• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, March 11, 2009

Adify, which powers 150 vertical ad networks, has added the ability to track post-impression ad performance and ad interaction in the latest version of its platform, expected to be unveiled today.

The new capabilities reflect online advertisers' increased focus on efficiency as the recession shrinks marketing budgets and places a premium on campaign results. The post-impression, or view-through, tracking allows advertisers to gauge performance by connecting an original ad impression to specific user actions taken later on a marketer's site.

Tracking view-through conversions is an attempt to discern the response among users who are not necessarily clicking on an ad--more than 99% of users--but may take some desired action as a result of seeing that ad.

That could include things like purchases, searches or sign-ups. Through version 4.0 of Adify's platform, ad networks can specify up to four types of conversions to track per campaign and up to eight related attributes--shopping cart value or search keywords, for instance.

Advertisers can also choose to track up to 10 different interactions within an interactive ad including when users start or finish a video, play a game, input information or expand an ad. The type of action can be customized by the advertiser.

"The important point is flexibility," said Joelle Gropper Kaufman, senior vice president for marketing and corporate partnerships. "This is very much designed to put network builders and advertisers in dialogue about what (interactions) are important."

Adify is also debuting a new measurement tool called Share of Network that allows advertisers and networks to cap the number of impressions each site can serve in a given campaign. Impressions exceeding the cap are spread to other sites that have not yet reached their limit, helping advertisers distribute campaigns more evenly across a network and networks to increase publisher loyalty.

The upgraded platform also allows advertisers to automatically optimize campaigns across a network according to four factors: geo-targeting, time of day; ad creative; and ad space.

For publishers, Adify is providing a new dashboard offering an overview of all ad sales activity on a publisher's sites, links for more specific data, and the ability to customize different components.