As you may have heard from our recent platform launch, Crisp is now offering open APIs for tracking and reporting of mobile rich media advertising. The adTrack API provides public interfaces for agencies and developers to track events and conversions beyond the banner.

Designing the API demanded a balance between flexibility and simplicity. Ad developers in mobile especially need an API that can accommodate change in the industry. But there was an even thornier issue – how to prevent abuse and misuse in reporting.

To find the trade off between flexibility and simplicity, we developed a library of functions for the most commonly used trackers. Things like click to video, click to call, panel impressions, click-throughs and conversions. This means that a developer doesn’t need to even read the API specification. They simply add the function library to their code and make a function call like getClickToCallTracker(). Then, if more flexibility is needed later, an ad unit can call the API directly.

The question of use and abuse turned out to be more difficult. Of course we put in safeguards for identifying partners and securing tracker ids. You can't send tracker or conversion data into someone else's reports, for example. But what about misuse on your own reports? What if someone put two impression trackers on their ad unit? What if they used a click-through tracker for expanding an ad? What if they used a Click to Gallery tracker when they should really use a Click to Microsite tracker? What if they put a conversion tracker on the order page instead of the thank you page?

There are no easy answers to all these questions. Sometimes it might be an honest mistake. Other times it may be a change of focus. For example, the media agency could decide that a video play is a click-through (or even a conversion) depending on how they target success for that campaign.

So in the end, I decided to follow the regal advice: with great power comes great responsibility. After all, they're your trackers. Why not give you the choice you need? If the only reason to hold back is that your reports don't look like my reports, well then no enforcement is needed. Even with the example of mistakenly adding too many impression trackers, you still get the correct relative data to fine-tune your ad during flight. Ultimately you're the one in the position to best understand the data.

Trackers do provide great power – the power of numbers. Dollars are spent, contracts signed, bonuses paid all based on tracking data. Depending on how you incorporate tracking into your advertising, those numbers can be misinterpreted, poorly understood, even overblown. But the power of relationships comes in explaining the numbers. Your true power will be measured is placing trackers to match your customer needs. I believe that adTrack gives you that opportunity.

I invite you to take a look at our approach. Our sample ad units document exactly where our trackers are fired during user interactions – and in what report columns you can see the data. I felt that was the responsible thing to do.