What is a pixel? A pixel is a small piece of html-code that is embedded on site pages, or in the markup of an e-mail message, allowing you to track impressions. The tracking pixel gets its name because it is most often rendered in the form of a 1x1 px transparent GIF image
Who is using the pixel? The pixel is used to track the effectiveness of advertising, collect audiences for retargeting in contextual advertising, and track the number of read E-mail messages. In CPA networks, a pixel is used to obtain operational information about clicks (clicks) to a landing page or a page of a placed order.
Visualization of the pixel log of one of our projects
Pixel types 1px gif The simplest kind of tracking that allows you to collect a minimum of information about the user, but it works almost everywhere and always. GIF format is used because of the minimum image size - only 43 bytes uncompressed
Can collect the following information:
- Time and date of visit
- The page on which it is located, including the utm tags
- user's IP address (allows you to calculate the city and provider)
- User-agent (you can find out the type of device, browser and user operating system)
- Selected browser language (operating system)
- User actions on the site (provided that the pixel is set on all pages)
It is implemented in two forms:
Synchronous - a pixel request runs a script that processes and stores information at the time of the request.
Asynchronous - implemented on the basis of a web server, when each pixel request is written to a log file, which is further analyzed. Its advantage over the previous method is that the pixel is loaded almost instantly (thereby does not slow down the loading of the page on which it is located), does not load the server at the time of the request (information processing can be postponed at the time of the "decline", or even transferred to another server)
Pixel configuration for asynchronous mode
JS tracking The page hosts a small javascript code that collects information and sends it to the server. Can collect the same information as a 1px gif, plus:
- Screen resolution
- Time zone selected in the system
- Perform a variety of logic, for example, collect and send some information from the page (for example, a list of products in the basket)
Server tracking The tracking code is executed at the time of the request on the server; it is usually used to notify CPA networks about the completion of the target action.
Should you trust data from a pixel? When processing data from a pixel 100%, you can only trust the data that was obtained by server tracking, since all other data is sent in clear text and can be intercepted and faked.
