So far we have mostly introduced SnowPlow in the context of the sophisticated event-based analyses it enables for websites and webapps. However there is a second use case for SnowPlow, based around warehousing (and later analysing) display ad data across an ad network or publisher website(s).

The setup for this use-case is straightforward: simply append SnowPlow’s ad impression tracking code to your adserver’s ad tags, and every ad impression (and thus web visitor and URL) will then be sent by SnowPlow to Amazon S3 for warehousing and later analysis. There are several key reasons why warehousing all of your ad data (impressions, clicks and conversions) in this way might be an attractive strategy:

1. You use a hosted adserver which does not give you access to “atomic” ad impression-level data
2. You have a Data Management Platform and want to create audience segments based on ad impression and URL visit-level data
3. You are already using SnowPlow on your site and want to start monitoring the effectiveness of your display ads on a per-visitor basis

If you are interested in setting up SnowPlow for display ad tracking, then please check out our technical integration guide on GitHub. Alternatively Keplar can set this up for you – please get in touch to find more.