Verify the discrepancy by pulling a CM Report from report builder.
Do the publisher and CM report dates match?
Are the reports for the same Placement(s)?
Check implementation:
Use a proxy sniffer to check implementation
- When you click on the creative, are you seeing a click tracker fire?
- Is the right click tracker implemented? (remember the tag anatomy we went over earlier?)
- Do you see a 302 on the server call?
An HTML email is essentially a micro site served via email to a user.
It contains an advertiser's images and/or copy along with the web site's content. Your images may or may not be served by CM.
The tracking method for CM involves the use of a 1x1-pixel image, called by a CM ad tag, that alerts the CM ad server whenever a user opens or views the email.
Tracking behavior may be unpredictable across email clients.
How do I know they are working?
Click Tracker:
Paste into a browser and see it if clicks through
Remember if using a dynamic click tracker, it must be turned on and past the start date!
Impression Pixel:
Loading the tag will generate a blank page - 1x1s are invisible!
View the tag implemented on a test page, and wait one day for an impression to show up in reporting
Put the tag on a test page and see if it fires using a proxy sniffer
Static Click Trackers
Landing page is hard coded, meaning tags have to be re-sent if you change it.
No start/end date
Will record data as long as tag is on site! To stop recording, must remove the tags
Dynamic Click Trackers
Landing page is NOT hard-coded in the tag, so can be changed from DFA without re-sending the tag
Must be activated, can be deactivated; set start/end dates
Will not start recording data until the start date has been reached. Will not click through either
Dynamic click trackers count against your active ad limit.
For the ord= parameter, sites are responsible for dynamically inserting a unique string (not necessarily a timestamp) each time a user visits the site.
The purpose of making the tags unique is to prevent web browsers from serving cached creatives to the user.
* A tag that doesn’t get a unique random number passed in will not function properly and can cause discrepancies.
When a user visits a site, the browser typically stores information from that site temporarily, including images and other media files, in the browser cache, which is kept on the user's hard drive. That way, when the user revisits the site, the browser can load the pages more quickly. When the browser sees tags it recognizes from previous visits, it serves content from the cache rather than downloading it again.
In most cases, that's good news. For CM, however, it's important to be able to serve a fresh creative, and to count each impression accurately. To make sure that happens, it's necessary to prevent creatives from being served from a user's browser cache.
Because the CM ad tags contain a unique string, the user's browser doesn't recognize them as content that's already been downloaded. Instead, it sends a fresh request to the CM ad servers, allowing for the accurate counting of impressions, and making it possible to serve the user a new ad.
<IMGSRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/N963.sdtestsitesix.com/B1898482;sz=1x1;ord=[timestamp]?" BORDER=0 WIDTH=1 HEIGHT=1 ALT="Click Here"></A>
http://ad.doubleclick.net – The web address of the CM ad servers
ad: Identifies the tag as being Standard.
N963 – The ID of your CM account
sdtestsitesix.com -- An identifier for a site, based on the site's web address
B1898482 – The Campaign ID
Ord=[Timestamp] – the random number the site inserts to make sure the tag doesn’t get cached.
Anatomy of a Click Tracker
http://ad-region.doubleclick.net/clk;[adID];[placement ID];[verifier]?[click-throughURL]
http://ad-region.doubleclick.net/: These parameters are the same as in standard tags.
clk: Lets the DART ad servers know that this is a click tracker.
[ad ID];[placement ID]: The IDs of the ad created for this click tracker and of the targeted placement.
[verifier]: A character that is created according to a proprietary algorithm and used internally to verify that the tag has not been tampered with.
[click-through URL]: The web address to which the user is ultimately sent.
IMPORTANT: The clickthrough URL is only included with static click trackers. In a dynamic click tracker, the second part of the tag, beginning with the ?, is left out.
What the 1x1 Tag Will Look Like
1x1 Pixels are served by a standard ad tag.
<A HREF="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/N963.sdtestsitesix.com/B1898482; sz=1x1;ord=[timestamp]?">
<IMG SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/N963.sdtestsitesix.com/B1898482;sz=1x1;ord=[timestamp]?" BORDER=0 WIDTH=1 HEIGHT=1 ALT="Click Here"></A>
NOTE: You only need to send the image portion of the tag to the publisher.
HREF Portion of the 1x1 Tag
A HREF portion of the tag includes an HTML anchor and hyperlink reference tag that tells a user's browser to call a web address when a user clicks on the image.
This isn’t necessary and should not be sent to the publisher when trafficking a 1x1 pixel. Think about it: someone can’t click on an invisible image.
What to do: remove the HREF portion before sending to the publisher.
The reasons for using a standard click command and striping out the“Jump” portion of the standard image tag is as follows:
1) Because the site is serving the creative, they would usually take the standard tag (jump and image portion) and separate the image portion from the jump potion on their page. They would then forget to generate the same ord value in both potions of the tag. In order for tag to work properly, the same ord value needs to be generated in both the image and click portion of the tag. To avoid this, we recommend removing the jump portion and creating a static click command – which doesn’t need an identical ord value.
2) Because of the way ad serving technology works, the image portion of a tag must be called first before the jump portion of the tag can work.
In the event the image portion of the 1x1 standard tag isn’t called before the user clicks on the associated creative, this will cause complications with the server.
To avoid the complications, the jump portion of the 1x1 standard tag is removed, and a static click command is created to serve along with the 1x1 image source.
Track and report impressions & clicks generated by site-served creatives, text link, email, or hard-coded creatives.
1x1 Pixels track impressions. When the creative is served the 1x1 impression pixels serves and records an impression
Click Trackers track clicks. When the creative is clicked the click tracker serves a click through URL and records a click
What Exactly is a 1x1 Pixel?
It’s an essentially invisible image that is 1 pixel in size. Need one? Open up Paint and shrink the canvas as small as it will go and voila!
This is the “creative” that gets served in order for DoubleClick to count an impression.
When you upload a 1x1 pixel as a standard image creative, it:
Will automatically be used to create the default ad that's assigned to all 1x1-pixel placements in your campaign.
Note that you only need to do this step once per campaign. The default ad will automatically be assigned to any new 1x1-pixel placements you create.
