Tips & Tricks: Simple Steps to Ensure Proper Conversion Tracking in DFA

Being able to track campaign performance starts with proper tagging of the relevant conversion points on your advertiser’s website. If your tags are not set up properly to begin with, then you could lose precious information on how your campaign is performing.

In DoubleClick for Advertisers, conversion tags are referred to as Floodlight activities. To save yourself the headache of Floodlight tag errors that could result in campaign conversions not tracking and reporting correctly, here are three easy QA steps you can take to determine whether a Floodlight tag has been implemented correctly.

Step 1: Compare DFA code and site code
Confirm that the Floodlight tag implemented on webpage matches the tag code in the DFA user interface (UI), and that there are no red flags such as line breaks.

Click into the Floodlight tag in question in the DFA UI. Copy and paste the tag code found in the “Floodlight Tag Preview” section into a simple text document.

Load the webpage where this same tag has been implemented. View the source code of the page by selecting View -> Page Source from your browser menu. Do a quick search for “doubleclick” within the source code. Unless the Floodlight tag has been coded on a hidden layer of the website, you should be able to find the tag somewhere within the page source code.

Once located, copy the Floodlight tag code and paste it into the same text document where you pasted the tag code from the DFA UI.

Compare the two tags. The syntax should match.

Step 2: Break down the syntax of the tag
Confirm that each “key=[value]” pair of the Floodlight tag that you just located within the source code of the webpage is correct. These key-values should exactly match those of the Floodlight tag you copied from the DFA UI.

Here's an example:

<iframe src="http: net="" src="1234567;type=abc123;cat=fghij456;ord=[Random" width="1" height="1" frameborder="0" style="display:none">

src=1234567: Identifies the advertiser that is the source of the Floodlight activity. The value of the src= key is the advertiser ID.
type=abc123: The group tag string, which identifies the activity group with which the Floodlight activity is associated in DFA.
cat=fghij456: The activity tag string, which identifies the Floodlight activity.

Step 3: Use a proxy sniffer
Use a proxy-sniffing tool to confirm that the tag is successfully firing every time the webpage loads. A proxy-sniffing tool is a browser plugin such as Tamper Data, HttpWatch or Charles.

Turn on your proxy sniffer, load the webpage, and filter by tags containing “doubleclick.” You should see your tag fire accordingly.

Refresh the page several times to make sure that the ord= key-value is correctly populated with a random number that is at least 8 digits long.

For a more complete guide to Floodlight conversion tracking and tag QA, make sure to visit the Floodlight module of the DFA Help Center (DFA sign-in required).

Posted by Kasey Spickard, DFA Technical Services Associate