Ad stats and network stats never match up

[chrisk999]

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Something that's always puzzled me - when I compare the ad stats (e.g. adwords/overture) to affiliate network stats for a direct-->merchant ad, how come the ad stats are always show more clicks?

i.e. yesterday:

Campaign 1 - Google says 736 clicks - Aff network says 659
Campaign 2 - Google says 1100 clicks - Aff network says 1014
Campaign 3 - Google says 336 clicks - Aff network 232...

Am I really losing rougly 10%-25% of visitors before they even reach the merchant page? Or is it double clicks (which I thought were filtered?).

Or is it the http redirects failing/being too slow between adwords and the merchant? I know this is a bit of a rookie question, but something that has persistently puzzled me.

[bodykind]

We get exactley the same, when we compare our own tracking against the PPC of both Google and Overture theirs is always a discrepency with the PPC Reports from Google and OT always showing more clicks, hence more spend.

I have been convinced for some time that their systems for tracking double clicks, multiple clicks from same IP etc don't work very well, in fact Overture tried convincing me I had clicks and conversions from a listing that had been offline for 2 months. Pointing that out to them didn't seem to matter, as usual the staff at Overture just read from their script and maintained I'd had those clicks.

[ChrisM]

I think its that networks tend to report Unique Visitors, whereas the PPC reports show actual clicks.

I work on 10-15% discrepency. I think thats reasonable - it would suggest that 1 in 10 ish people are shopping around and choose to visit your site a second time.

I think its also perfectly reasonable that we as advertisers should have to pay for that - if our advert wasnt there the second time, we wouldn't get the commissions when they convert - which is presumably quite likely if theyre coming back for another look.

Chris