"Why is there a difference between your reporting and my analytics software?"
All platforms use different methodologies for analyzing traffic so you should never expect them both to match exactly. Having said that, ad platforms should follow a similar trend. If you see any large differences in the data, please do not hesitate to let us know.
For those using Google Analytics, make sure that you are using campaigns to effectively segment referral traffic from other sources. Depending solely on the “referral” information that analytics provide isn’t reliable. Google provides a tool for building special URLs that track more accurately: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en
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Technical Issues
It is possible, based on your audience and other technical factors, that traffic simply will not register in analytic reporting. Here are a few use cases:
If the user has visited your site within the last 30 days, they may bundle that user's visit into an existing group, thus reducing the effective “click”/session/page view count.
If the user clicks an advertisement but backs out (on mobile, it is common for users to back out if the site they are visiting is loading slow or broken).
Even if the user makes it to your site, if that user navigates to another part of the site before your analytics can register the visit, it is possible to lose the referral (even with campaign tracking).
If your site causes the user to redirect, the initiating referrer or campaign tags could be lost. You should not point your ad campaigns to referral links.
Many analytic providers also provide opt-out support (or recognize the do not track option of the user), which may prevent visits from counting.
Finally, the analytics software may have not loaded fast enough (similar to point 3) and the traffic isn’t registered.
If for any reason you suspect fraud or inaccurate reporting, please let us know as soon as possible.
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Google Analytics
"...Google Analytics shows 0:00:00 for session duration?"
"... single-page sessions have a session duration of 0 seconds since there are no subsequent hits after the first one that would let Analytics calculate the length of the session" - Google
If a user does not navigate to another area of the site after hitting the landing page or does not perform any other activity on your site, google analytics will not be able to calculate the session duration and will effectively mark their session as 0.
It is common for traffic sources with high bounce rates to have short session times.
"...Mantis is showing a higher/lower click count than Google?"
Our click tracking is invoked prior to directing the user to your website, which will ensure every click from an ad is tracked, but there is no guarantee that the user made it to your website (due to network issues, going back before the page loads, etc).
Additionally, while Mantis implements various anti-fraud measures when tracking clicks, our algorithms may differ from third-party platforms (i.e., either we are over-aggressive and do not count them, or we are not aggressive enough and track things a third-party would not). You should take into consideration all behavioral KPIs when determining if a source of traffic is valuable or not.
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Website Tracking
We highly recommend that you take advantage of our URL macros to better track analytics per website. Mantis supports replacing the property name (or id) so that you can breakdown referral tracking using our internal identifiers (vs. relying on referrer information which may be unreliable).
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Fraud Detection
All websites included in the Mantis ad network go through a series of internal fraud checks both in real-time and post click/impression. Additionally, we also partner with some of the most trusted and well known fraud vendors in ad tech to ensure protection against bot nets and other automated sources of traffic.