In an effort to understand the technology of a campaign I would like someone to carefully read the following step-by-step understanding of what constitutes a campaign and then answer the question and respond to the request provided below.
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A goal is created. The goal could be any event on a webpage that is triggered by a visitor who has been designated as a campaign participant.
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A campaign participant (visitor) is someone who clicks on a link that points to the website and/or webpage on which the goal can be triggered.
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The link on which the campaign visitor clicks is identified as part of the campaign by at least one key-value pair that is appended to the link. What is appended could be either a query string or hash. If it is a hash there are two HTTP requests rather than one, as the contents of the hash must first be processed with Javascript before being sent as part of an HTTP Request. (Alternatively, the default action of the first request is suppressed and only after the hash has been processed is an HTTP request sent.)
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When the HTTP Request is received by the server on which the goal resides, a cookie is set in the campaign visitor’s browser. This identifies the visitor as a campaign participant.
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Thereafter, whenever the campaign participant visits the website via the machine on which the cookie is set, his visit is counted as that of a campaign participant.
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When the campaign participant triggers the goal a conversion is recorded.
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The resulting conversion rate is the total number of triggered goals divided by the total number of visits of campaign participants to the website.
QUESTION: Is this an accurate rendering of what campaign tracking is all about?
REQUEST: Please comment on those items that are clearly inaccurate.