Data Collection

Ad platform algorithms are only as smart as the data you feed them. Feed them incomplete signals—missing customer emails, no product values, broken attribution chains—and they optimize on noise. Your ROAS suffers because Facebook thinks every visitor converts equally, when in reality half your budget goes to traffic that never had purchase intent.

AnyTrack collects four core data types that ad platforms need for accurate optimization: First-Party Data (cookies, device IDs), Customer Data (email, phone, name), Product Data (SKU, value, currency), and Event Data (actions, conversions, timestamps). Collection happens client-side via the AnyTrack tracking tag and server-side via webhooks, APIs, and postbacks—capturing signals browsers cannot block and matching them into unified customer profiles that drive attribution accuracy and Event Match Quality.

Types of Data Collected

AnyTrack collects six categories of data. Each plays a specific role in attribution, identity resolution, and ad platform optimization.

Web Traffic Data

Web traffic data captures how visitors interact with your website at the session level:

• Page Views: Total pages viewed across all visitors.
• Sessions: Individual visits, including all interactions within a given timeframe.
• Bounce Rate: Percentage of single-page visits where the user left without further interaction.

This data feeds into the Campaign Report and provides the foundation for attributing downstream conversions to specific traffic sources.

Visitor Actions

Visitor actions are the specific events users perform on your website or on third-party platforms like affiliate networks:

• Product Views: When a user views a product page.
• Add to Cart: When a user adds a product to their shopping cart.
• Checkout Started: When a user initiates the checkout process.
• Meeting Booked: When a user schedules a meeting or appointment.
• Outbound Clicks: Clicks on affiliate or external links that lead away from the site.
• Leads and Registrations: Form submissions, sign-ups, and newsletter subscriptions.
• Purchases: When a user completes a transaction.

These actions are tracked as Standard Events and can be customized through Event Mapping. Each event carries metadata that AnyTrack uses to match the action back to the original visitor session for accurate attribution.

First-Party Data

First-party data is information collected directly from the visitor's browser through cookies:

• Facebook Cookie ID (_fbp) — Used to match conversions back to Meta ad clicks.
• Google Analytics Client ID (_ga) — Used to stitch sessions across Google's ecosystem.
• AnyTrack Click ID (click_id) — AnyTrack's own identifier that ties outbound clicks to downstream conversions.

This data is what drives Event Match Quality scores on Meta and similar match rates on other ad platforms. The higher the match quality, the better the ad platform can attribute conversions and optimize delivery.

Customer Data

Customer data is personally identifiable information (PII) collected from eCommerce platforms, CRMs, and form submissions:

• Email Addresses — The single most important signal for ad platform matching.
• Phone Numbers — Secondary matching signal used by Meta, Google, and TikTok.
• Physical Addresses — Used for offline conversion matching and audience building.
• Customer Name — Supports identity resolution across sessions and devices.

AnyTrack stores customer data to enrich session and conversion records and to power identity resolution — linking a returning visitor's new session to their previous interactions even across devices. When forwarding data to ad platforms via Conversion API, AnyTrack hashes PII using SHA-256 to meet platform requirements.

Campaign Traffic Data

Campaign traffic data identifies where visitors come from and which ads drove them:

• UTM Parameters: Source, medium, campaign, term, and content values.
• Referrers: The originating URL of inbound traffic.
• Click IDs: Platform-specific identifiers like Google's gclid, Facebook's fbclid, and TikTok's ttclid — these are the backbone of ad platform attribution.

AnyTrack captures these parameters on the first page load and persists them across the session so they can be joined with conversion events later.

Conversion Data

Conversion data records completed goals and their associated attributes:

• Conversion Types: Purchase, Lead, Registration, Meeting Booked, or any custom event.
• Conversion Attributes: Product details, revenue value, currency, quantity, order ID, and product ID.

Conversion attributes are forwarded to ad platforms through Conversion API integrations, giving algorithms the revenue signals they need to optimize for value rather than just volume.

For advanced use cases, you can send custom events and conversion attributes beyond the standard set. See Event Attributes for passing custom parameters, Custom Conversion Names for defining your own event names, and Custom Conversion Source for tracking conversions from platforms not in the integration catalog.

