To identify visitors arriving to your site through a marketing campaign you must either define a pattern based on the entry / landing page (e.g., set up a campaign based on the visitors who arrive on a certain page that is only accessible through the campaign). or the referring URL (e.g., set up a campaign based on the visitors who arrive from a specific partner site).

In some cases the referrer URL of a campaign cannot be specified, as visitors arriving from the campaign may use multiple referral sources (e.g. the syndicated ads served Yahoo! by but displayed on a partner site). In such cases you can create a unique entry (landing) page for each of your campaigns (e.g., www.abc.com/ysm.html or www.abc.com/?ref=ysm).

To set up a campaign, you need to do the following:

1. Go to Settings > Campaigns & Ad Channel > Manage Campaigns, choose a campaign type from the dropdown menu and click on the Add new campaign button.
   

   
   Figure 1: Add New Campaign Button

2. In the Add new campaign window, set the campaign properties by entering the campaign name, a campaign description and selecting the cost type. The following options are available:


• Free campaign / Other cost type
• One-time cost
• CPC (Fixed Cost-per-Click) - You need to enter the amount per unit and then the total price will be calculated and displayed within reports.
• CPA (Cost per action) - You need to enter the amount per unit and then the total price will be calculated and displayed within reports.

  
  Figure 2: Set Campaign Properties

  When configuring a paid search campaign, enter the keyword identifier, e.g., kw. Then, you need to add this identifier to the URLs of your landing pages on the search engine side, in order for keywords cost to be reported that a cost may be reported. Please note that for Yahoo! Search Marketing campaigns, the keyword identifier must be OVKEY. For Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter campaigns, you may choose any keyword identifier you want.

  Next, select the start date and end date for your campaign. Please note that this information has no impact on the tracking of your campaign. Entering this information will simply help you when analyzing the performance of your campaigns.

  Choose whether your campaign results will be listed in your reports by clicking on the Show option. This is also the place where you can set a campaign as Hidden, when you have decided that you no longer want to see a campaign in your reports, but would like to keep the tracked data for future analysis.

3. The next step is to define the campaign settings, which is the most important part in defining your campaign. With this step, you need to find a unique way of identifying your campaign either in terms of the landing page URL or the referring URL.

The following options are available:

• URL PARAMETER EQUALS: Provides an exact match for the URL parameter you define.

The URL Parameter equals option allows you to define a campaign by providing a URL parameter that appears in the Landing Page URL. You do not need to enter the full Landing Page URL. The URL Parameter equals option will return an exact match for the parameter you provide.

Example:

URL parameter equals cmp=12 returns only the visitors generated by the campaign with the URL parameter cmp=12; visitors from campaigns defined as cmp=12xx will not be returned.

The URL parameter can be:

• what comes in between the “?” mark in a URL and the “&” sign
  E.g.,www.abc.com/index.html?cmp=springsales&_abc3tyJNL60ZN7e3gkG&abcd=133
• what comes in between two “&” signs
  E.g.,www.abc.com/index.html?ref=googleadws&kw=web+analytics&_c_id=abcd123&abcd=1
• what comes in between an “&” sign and the end of the URL
  E.g.,www.abc.com/index.html?ref=googleadws&kw=web+analytics&_c_id=abcd123&abcd=7
• LANDING PAGE URL CONTAINS: Provides all the URLs that partially match the pattern you define.

  Example:

  Landing Page URL contains cmp=ysm returns all the visitors generated by the campaigns cmp=ysm123xx.

• LANDING PAGE URL EQUALS: Requires you to enter the whole URL and provides an exact match for the URL you define.

  Example:

  Landing Page URL equals www.yourdomain.com/index.html?campaign=ysm returns only the campaign visitors that entered your web site via this specific page.

• REFERRING URL CONTAINS: Provides all the URLs that partially match the pattern you define.

  Example:

  Referring URL contains www.partnersite.com returns the visitors referred by www.partnersite.com/xxx.

• REFERRING URL EQUALS: Requires you to enter the whole URL and provides an exact match for the URL you define.

  Example:

  Referring URL equals www.yourdomain.com/partners/mypartner returns only the visitors referred by this specific URL.

After you set up your campaign, test it by accessing the landing page or the web site using the campaign identifiers you selected. Then, check the traffic reports to see whether your visit was properly recorded.

Notes:

- Make sure you spell your referrer or landing page correctly. If this information is incorrect, Yahoo! Web Analytics is not able to measure your campaign traffic.

- Make sure there are no campaign tracking string conflicts, e.g., one campaign defined with URL contains: ref=ysm and another campaign with URL contains: ref=ysmuk. Since both tracking strings are defined with URL contains and both strings contain the phrase ref=ysm, Yahoo! Web Analytics will report this as a conflict.

- Your campaign is active from the time when you create it and does not apply to past data, i.e., if you launch a campaign in Yahoo! Search Marketing in January but you only set up campaign tracking in February, you will NOT have campaign data for January even though standard tracking was set up during the whole period.

After you set up your campaign, it is recommended you test it by accessing the landing page or the web site using the campaign identifiers you selected, then check the traffic reports to see whether your visit was properly recorded.