Glossary
Tracker
The software between the ad and the offer that records every click, splits traffic between landers and offers, receives postbacks and shows cost and revenue side by side per source, creative, placement and GEO. The media buyer's main tool.
Also called: TDS, traffic distribution system, tracking platform.
The tracker issues the link you put in the ad, redirects the click to a lander or an offer according to rules you set (by GEO, device, share of traffic), receives the network's postback when the click converts, and pulls or imports cost from the source. The result is a table where every row has a spend and a return.
A TDS (traffic distribution system) is the same thing seen from the routing side: rules that send different visitors to different pages, including the rule that sends reviewers to a safe page, which is cloaking.
Trackers are self-hosted or cloud; the tools catalog on this site reviews the ones affiliates use.
Related terms: Postback, Sub ID, Cloaking, Split test, Redirect.