When a customer scans a QR code for an ad in a physical magazine the person is taken to the advertisers website. This same advertiser also has a companion ad (image with link) on my client’s site. The client would like the QR redirect to include his website with the particular page with the advertisers ad before being sent to the actual advertisers website, but he wants it to be completely transparent to the visitor. In other words the complete path would be:
QR scan > Specific page on the client site (transparent) > Advertiser site
Essentially it would work like call forwarding where you have no idea you as the caller are being forwarded but the owner of that phone number could see a physical count of the number of forwarded calls in his statement. I’m not sure how that would be done.
Would it not be the case if you make the online page Ad a unique URL (a URL that is not part of your main site), then all you do is to record server side the hits to that page.
Or maybe for an existing page you could add a dummy variable to a .php page
On 31 Oct 2012, at 00:13, Todd email@hidden wrote:
When a customer scans a QR code for an ad in a physical magazine the person is taken to the advertisers website. This same advertiser also has a companion ad (image with link) on my client’s site. The client would like the QR redirect to include his website with the particular page with the advertisers ad before being sent to the actual advertisers website, but he wants it to be completely transparent to the visitor. In other words the complete path would be:
QR scan > Specific page on the client site (transparent) > Advertiser site
Essentially it would work like call forwarding where you have no idea you as the caller are being forwarded but the owner of that phone number could see a physical count of the number of forwarded calls in his statement. I’m not sure how that would be done.
If I understand you correctly yes, the QR could simply point to that particular page/ad on the client site, but the visitor would stop there then have click the ad to be taken to the advertiser site. This is what the client wants to avoid: stopping on his site. It’s all about transparently filtering the visitor through the client site (without stopping) and seamlessly moving on to the advertiser site.
Todd
Would it not be the case if you make the online page Ad a unique URL (a URL that is not part of your main site), then all you do is to record server side the hits to that page.
Or maybe for an existing page you could add a dummy variable to a .php page
Why didn’t your client create a QR code to a special page on his site where
he can set a simple redirect. Something like clientsite/special/index.html,
which then redirects to wherever he wants it to go. They can set the
redirect then to whatever flavor of the month they like.
–
Ernie Simpson
On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 10:52 PM, Todd email@hidden wrote:
If I understand you correctly yes, the QR could simply point to that
particular page/ad on the client site, but the visitor would stop there
then have click the ad to be taken to the advertiser site. This is what the
client wants to avoid: stopping on his site. It’s all about transparently
filtering the visitor through the client site (without stopping) and
seamlessly moving on to the advertiser site.
Todd
Would it not be the case if you make the online page Ad a unique URL (a
URL that is not part of your main site), then all you do is to record
server side the hits to that page.
Or maybe for an existing page you could add a dummy variable to a .php
page
Yes, that would be an option for one or two QR codes but the problem is that his magazine will have several QR codes (exactly how many I don’t know) each leading to a different site and neither he or his people is (technically) up to changing multiple redirects each time a new issue comes out with new advertisers/QR. Logistically it’s not realistic. Possible yes, but not realistic.
Todd
Why didn’t your client create a QR code to a special page on his site where
he can set a simple redirect. Something like clientsite/special/index.html,
which then redirects to wherever he wants it to go. They can set the
redirect then to whatever flavor of the month they like.
Todd, I am sorry I haven’t jumped on this earlier, but could you please try to tell the story again? I’m not clear who wants to go where here. The QR code is associated with a single URL, and that points to the ad, does the client then want the ad to do a timed redirect to a second page that might change its location in future?
Walter
On Nov 1, 2012, at 1:08 AM, Todd wrote:
Yes, that would be an option for one or two QR codes but the problem is that his magazine will have several QR codes (exactly how many I don’t know) each leading to a different site and neither he or his people is (technically) up to changing multiple redirects each time a new issue comes out with new advertisers/QR. Logistically it’s not realistic. Possible yes, but not realistic.
Todd
Why didn’t your client create a QR code to a special page on his site where
he can set a simple redirect. Something like clientsite/special/index.html,
which then redirects to wherever he wants it to go. They can set the
redirect then to whatever flavor of the month they like.
When a visitor scans the QR they should ultimately end up at the advertiser site (easy to do). The catch is that the client wants to transparently filter traffic through his website before the visitor is redirected to the advertiser site so he can have a traffic record that he can use as a selling point when selling ad space for the physical magazine. He doesn’t want the visitor to stop on his site or have any clue as to what’s happening, as far as the visitor is concerned they go directly to the advertiser site.
The nuts-n-bolts
The physical magazine comes out once a month and will contain multiple QR codes that point to the respective advertiser site. Each of the magazine ads will have a sister ad on the client website that’s a clickable image pointing to the same advertiser site.
