What do you think about NATS ?

[cellinis]

I was taking an off day today (no marketing day) and going over my stats when I noticed something rather strange.

I use a link tracking system for my outgoing hits. Upon comparing the hits listed by the NATS in the stats area of various sponsors and the clicks according to my own program, I noticed huge discrepancies, on occassions as much as 30%.
Similar difference is also with CCbill sponsors though it is 1-2% at the most.

As it is, this NATS thing basically renders my landing pages useless, because there is no Direct to Join option... and now this..

What are your experiences with NATS? Am I the only one or are there others who have noticed similar problems?

[cellinis]

A follow up... these discrepancies seem only to come from some sponsors... others seem to report stats more or less accurately (3-4% difference, which I guess is normal). Damn, now I have to recheck all my codes to see if I didn't make an error.

[seoguy]

hi,

would you mind telling which sponsors show huge discrepancies? Or, if you don't want to tell, could you at least tell which DON'T :-)

[cellinis]

Until I am sure of my links, I will not name the sponsors... the ones that seem accurate are Reality Cash, Brain Cash, Occash, Sapphic Cash... of course the list is not complete... I am still working on it.

[seoguy]

could you maybe pm me about the ones you are not sure about? we could compare...

[SirMoby]

I think NATS is a great backend that offers a lot of features. However, I'm very conerned about the claims of "Impossible To Shave". Either they don't understand or they think we're stupid.

[Opti]

As an affiliate, I'd trust a program running NATS over a program running MPA4, purely based on NATS promoting themselves as unshavable... and the type of program owner that would be attracted to use it 'despite' that feature.

I'd be interested to know if/why some NATS sponsors don't show accurate click counts though. (any chance some programs have a way to count 2nd page uniques with NATS?)

Low click counts may not necesarily mean shaved signups too.

[RawAlex]

NATS so far has not impressed me anywhere near as much as the hype would suggest. I have not actively promoted a program that uses NATS and gotten good results - so there is nothing more I can put up on this one.

Alex

[Opti]

Originally Posted by RawAlex

NATS so far has not impressed me anywhere near as much as the hype would suggest. I have not actively promoted a program that uses NATS and gotten good results - so there is nothing more I can put up on this one.

Alex

I've heard a few people say this.. do you (or anybody that thinks the same) have a theory on why this might be?

Not arguing it isn't true... I just can't think of a logical reason how the affiliate managment software could affect the signup ratio that much.

[swedguy]

The default in NATS is to count 1st page hits, at least that's what they said. But it can be changed to count 2nd page, there are a couple that do that. That could be the reason why are you seeing such a big difference.

[SirMoby]

I'm just curious.

Why are people so interested in having sponsors actually count the clicks? Shouldn't you be counting the actual numbers to your advertising and counting the dollars from the sponsor?

Aren't those the 2 numbers that really matter?

[RawAlex]

SirMoby, for me it is a question of perceived honesty. If a sponsor can't count clicks (which is a pretty simple process, when you think about it) then how can I be sure they are going to do a good job counting the money?

As an example, one sponsor (well known sites) was counting less than 10% of the traffic I was sending them. I have no idea how they are counting clicks, but I know how many banner clicks I was getting to them (over a 10 day sample period) and I know how many clicks they reported in the same period. They lost my faith in their ability to count, so I am NOT intersted in sending them any more traffic.

Alex

[SomeCreep]

I like NATS. One sponsor I promote recently changed from ccbill to NATS and the number of clicks are the same. No discrepancies.

[Rui]

NATS is good but its a bit overrated compared to MPA and such

[cellinis]

There are differences for sure, I didn't mix up the link codes. The next job is to write to these sponsors and see if they are not actually counting second page clicks (in which case the difference should be more, based on my previous experience). Once I hear from them, then I'll share the list.

If someone from NATS is reading this, maybe they should have a system to link directly to the join pages anyway. I have always been more successful using my own landing pages rather than tours from the sponsors (why the hell do they make a hash of their tours? I have actually seen some excellent sites convert at 1:1500 after preselling just because they idiotically put a bad looking model on their first tour page!)

[cellinis]

Originally Posted by SirMoby

I'm just curious.

Why are people so interested in having sponsors actually count the clicks? Shouldn't you be counting the actual numbers to your advertising and counting the dollars from the sponsor?

Aren't those the 2 numbers that really matter?

I agree with Alex here. The minimum is to be able to count the actual number of clicks sent. I know there are actually some sponsors that only provide number of sales made, but that is just not correct. How do you know which ad made a sale and which ad failed? Specially when you have multiple ads running in tandem for the same sponsor.
And as Alex said, if they don't even report the number of clicks accurately, how the hell do we know that they report the number of sales accurately?

[Rocco]

after this I don't trust NATS anymore:

Log in to your sponsor NATS system and then paste this path:

/admin_stats_referrers.php

[swedguy]

Originally Posted by Rocco

after this I don't trust NATS anymore:

Log in to your sponsor NATS system and then paste this path:

/admin_stats_referrers.php

What is it?

I only get redirected to members.php

[frankthetank]

Originally Posted by swedguy

What is it?

I only get redirected to members.php

So do I.

[cellinis]

Which sponsor did that work on? The ones I tried seem to redirect to members.php too.

[Rocco]

oops, probably they have already fixed it

[swedguy]

Now I see what it's all about. DAMN, I knew I should never have gone to sleep

[Rocco]

Originally Posted by swedguy

Now I see what it's all about. DAMN, I knew I should never have gone to sleep

I'll give you a call and wake you up next time

[Mefo]

Originally Posted by cellinis

Which sponsor did that work on? The ones I tried seem to redirect to members.php too.

you guys missed all the fun

[ClickBuster]

Originally Posted by Opti

As an affiliate, I'd trust a program running NATS over a program running MPA4, purely based on NATS promoting themselves as unshavable... and the type of program owner that would be attracted to use it 'despite' that feature.

...

Not arguing it isn't true... I just can't think of a logical reason how the affiliate managment software could affect the signup ratio that much.

Opti, one of the reasons that people are seeing differences in stats and bad ratios is the fact that NATS tracks only with cookies. How to check this? A simple PHP script can prove this.

<?php
set_time_limit(0);
for ( $i = 0; $i < 100; $i++ )
  file ('YOUR_NATS_CODE_HERE');
?>

This will track 100 unique hits in your account. If you try this on MPA, it won't work, because it tracks with both cookies and database.

-- Andrew