Overview

In Campaign Manager 360 a conversion is recorded by a tag, known as a Floodlight activity, when a user performs a predefined action after being served an ad. Commonly tagged actions include tracking when a user purchases an item from an online store, or visits a webpage to request more information through an online form. In general, conversions tracked by Google both begin and end online.

Conversions for some advertisers, however, may start online and finish offline. An example of this is a user that begins researching a product online, clicks on an ad, and then completes their purchase over the phone or in a retail store. In this scenario, Campaign Manager 360 will have data about the online portion of the transaction, but not the offline portion, resulting in the conversion going unrecorded.

To address this, the Campaign Manager 360 API's Conversions service lets advertisers provide information about the offline portion of these conversions directly to Campaign Manager 360.

Prerequisites

Before you can start working with the Conversions service, you'll need to complete the following steps:

1. Create and authorize an API project as outlined in our Get Started guide.

2. Ensure your Campaign Manager 360 user profile has the necessary user role permissions. Contact your Campaign Manager 360 account administrator to have these permissions enabled, if necessary.

   • Insert offline conversions: Permits uploading new offline conversions using batchinsert.

   • Update offline conversions: Permits modifying existing offline conversions using batchupdate.

Match conversions to activities

Offline conversions must be matched to a corresponding online activity in Campaign Manager 360. You'll refer to these activities by their floodlightActivityId and corresponding floodlightConfigurationId.

If you don't yet have an activity for tracking offline conversions, you can use the API's FloodlightActivities service to create one. See the Common Trafficking Tasks guide for an example of how to do this. Creating dedicated activities for offline conversions is highly recommended.

Obtain click, device, and user IDs

Offline conversions must also be attributed to a click, device, or user ID (only one of which can be used at a time). The most common ways to obtain these IDs are covered below.

Using Display Click ID

Conversions can be attributed to ad clicks through the use of Display Click IDs (DCLIDs). DCLIDs can be obtained from Enhanced Attribution.

Important: Offline conversions can not be attributed to the specific click identified by a DCLID. Instead, each conversion will be associated with the user responsible for the click. If a more recent click was recorded from the same user, for example, the conversion can be attributed to that click instead.

Display Click IDs must be passed in the dclid field.

Using Google Click ID

Conversions can be attributed to ad clicks through the use of Google Click IDs (GCLIDs). GCLIDs can be obtained from Google Ads or Search Ads 360.

Important: Offline conversions can not be attributed to the specific click identified by a GCLID. Instead, each conversion will be associated with the user responsible for the click. If a more recent click was recorded from the same user, for example, the conversion can be attributed to that click instead.

Google Click IDs must be passed in the gclid field.

Using match ID

Conversions can be attributed through your own first-party identifier that has been synced with Google using the match_id feature in Floodlight.

Using mobile device ID

Conversions can be directly attributed to mobile or Connected TV devices through the use of advertising device identifiers. The following identifiers are supported:

• AdID
• IDFA
• Identifiers for Advertising from CTV devices:
  • RIDA (Roku)
  • AFAI (Fire TV)
  • AdID (Android TV)
  • IDFA (Apple TV)
  • MSAI (Xbox)
  • TIFA (Samsung)
  • VIDA (Vizio)

These identifiers must be passed in the mobileDeviceId field.

Using the %m match macro

Warning: As of May 25, 2018, encrypted user IDs won't be populated in the %m macro for users in the European Economic Area. Learn more

The %m macro can be inserted into click-through or redirect URLs for a creative. The ad server will expand this macro into a user's encrypted user ID following a click event. The encrypted user ID can then be captured directly from the redirect URL, or from server logs.

IDs captured using the %m macro must be passed in the encryptedUserId or encryptedUserIdCandidates[] fields.

Important: If you plan to work with encrypted user IDs you'll need to know how the IDs are encrypted (that is, their encryptionInfo). Contact your Campaign Manager 360 account representative or Campaign Manager 360 support for help determining this.

Using Data Transfer

Warning: As of May 25, 2018, encrypted user IDs won't be populated in Data Transfer files for users in the European Economic Area. Learn more.

Data Transfer is a Campaign Manager 360 feature that provides access to event-level ad server log data. This data is delivered through separate feeds, each comprising a single Data Transfer file. Within these files, each recorded event is associated with an encrypted user ID.

To make use of user IDs provided in Data Transfer files, you'll need a way to match an online ad server event with some event in your offline system. This is commonly done using custom Floodlight variables, which you can dynamically populate with values that uniquely identify a user action. A simplified workflow might look like this:

1. A Floodlight activity tag fires, indicating the start of a transaction. The tag contains a custom variable value you've provided that uniquely identifies the transaction.

2. The transaction continues and completes offline, maintaining the same identifier.

3. Using the identifier recorded when the transaction completed, a matching entry is located in the Data Transfer activity log file that recorded the original Floodlight activity.

IDs retrieved from Data Transfer files must be passed in the encryptedUserId or encryptedUserIdCandidates[] fields.

Important: If you plan to work with encrypted user IDs you'll need to know how the IDs are encrypted (that is, their encryptionInfo). Contact your Campaign Manager 360 account representative or Campaign Manager 360 support for help determining this.