Why am I seeing a discrepancy between ad clicks and page views in Visitor ID?

The way Terminus tracks activity on your website (via a reverse IP address lookup) and the way we serve display ads (via cookie-based data), are very different. Terminus ad serving is based on third party cookie data, which allows us to target down to the department or title-level at your target accounts. Web engagement data, captured by Terminus's Visitor ID tool, is only collected when a device is connected to a company's recognizable IP address at the time an ad is clicked.

 

 

With cookie-level data, we are able to proactively serve an ad to someone who is browsing the internet at their company's office, remotely, or at another location outside of their work office (re: not connected to their company's recognizable IP). However, if a user clicks an ad and lands on your website, that page view/visit will only register in Visitor ID if they are connected to their work IP address at the time the click occurred. For these reasons, it is possible that a targeted advertising account that is showing clicks for your ads will not show up as a visiting account in Visitor ID immediately, or that ad clicks will equate directly to Page Views for that account. 

How does Visitor ID work?

Once Account-Based Visitor ID is properly set up, Terminus begins recording website activity, cookies unique visitors, and then conducts a reverse-IP lookup to associate a company with the visit. Once the reverse-IP lookup is complete, Terminus identifies if the company is in a Terminus campaign or not and then displays that information in the Account-Based Visitor ID section of your Terminus account. Since the visitor is cookied during their visit, they’re considered a unique visitor and subsequent visits to your site will be tracked but not be counted against your allotment of monthly unique visitors.

As with any other cookie-based tracking solution, if a visitor clears their cookies, doesn’t allow cookies, or visits from another device, they will be counted again as a unique visitor if they return to your site.

Additionally, if someone is visiting your site from home or outside of the office (i.e., is not connected to their organization's recognized IP address), Terminus may not be able to associate that visit to one of your accounts. 

If you have any additional questions related to cookie vs. IP-based ad serving and tracking, please reach out to support through the Terminus Support Portal.