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Doubleclick (Legacy)

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Overview

Track your Doubleclick campaigns using Branch's Universal Ads product. Branch's Ad Product will enable you to update your Doubleclick Campaign Manager (DCM) campaigns with deep links that send data back to Doubleclick's servers.

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Doubleclick Complete Coverage

DoubleClick supports tracking links, and is also a self-attributing network with limited data in the response. Follow the relevant setup guide for the behavior you would like to see. Where possible, we recommend setting up both implementations for complete coverage, so data appears in Branch, the ad partner, and DoubleClick.

Setup 1

You can see conversion data in DoubleClick Campaign Manager without using any tracking links by setting up Floodlight tags. DoubleClick will be notified of all conversions.

Setup 2

You can see conversion data in the Branch dashboard by using tracking links for the ad network you are running ads with. Postbacks will be sent to the ad network.

Setup 1: Seeing data in DoubleClick

Doubleclick Campaign Manager Set Up

Before we start anything on the Branch side, we need to configure options on the DCM side. Start by heading to your DCM dashboard, and navigating to the advertisers' section.

Grab Advertiser ID

First, we'll need to grab the advertiser ID. Select the advertiser you want to track, and grab the Advertiser ID. In this example, it is 6637276. This is the advertiser you will track campaigns with. Please keep note of it.

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Grab Server to Server Token

Once you've captured the advertiser ID and selected the advertiser, navigate to Floodlight Configuration. From there, go to "server to server", and make sure "in-app attribution tracking" is check-marked. Click new token, call it “Branch token”, and save it. Copy this value, as well.

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Now that you have Advertiser ID and Server to Server Token, the last step is to find the events you need to track.

Grab Tags for Events

Go to the Floodlight activities tab. For all the events you want to track, grab the Activity tag String and Group tag String.

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In the above screenshot, the two values for Activity tag String are act-ios and act-android. The one value for Group tag String is sales. Do this for all activities you want to track.

Once you're done with this exercise, you should have at least 4 unique values:

  • Server to Server token
  • Advertiser ID
  • Activity tag String (per event)
  • Group tag String (per event)

Branch Dashboard Setup

Let's take these values and place them in Branch's dashboard. Begin by navigating to the partners page.

Enable

Find DoubleClick in the search box. Hit enable. In the Account Settings tab, insert your Server to Server token.

Map Events

At this point, you have enabled Branch to communicate with Doubleclick. Now we need to map Branch events to Floodlight Activities found on the Doubleclick dashboard.

  1. Click the Postback Config tab.
  2. Set Send Postbacks For to All Events
  3. You should see a URL for the event Install. For demonstration purposes, we will assume you have a corresponding Install event on the Doubleclick dashboard, but this applies to any event you add.
  4. Start by grabbing your Advertiser ID, Activity tag String, and Group tag String.

In the screenshot above, we have two events, "In App Activations - Android", and "In App Activations - iOS", which correspond to the Branch Install event. For this example, the Activity tag Strings are act-and and act-ios. The Group tag String is sales.

Copy the existing URL in Install, and replace the src, cat, and type variables. The "cat" example below has conditional iOS and Android information.

Your end result should look exactly like this, where there are different cat tags for iOS and Android.

https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/s2s/appactivity/src=6637276;cat=<#if user_data.os=="IOS">act-ios</#if><#if user_data.os=="ANDROID">act-and</#if>;type=sales;ord=${ (id)! }

If you don't have two different tags for iOS and Android, then it will look simpler:

https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/s2s/appactivity/src=6637276;cat=act-tag;type=sales;ord=${ (id)! }

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Setup 2: Seeing data in Branch, postbacks to ad partners

Create ad link

If you're looking to see data in the Branch dashboard and postback to ad partners, create an ad link for the relevant partner, and then use that link in the click tracking URL field of your DCM creative tag.

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Server-side vs Client-side Handling

If a placement's click is handled server-side by a specific publisher and there is no device ID macro, Branch will record clicks but not attribute downstream events in Branch's dashboard (client-side clicks will attribute downstream events in Branch's dashboard). Clicks with a device ID macro or client-side handling will attribute downstream events in Branch. Please contact [email protected] or contact your Account Manager for details on specific networks before implementation.