Methods of Data Collection

AnyTrack uses four collection methods, split between client-side and server-side. Using both ensures maximum data coverage — client-side captures what happens in the browser, server-side captures what happens after the click leaves your site.

AnyTrack Tracking Tag (Client-Side)

The AnyTrack tracking tag is a JavaScript snippet installed in your website's <head> section. It captures:

• Campaign traffic data — UTM parameters, referrer, and ad platform click IDs on every page load.
• First-party data — Browser cookies including _fbp, _ga, and AnyTrack's own click_id.
• Visitor actions — Page views, outbound clicks, form submissions, and eCommerce events.

The tracking tag also powers AutoTag, which automatically appends the AnyTrack click_id to outbound affiliate links so that downstream conversions can be attributed back to the original visitor.

Webhooks (Server-Side)

Webhooks are real-time notifications sent from platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and ClickFunnels to AnyTrack. When a conversion happens — a purchase, a form submission, a new lead — the platform sends the event data directly to AnyTrack's servers.

Webhooks capture customer data (email, phone, address) and product data (SKU, value, currency) that the browser-side tag cannot access, making them essential for high Event Match Quality scores.

Postback URLs (Server-Side)

Postback URLs are used by affiliate networks to send conversion data to AnyTrack. When a visitor clicks an affiliate link, converts on the merchant's site, and the affiliate network records the commission, a postback fires with the conversion details.

AnyTrack matches the incoming postback to the original visitor session using the click_id, then forwards the conversion to your connected ad platforms. This is how affiliate conversions flow into Google Ads, Meta, and TikTok for optimization.

API Integrations (Server-Side)

API integrations provide direct data exchange between AnyTrack and platforms like Calendly, HubSpot, and CJ Affiliates. These integrations pull conversion and customer data on a scheduled or event-driven basis.

How It All Connects: Data Orchestration

Data orchestration is the process of combining client-side and server-side data into a single, enriched customer profile. Here is how it works in practice:

1. A visitor clicks a Google Ad and lands on your site. The tracking tag captures the gclid, _fbp cookie, UTM parameters, and starts a session.
2. The visitor clicks an affiliate link. AutoTag appends the AnyTrack click_id to the outbound URL. An OutboundClick event fires.
3. The visitor converts on the merchant's site. The affiliate network sends a postback with the conversion value and the click_id.
4. AnyTrack matches the postback to the original session using the click_id, joining conversion data with the first-party data and campaign parameters collected earlier.
5. AnyTrack sends the enriched conversion to Google Ads (via offline conversion import), Meta (via Conversion API), and TikTok (via Events API) — including the gclid, hashed email, _fbp, revenue value, and event name.

The result: ad platforms receive complete, matched conversion signals instead of fragmented data. This directly improves algorithm optimization, audience building, and ROAS reporting.

Identity Resolution

Identity resolution is the process of matching incoming conversions to the correct visitor profile. AnyTrack resolves identities using a combination of:

• Click ID matching — The AnyTrack click_id links outbound clicks to downstream conversions, even when they happen on a different domain.
• First-party cookie matching — Browser cookies like _fbp and _ga tie conversion events to the ad click that started the session.
• Customer data matching — Email addresses and phone numbers from webhooks or API integrations are matched against ad platform user graphs for deterministic attribution.

Strong identity resolution directly increases your Event Match Quality on Meta and equivalent match rates on other platforms. Higher match rates mean the ad platform can attribute more conversions to the correct ad, which improves optimization signals.

Data Privacy and Compliance

AnyTrack operates within a first-party data scope and follows platform-specific privacy requirements:

• First-party context: All data is collected and processed as a first-party data processor. AnyTrack does not use third-party cookies or sell data to external parties.
• Consent mode compatibility: AnyTrack respects cookie consent preferences and adjusts data collection when users decline tracking.
• PII storage and hashing: AnyTrack stores customer data (email, phone, name, address) to enrich conversion records and power identity resolution. When forwarding this data to ad platforms, it is hashed using SHA-256 to meet the requirements of Meta Conversion API, Google Ads, and TikTok Events API.

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Privacy

AnyTrack stores customer PII securely for session enrichment and identity resolution. Data sent to ad platforms is always hashed before transmission — only hashed values leave AnyTrack's servers for matching purposes.