As it stands, when the QR is scanned the visitor will be taken to the specific page on the client website where the sister ad is placed. Once there the visitor will need to click the sister ad to be taken to the advertiser site.
While this will work there are a couple fundamental problems:
a.) The advertiser doesn't want the visitor to stop on the client site.
b.) The visitor has to manually click the site ad before getting to their destination.
So ultimately the client just wants to capture stats without anyone being the wiser while at the same time transparently taking the visitor from QR scan to advertiser site. And if it is possible then it needs to be relatively easy for the client’s staff to do as they are not a terribly tech-savvy lot and the ads will be changing on a regular basis. I will not be doing it for them.
Todd
Todd, I am sorry I haven’t jumped on this earlier, but could you please try to tell the story again? I’m not clear who wants to go where here. The QR code is associated with a single URL, and that points to the ad, does the client then want the ad to do a timed redirect to a second page that might change its location in future?
Who will be hosting the ads? Who makes up the QR codes? The advertisers, or your client? I understand what your client is trying to accomplish in terms of their goal, but how you solve this depends on the implementation details above.
Walter
On Nov 1, 2012, at 11:00 AM, Todd wrote:
Sure, no problem.
Overview:
When a visitor scans the QR they should ultimately end up at the advertiser site (easy to do). The catch is that the client wants to transparently filter traffic through his website before the visitor is redirected to the advertiser site so he can have a traffic record that he can use as a selling point when selling ad space for the physical magazine. He doesn’t want the visitor to stop on his site or have any clue as to what’s happening, as far as the visitor is concerned they go directly to the advertiser site.
The nuts-n-bolts
The physical magazine comes out once a month and will contain multiple QR codes that point to the respective advertiser site. Each of the magazine ads will have a sister ad on the client website that’s a clickable image pointing to the same advertiser site.
As it stands, when the QR is scanned the visitor will be taken to the specific page on the client website where the sister ad is placed. Once there the visitor will need to click the sister ad to be taken to the advertiser site.
While this will work there are a couple fundamental problems:
a.) The advertiser doesn’t want the visitor to stop on the client site.
b.) The visitor has to manually click the site ad before getting to their destination.
So ultimately the client just wants to capture stats without anyone being the wiser while at the same time transparently taking the visitor from QR scan to advertiser site. And if it is possible then it needs to be relatively easy for the client’s staff to do as they are not a terribly tech-savvy lot and the ads will be changing on a regular basis. I will not be doing it for them.
Todd
Todd, I am sorry I haven’t jumped on this earlier, but could you please try to tell the story again? I’m not clear who wants to go where here. The QR code is associated with a single URL, and that points to the ad, does the client then want the ad to do a timed redirect to a second page that might change its location in future?
The ads will be hosted on the client site at least for now though there was talk of using an ad server service to rotate ads. The client site is nearly 500 pages with 5 ad spaces per page (he may even want to add more space). Personally I doubt he will come anywhere close to selling that much ad space for a local circulation, but I am often wrong.
My guess is the client will be creating the QR (none of this has actually happened yet) then supplying it to the mag. publisher simply because the client will know exactly what webpage the sister ad is appearing on. Though I don’t know for certain if this is true (this was a last-minute discussion).
Todd
Who will be hosting the ads? Who makes up the QR codes? The advertisers, or your client? I understand what your client is trying to accomplish in terms of their goal, but how you solve this depends on the implementation details above.
Hmmmm. Then I’m not how they will have a problem figuring out who viewed what. If they host the ad themselves, and the QR code points to the ad, they will have the server logs or Google Analytics to show the way. I would only imagine they would have to do something clever if the ads were being hosted by a third party. Then the thing would be to link to a local URL on the client’s server, but have that URL be a transparent redirect to the actual page, similar to how the MAR router + htaccess works.
Walter
On Nov 1, 2012, at 11:18 AM, Todd wrote:
The ads will be hosted on the client site at least for now though there was talk of using an ad server service to rotate ads. The client site is nearly 500 pages with 5 ad spaces per page (he may even want to add more space). Personally I doubt he will come anywhere close to selling that much ad space for a local circulation, but I am often wrong.
My guess is the client will be creating the QR (none of this has actually happened yet) then supplying it to the mag. publisher simply because the client will know exactly what webpage the sister ad is appearing on. Though I don’t know for certain if this is true (this was a last-minute discussion).
Todd
Who will be hosting the ads? Who makes up the QR codes? The advertisers, or your client? I understand what your client is trying to accomplish in terms of their goal, but how you solve this depends on the implementation details above.