Hydra Launches Beta Online Conversion Tracking Software

Improves Accuracy, Helps Eliminate Potential for Fraud, and Improves Publisher Interface

Beverly Hills, CA — February 4, 2010 - Hydra, operator of a performance-based multichannel online advertising platform, today announced the introduction of its next generation, proprietary campaign tracking software HNv2.

Currently in beta testing, HNv2 protects advertisers by introducing new controls to proactively prevent fraud and the promotion of campaigns in unauthorized channels. To ensure greater reliability and accuracy in the tracking of conversion data, HNv2 also employs cookie-less tracking. At the same time, the new system provides Hydra publisher partners with a wide range of enhancements designed to save time and increase revenue.

"Hydra is already regarded as offering one of the most accurate and easiest to use tracking software platforms in the industry, but our new HNv2 offers a previously unheard of level of information exchange and fraud protection to our partners," said Zac Brandenberg, CEO of Hydra. "By redesigning it from the bottom up based on input we solicited from both our publishing partners and advertisers, we were able to create what we believe is the best platform in the industry."

Hydra's HNv2 software provides new tools for eliminating fraud and ensuring compliance with advertisers' guidelines across all major online channels—search, display, email and social media. For example, it employs new search monitoring technology that automatically sends alerts any time a media partner is promoting via search for campaigns that do not allow search as a channel. Hydra's new software also supports cookie-less in addition to traditional cookie-based tracking by capturing and storing a wide range of data associated with each click. As a result, it is able to prevent duplicate actions from being generated by the same click, automatically remove bot-generated traffic, and support compliance monitoring by providing the exact referrer source of the click that drove a specific action. Publishers benefit from cookie-less tracking as well by gaining credit for conversions for that portion of consumers who have cookies turned off in their browsers.

Hydra's HNv2 software also provides an all-new publisher interface that allows users to access detailed campaign information and performance data all from within a single, all-in-one dashboard design, thus eliminating the need to navigate to or load additional web pages. Publishers looking to select which Hydra campaigns to run will also have more powerful search capabilities in the new system. Publishers can search campaigns by product vertical, allowable promotion channels, payout, target audience, and more. In addition, HNv2 allows publishers to easily place and manage their own third party tracking pixels, and activate or disable pixels with a single mouse click. Beyond these visible differences, the one feature publishers will immediately notice is the new interface's speed. Underpinned by an entirely new database and caching architecture Hydra quietly introduced last year, running searches and complex reports in the new campaign browser returns results in a fraction of a second.

Of benefit for both advertisers and publishers, Hydra's new HNv2 software now reports on traffic and revenue for every ad creative unit that is published, allowing for A/B creative optimization and advanced data analysis on their traffic. Hydra will be adding new features including the addition of an API to support external tools, and the ability to port data to multiple formats such as RSS feeds, desktop widgets, mobile phones and more.

"Hydra HNv2 provides marketers with powerful tools and actionable data previously unavailable in online marketing," said Mason Wiley, SVP of Marketing for Hydra. "By helping to eliminate the possibility for fraud, and by providing a unique, customer-centric design that anticipates users' needs and delivers campaign reporting in real time, we believe it's a major step forward for making performance-based network distribution safe for brands."

Source: Hydra Group