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AnalyticsSet up measurement

Traffic tags in your ad server

Where to place Pixalate tags in Google Ad Manager, The Trade Desk, Beeswax and Campaign Manager 360, and the placement rules that keep measurement accurate.

Once Pixalate has generated your tags, you traffic them alongside your creatives so they fire when each ad renders. This page covers the placement rules that apply everywhere, then the steps for common platforms. The setup isn’t limited to these platforms: every ad server has a field for an impression tracker.

Video (2 min): traffic the Pixalate tag in Google Ad Manager and The Trade Desk.

Before you start

  • Get your tags from your Customer Success representative. Pixalate generates them from your macro mapping, with your ad server’s macros already inserted.
  • Know which form each tag is: a JavaScript tag or a 1x1 pixel (image). When you traffic it, choose the matching tag type in your ad server (JavaScript, image and so on).
  • Start with a small volume of impressions and tell your Customer Success representative when the tag goes live. See Get started.

Your responsibilities

  • Give Pixalate all the information it needs to generate the tag.
  • Traffic the tag following the instructions you got during onboarding.
  • Fix any issues Pixalate’s team raises during QA.

Placement rules

Where the tag sits decides whether Pixalate can tell when the creative rendered, and so whether render and viewability metrics are counted.

Where to fire the impression tag

IntegrationWhere to put the tag
Directly on the publisher’s site or appAt the placement level, in the same div as the creative or placement. If that isn’t possible, as close to that div as you can.
In the publisher’s ad SDKFire the tag when the creative loads. For video, fire it on the impression event. Partner SDKs name their creative-load and impression callbacks differently.
In an ad serverIn the ad server’s impression tracking field, with the correct tag type selected.

Help the tag detect when the ad renders

  • Put the tag in the same iframe as the creative.
    • If you can’t, make sure the iframe containing the creative follows the same-origin policy with the iframe the tag is in.
    • If you can’t do that either, make sure the creative’s iframe is a correct standard ad size and matches the standard ad size of its parent iframe.
    • The tag tries to detect a valid render state for cross-domain iframes that match IAB ad sizes. Because of same-origin restrictions, this fails if the iframe loads before the tag. Don’t rely on it. If there’s no alternative, make sure the tag loads before the iframe renders.
  • Keep the creative, or its container, close to a standard ad size. The tag matches ads of the wrong size only if the combined error (width plus height) is 15 pixels or less. A placement more than 15 pixels off a standard ad size isn’t detected at all.
  • For direct placements, put the tag inside a common parent of the creative. The tag doesn’t detect elements outside what it sees as the placement’s parent container.

If you don’t follow these rules, you may see fewer Rendered Display Impressions and Rendered Impressions than expected, which limits the viewability data in your Analytics reports.

For ad sizes that aren’t IAB standard, such as native, see Measure viewability for non-standard ad sizes.

As a third-party tracking URL

In the creative’s settings, paste the Pixalate tag URL into Third-party tracking URLs > Creative View.

A Pixalate tag configured for Google Ad Manager looks something like this. Your tag will differ; use the one Pixalate gives you.

https://[PIXALATE_TAG_HOST]/?clid=[CLIENT_ID]&paid=[PARTNER_ID]&dvid=v&avid=%eadv!&caid=%ebuy!&plid=%eaid!&siteId=%esid!&creativeId=%ecid!&kv12=%epid!

The %e...! values are Google Ad Manager macros, which Ad Manager replaces with its IDs when the ad serves.

As a creative wrapper

A creative wrapper adds the Pixalate tag to every creative that has a given label. For details, see Google’s Labels and creative wrappers help.

  1. Sign in as an administrator and create a label: click New label.
    • Enter a name for the label (up to 127 characters).
    • Optionally, add a description.
    • Choose the label types the label can be used for. You can choose one or more, or leave them blank and choose later.
    • Click Save.
  2. Go to Admin > Labels > Creative wrappers and click New creative wrapper.
  3. Select your label, paste the Pixalate JavaScript tag into the Footer field, and save.

Without creative wrappers

If your Ad Manager network doesn’t offer creative wrappers, add the tag through a creative template instead. Both standard templates (included in Ad Manager) and custom templates (created by an administrator) support third-party tracking. See Google’s Traffic with creative templates.

  1. Go to Delivery > Creatives > Creative templates.
  2. Find the standard template Image banner with optional third party tracking and make a copy.
  3. Open the copy and rename it.
  4. Under Variables, click Add variable. Set Type to Text and the variable name to Wrapper Code, then click OK.
  5. In Code snippet, click Insert variable and select Wrapper Code. When a trafficker sets up a creative with this template, the placeholder is replaced with what they enter.
  6. Click Save.

When you traffic a creative with the template, paste the Pixalate tag into the Wrapper Code text box.

