How Flipbooks Take PDF Tracking to the Next Level

Last updated: April 15th, 2025

What happens after you hit “send” on that PDF—be it a business proposal, internal document, or marketing brochure? Can you confidently say who viewed it, when, for how long, or whether it was shared with unauthorized parties? Most likely, you can’t. And you’re not alone.

PDF tracking has traditionally been difficult. Without the right tools, it’s almost impossible to know how your documents are being used after distribution. But this insight—knowing who accessed your PDF files, where they were opened, and how long someone engaged with them—can be critical for compliance, performance analysis, and business growth.

With the right platform, you can track PDF files effortlessly, ensuring high confidentiality through features like password protection, access expiration, view-only mode, and download prevention. You’ll also gain access to powerful user activity logs, real-time analytics, and a detailed audit trail to better understand user engagement and maintain compliance with regulations such as GDPR or CCPA.

Instead of relying on static PDF files, you can upgrade to digital flipbooks—interactive, flippable documents that look and feel like printed materials such as magazines, portfolios, catalogs, or brochures. These flipbooks offer advanced PDF tracking capabilities, delivering insights like clicks, impressions, average time spent, and geolocation data, all while allowing for custom branding, scalability, and cross-platform compatibility.

So if tracking PDF files is a priority for your organization, this article will show you how to do it smarter, safer, and with far more clarity—using digital flipbooks.

Why is document tracking important?

Understanding how your documents are used isn’t just “nice to have”—it’s essential. From safeguarding sensitive data to refining marketing strategies, PDF tracking serves multiple purposes:

1. Privacy and security concerns

Protecting sensitive information is more important than ever. Whether you’re sharing contracts, internal reports, or strategic documents, you need to ensure that they don’t fall into the wrong hands.

With PDF tracking software, you can implement role-based access controls, enable view-only modes, restrict downloads, and add password protection or two-factor authentication to your documents. You’ll also be able to activate access expiration settings, ensuring documents are no longer available past a certain date.

But it’s not just about preventing unauthorized access. Tracking also gives you a clear audit trail—so if a document is altered, forwarded, or leaked, you can trace the user activity logs to pinpoint exactly who accessed it and when. This is particularly important for businesses that need to demonstrate compliance with GDPR or CCPA, or for those operating in industries where high confidentiality is a must.

By proactively tracking PDF files, you’re not only protecting your business assets—you’re preventing potential personal data leaks that can be used to steal their identities. 

2. Marketing analysis and sales improvement 

Document tracking gives your sales and marketing teams the power to understand exactly how recipients engage with your content. You’ll see who opened your PDF, how long they viewed it, which links they clicked, and how often they returned—giving you valuable insights without having to follow up with manual emails.

This level of detail helps you identify high-intent leads, tailor your follow-ups, and improve your content strategy. For example, if a prospect spends time on your pricing page or frequently reopens your brochure, that’s a clear sign of interest worth acting on.

By analyzing engagement metrics, you can refine your documents to be more appealing, informative, and conversion-focused. In the end, document tracking helps you create smarter content, engage more effectively, and close more deals.

3. Keep track of users’ interest

Knowing how much time someone spends on your document—and whether they come back to it—can tell you a lot about their level of interest. These details help you spot what truly matters to your audience and guide your focus toward the most engaged readers.

By understanding which pages or sections get the most attention, you can improve future documents to better match your audience’s needs. This makes it easier to send relevant, well-timed content that adds real value.

Strong messaging, helpful insights, and eye-catching visuals also make a difference. High-quality content encourages readers to stay longer, explore more, and come back when they need solutions.

How to make a PDF traceable?

PDF tracking should allow you to see when someone opened, downloaded, or printed your document, at least this should happen in theory. There are a few ways to PDF tracking in order to get this information. Here are a few possible options for PDF tracking.

PDF tracking with Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics

Yes, with GTM, you can see how many downloads your PDF document had, and this is especially helpful if you have a lot of PDF resources on your website. To get this information, you’ll have to set some technical measurements in GTM, such as configuring the trigger setup and the tag setup. But before getting into more details about how to set these, make sure that you install Google Analytics in your GTM. 

Now head over back to your GTM. Firstly, you’ll need to create the trigger, which will tell GTM what to track. 

Set up the Trigger in your Google Tag Manager:

• From the Triggers menu, select New
• Make sure to give your trigger a descriptive name
• Select the trigger Click > All Elements
• Under This trigger fires on, select Some Clicks
• Now select the Click URL from the variable dropdown menu
• Select Ends With from the match type dropdown menu
• Specify .pdf in the value field

Now we’ll use this trigger to create our tag for Google Analytics tracking.

Set up the Tag in your Google Analytics:

• From the Tags menu, select New
• Make sure to give your tag a descriptive name
• Select the Google Analytics: Universal Analytics tag
• Select Event as your track type
• Now set your Category and Action names
• Set the Label to the {{Click URL}} variable by clicking on the building block icon
• Under Triggering, select the trigger we created earlier and hit save
• Click on Submit, and press Publish

I know Google Tag Manager can seem like a technical tool, and to be honest with you, it is. But if you find it difficult to set the steps above by yourself, maybe it would be a good idea to collaborate with a specialist. 

There are also other ways of doing PDF tracking, such as tracking with Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and Twitter Ads. Or, as I already told you, by using PDF tracking apps and software. The only downside is that you need to pay extra money for more insightful statistics about your document. 

But I’m here to tell you about a better version of document tracking by converting your PDF document into a digital flipbook. The process is simple and fast if you use the best flipbook software on the market.

