How ad tracking works
Ads can only report what they can see. The tracking wizard walks you through giving each ad platform a way to see what happens after the click, and tells you honestly where nothing can be seen.
It takes about twenty minutes the first time, everything saves as you go, and you can skip any step and come back. It runs once per pen name.
Start with your links
Where do your ads send people? Your own store can report everything that happens on it. A signup page can report sign-ups. Amazon and the other retailers report almost nothing, and the wizard says so up front.
List every page an ad might send a reader to, then star the one most of your ads will use.
See what you will actually learn
Before you spend a dollar, the plan step shows a grid: each of your links against clicks, page views, sign-ups, purchases, pages read, and return on ad spend. Green is counted for real. Amber is an estimate. Grey cannot be measured for that link, and the grid tells you why.
Amazon purchases are grey unless you use Amazon Attribution. Purchases on other retailers stay grey; clicks are the last thing they let you see.
Give each platform a pixel
A pixel is the small script that tells an ad platform a click turned into a page view, a sign-up, or a sale. Without one, the platform can only optimize for clicks, which are the cheapest thing to buy and the least useful.
The wizard creates pixels for you on Meta, ChatGPT, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest and X, or you pick one already on your ad account. Google uses a conversion action instead, which the wizard creates too. Then you install it. If your store is on Shopify, one click puts the Meta, ChatGPT, LinkedIn or Pinterest pixel on your storefront and checkout with no theme edits. On any other site, follow the guide for your site builder, or paste the code where your site takes scripts.
Each platform can be skipped on its own. Skipping means ads on that platform optimize for clicks until a pixel exists.
Check that it is alive
A pixel that is installed but silent is the most common reason ad results look wrong. For Meta the wizard can check it for you: whether it has ever fired, the last seven days of events, how well it matches visitors to people, and a test event you can watch arrive. For the other platforms you confirm the tag fired in their own events dashboard, then mark it here.
Use tracked links in your ads
The link you paste into an ad decides what you can learn afterwards. The wizard gives you three versions of each link, and the ad wizard uses the best one it has when an ad launches.
A tagged link tells your store analytics which ad sent the click. A short link forwards to the tagged address, counts every click, and fires your pixels on the way through, even for retailer links. A bridge page is a fast page on your own site that fires your pixel, shows the cover, then forwards the reader to the retailer. The wizard tells you whether a bridge page is worth it at your spend, gives you one to paste on your site, and checks it once it is live.
Selling on Amazon: enroll in Attribution
Amazon reports sales from your ads only through Amazon Attribution, and only for clicks that carried an Attribution tag. Kindle Unlimited pages read come back the same way. Nothing else on Amazon reports back.
Enrollment is free and works for most KDP authors. You create one tag per book and ad platform in the Amazon console, paste it into the wizard, and it is added to the link automatically whenever an ad launches.
Nothing here is final
The summary shows, platform by platform, what your results pages will be able to report, and the one thing to fix wherever a number is missing. Skip anything, come back any time, and once you set what you keep per sale on a book, the summary also tells you the most you can pay for a sale and still come out ahead.