The Trade Desk

  1. Go to Libraries > Creatives and open the creative.
  2. In the Tracking section, paste the tag into the field that matches its type:
    • a 1x1 pixel goes in 1x1 Pixel Impression Tracking URL
    • a JavaScript tag goes in JavaScript Tracking Tag
  3. Save the creative.

Beeswax

  1. Open the creative and expand Pixels and Scripts.
  2. Under Pixels, click + Add 3rd Party Impression Pixel and paste the Pixalate pixel URL.
  3. Save the creative.

Campaign Manager 360 pass-through macros

Sometimes the platform that serves the tag can’t supply a value, but another platform in the chain can. For example, a Campaign Manager 360 tag trafficked in The Trade Desk has no app ID or device ID of its own, but The Trade Desk does. Campaign Manager 360’s %p pass-through macro can capture those values from its own tag and pass them into the Pixalate tag.

The process has three steps:

  1. Pixalate generates the Pixalate tag.
  2. You add the new macros to the Campaign Manager 360 tag.
  3. You traffic the final tag in The Trade Desk.

How %p works

%p captures a key-value from Campaign Manager 360’s request and passes its value on:

%p[start_key_string]![end_character]
  • [start_key_string] is the key whose value you want to pass, including the =, for example ord=.
  • [end_character] is ; when more key-values follow, or ? for the last one. The ; and ? are removed when the macros expand, so keep the original & separators.

For example, with a tag that contains cost=19.95;u1=books;ord=BUY12834988?:

<!-- Your 1x1 tag with placeholders -->
<img src="https://www.example.com/?price=[price]&category=[category]&order=[orderID]" height="1" width="1"/>
<!-- The same tag with %p macros -->
<img src="https://www.example.com/?price=%pcost=!;&category=%pu1=!;&order=%pord=!?" height="1" width="1"/>
<!-- After the macros expand -->
<img src="https://www.example.com/?price=19.95&category=books&order=BUY12834988" height="1" width="1"/>

For the current syntax, see Google’s Use macros to pass information to Floodlight tags and Custom Floodlight variables.

Example: pass the app ID and device ID

The Campaign Manager 360 tag trafficked in The Trade Desk carries The Trade Desk’s macros as custom parameters (appId=[TD_AppID] and deviceId=%%TTD_DEVICEID%%):

<IFRAME SRC="https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/adi/Nxxxx.site-keyname/Byyyyyyy;sz=widthxheight;ord=[timestamp];dc_lat=N;dc_rdid=Czzzz;tag_for_child_directed_treatment=I;kw=[keyword];appId=[TD_AppID];deviceId=%%TTD_DEVICEID%%;click=?" WIDTH=X HEIGHT=Y MARGINWIDTH=0 MARGINHEIGHT=0 HSPACE=0 VSPACE=0 FRAMEBORDER=0 SCROLLING=no BORDERCOLOR='#000000'>
  <SCRIPT language='JavaScript1.1' SRC="https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/adj/Nxxxx.site-keyname/Byyyyyyy;abr=!ie;sz=widthxheight;ord=[timestamp];dc_lat=N;dc_rdid=Czzzz;tag_for_child_directed_treatment=I;kw=[keyword];appId=[TD_AppID];deviceId=%%TTD_DEVICEID%%;click=?">
  </SCRIPT>
  <NOSCRIPT>
    <A HREF="https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/jump/Nxxxx.site-keyname/Byyyyyyy.n;abr=!ie;sz=widthxheight;ord=[timestamp];appId=[TD_AppID];deviceId=%%TTD_DEVICEID%%;kw=[keyword]?">
      <IMG SRC="https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/ad/Nxxxx.site-keyname/Byyyyyyy.n;abr=!ie;sz=widthxheight;ord=[timestamp];dc_lat=N;dc_rdid=Czzzz;tag_for_child_directed_treatment=I;appId=[TD_AppID];deviceId=%%TTD_DEVICEID%%;kw=[keyword]?" BORDER=0 WIDTH=X HEIGHT=Y ALT="Click Here"></A>
  </NOSCRIPT>
</IFRAME>

The Pixalate tag in the Campaign Manager 360 creative then uses %p macros to pick up those values:

<script type="text/javascript" src="{PIXALATE TRACKING TAG}"></script>

Legacy browser notes

The Pixalate tag supports Internet Explorer 6 and later. For older versions, make sure the page declares one of these doctypes.

HTML5:

<!DOCTYPE html>

HTML4:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

Iframe:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/frameset.dtd">

Internet Explorer 9 and 10 add a border to linked images. Most sites turn this off in a reset stylesheet. To remove the border, add this to your styles:

img {text-decoration: none; border: 0px}

If you need the border, set the image size explicitly instead:

<img width="160" height="600" src="https://www.example.com/160x600.png">