What analytics software to use for small Apache served website with banners not from Google

Question

I'm planning to run a small website using Apache (and other) server(s). The website supports configuring different banners for different pages dynamically. The banners are not from Google but "manually chosen". I don't expect too much traffic but still some, say 1.000 page views a day.

I'd like to have statistics for the different banners (which one was klicked how often per page view etc.) and general stastics about users and sessions.

So far I only know about Google Analytics and AWStats. I already asked another question if Google Analytics supports statistics for other ad networks and obviously it does but only when using some workarounds.

Which analytics software (inlcuding but not limited to Google Analytics and AWStats) would you recommend for my purpose? Ideally, it should be free and easy to use.

Answer 1

If you want something specifically for ads, take a look at http://openx.org, I use it for my site and I actually got accepted into their hosted solution beta, which I love because it gives me my own little ad server :)

I've had great results with managing and targeting my site's advertising as it's a blend of "manually chosen" ad runs & major network.

• Download Source at http://openx.org/publisher/open-source-ad-server
• I can't seem to remember how I applied for the enterprise solution beta (maybe its closed) but, here it is: http://openx.org/publisher/enterprise-ad-server

p.s. I hear http://haveamint.com is pretty cool as well.

Answer 2

I wouldn't say that the answer given in the linked question is a workaround. That's the expected way to do it. I would stick with that. You're only going to need to create one url per banner ad. I know it's a bit of a pain to have to do it, but this is how most people do it and it works pretty well.