it could be a number of things which is why i ask what 'tracking' means. he could be just trying to track click throughs so he can know for himself if he's getting click throughs and not just rely on the companies that are supposed to be paying him.
or, if he had his own banner ad system where he wants to charge advertisers based on click throughs ..
or what red says ..
even with a meta refresh with a value of zero, you will see a quick flash of the page. if there is 'tracking' involved though, there must be some server-side technology happening.
and if there is server-side technology happening, then the best way is probably to do a header re-direct so the user does not see that they are being sent through a middle page.
i.e.
HTML Code:
<a href="redirect.php?adid=2">text or image here</a>
and if it were php on the receiving end:
PHP Code:
<?
// logic to 'track' adid 2 goes here
header("location: http://final_address.com/");
?>
then again, he posted in the html forum so who knows. there are too many questions to give a good answer.
if there is no server-side stuff and if it was me, i would use a javascript re-direct rather than a meta refresh since it is quicker. something like
HTML Code:
<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
window.location = "http://somesite.com";
</script>