID=5&BannerID=408&SiteID=1&RandomNumber=464183249&Keywords=
or this one:
If I go with the logic of the things, when you register a click to a banner, you would normally need a few info : “how many times it has been clicked”, “by who” (ip/registered account/…), “when”.
Now if we look at the parameters there are a lot more informations to this. OpenX adds a lot more on top of that :
The only reason I can think of this is to save call to the db, other than that I really can’t see.
Any hint or ideas ?
Tracking.
The parameters are used to identify you, where you’re clicking from, what you’re clicking on, which ad campaign your click should go to, etc.