From PDFs to digital flipbooks for easier tracking

There is a better way of tracking PDF opens, and you definitely need to try it. I’m talking about digital flipbooks. There are digital representations of printed documents such as brochures, guides, presentations, catalogs, etc. They are practically page-turning PDFs with a realistic 3D page flip effect. But the good news doesn’t end here since you can do a lot more by creating digital flipbooks. 

The great part is that you can quickly transform any PDF document into a stunning flipbook within minutes. Just use a professional and secure flipbook maker, upload your PDF, and brand it fully. And unlike static PDF documents, digital flipbooks can be engaging materials that will make your clients spend more time reading them.

Add interactive elements such as videos, photo slideshows, iframe widgets, GIFs, buy buttons, and many more. These are the elements that make digital flipbooks so entertaining, and that keep clients and readers interested in spending more time navigating them. And that is exactly the point of every document – to be read and flipped through, as much time as possible.

Example of a PDF turned into an interactive marketing brochure

This is what your PDF document can look like after being converted into a digital flipbook. Stunning, yes! I bet any recipient will spend more time reading and flipping through it as it has so many engaging elements. 

And even though this is an interactive marketing brochure, you can easily make any other type of digital publication. 

The best part is that you can find a variety of already premade templates that are designed by professional designers. You’d only need to replace the texts, images, and colors with your own to give it a personal touch. If you consider yourself more on the creative side, then start this process from scratch and let your creativity flow. Design can be an easy and fast process when using the right tools. 

PDF tracking VS. Flipbook tracking

Now that you’ve seen how digital flipbooks work, I’ll tell you more about the main differences between PDF tracking and flipbook tracking. But, to be honest with you, there are so many more advantages that digital flipbooks bring to your business.  

1. Flipbook tracking offers easily accessible statistics

While traditional PDF tracking shows basic data like clicks and downloads, it often requires third-party tools and technical know-how. That’s not ideal—especially for larger teams that need fast, in-depth insights.

With flipbook tracking, everything is built in. Just convert your PDF into a digital flipbook and instantly access detailed stats like views, clicks, time spent, location, device types, and more—no extra setup required.

These reports help you spot trends, understand reader behavior, and continuously improve your content. The best flipbook tools make performance tracking easy, visual, and actionable—so you can focus on creating smarter, more effective documents.

2. Flipbooks are secure, with plenty of privacy options

I’m sure big companies know the importance of having safe measurements when it comes to the privacy and security of their documents, especially when these are shared in the digital world. On the other hand, digital flipbooks are secured documents, and they offer great privacy options if necessary. In fact, they work excellent both ways, even if you want to easily share your documents with the whole world or if you want to share them privately – amazing, I know. 

If you need secure documents that won’t be distributed or shared afterward, you can be 100% sure that digital flipbooks are the perfect solution for that. Digital flipbooks have secure and various sharing options. For instance, you can share your digital flipbook privately, with specific people only through a private email link, or you can even use a password-protected option to give access only to people you shared your password with. Therefore, only the people who know the password will be able to access it.

Regardless of the privacy options you need, by using a digital flipbook your documents will only reach the people you want.

3. Flipbooks could increase engagement

In PDFs documents, you can add images and links, yes, but that’s pretty much it. With digital flipbooks, you can make your audience spend more time on your documents by offering them dynamic content in a professional way. Digital flipbooks already have a 3D flipping effect, so it’s not a static document like the PDF. 

But you can make digital flipbooks even more attractive by adding interactive elements that PDFs simply can’t have. Add virtual tours, photo-slideshows, videos, audios, GIFs, tags, social media buttons, and more.

The great part is that by adding these interactive elements to your documents, you can also track further statistics and see what elements your audience clicked on and opened. Interactive elements also have a big impact on how much time your audience spends on your documents so keep this in mind next time you create your digital documents. 

And now let me tell you about a flipbook maker app that offers everything you need in order to succeed in your flipbook tracking strategy!

How to use Flipsnack for your flipbook tracking?

Flipsnack is a flipbook maker app that over 8  million users love and swear by. This app does everything I’ve mentioned earlier. It eases your life by offering you full view of statistics without any technical steps. Simply bring your PDFs here, and transform them into digital flipbook animations. Then get access to their performance statistics such as clicks, views, average time spent, and more.

On top of that, you get super privacy and security options when sharing your documents online. Starting from the password-protected option to the private link sharing, you can be sure that your documents will reach only the people you want.

There’s no need to tell you more details about it since everything I described in this article regarding PDF versus flipbook tracking can be done in Flipsnack. I can only encourage you to make a free account and experience the app’s great functionalities. 

So easily check statistics, analyze your audience’s preferences, and better strategize how you create your following documents. Ease your PDF tracking life, with flipbooks.

Start PDF tracking with flipbooks

PDF tracking is now easier and more powerful with digital flipbooks. As covered throughout this article, flipbooks not only make your documents more engaging with an interactive, magazine-like feel—they also offer built-in tracking capabilities that eliminate the need for extra software or technical steps. From creation to analysis, flipbook tracking gives you full visibility into document performance through real-time statistics like views, clicks, time spent, and more.

On top of that, flipbooks support essential security features like password protection, view-only mode, and access expiration, helping you keep sensitive information safe while staying compliant with regulations like GDPR and CCPA. Whether your goal is to optimize marketing efforts, boost sales, or protect confidential content, flipbook tracking offers the scalability, ease of use, and precision you need to succeed.

So give it a try—and discover how flipbooks can transform the way you share and track PDFs.

Frequently asked questions on PDF tracking

Here are some common questions regarding PDF tracking in Flipsnack: