Yahoo Click ID in Google Campaign Manager Ad Server

Abstract

Describes how to enable Enhanced Attribution for Yahoo Click ID in the Google Campaign Manager ad server. Topics include 3rd Party Hosted (Ad Tag) and Yahoo Hosted (Img 1x1 Click Tracker) implementations in Google Campaign Manager 360.

How It Works

To implement Enhanced Attribution for Yahoo campaigns that use use Google Campaign Manager 360 (fka DCM) for tracking or ad serving, the only change needed is to regenerate the dynamic click tracker or ad tag, so that it will include the key-value pair that represents the Yahoo VMCID parameter vmcid= and the click ID macro ${CC}.

The steps to implement this change in Google Campaign Manager 360 are described in the sections below.

Add VMCID Click ID Macros to Google CM360 Dynamic Click Trackers

Step 1: Update the Placement with the vmcid=${CC} key-value pair.

Go to Campaigns and select the current campaign that the dynamic click trackers are created under and select the Placement (for example: VMCID Test Placement):

placement

Click the Placement and scroll to the Tag defaults section:

tag defaults

Expand the Tag Defaults section and scroll to the Additional key-values sections and enter vmcid=${CC}. This is the VMCID parameter and click ID macro that will be added to your dynamic click tracker tags.

See the Google Help Center article for reference:

key values

Save the Placement.

Step 2 Update the Dynamic click tracker’s Landing page URL suffix with the vmcid parameter and the click ID macro ${CC} and the DCM pattern matching macro %p.

Select the Dynamic click tracker under that Placement from the Campaign screen:

click tracker

Click the Dynamic click tracker (example VMCID Dynamic Click Tracker) and scroll to the Landing page URL suffix section:

dynamic click tracker

Expand the Landing page URL suffix section to add the vmcid parameter and click ID macro. Since this is the landing page URL the expanded click ID value needs to appear here instead of the macro itself.

To do this, use CM360/DCM’s %p (pattern matching) macro to capture the expanded click ID macro value and include it in the landing page URL.

Use the following structure to add the URL suffix. Here’s a reference to the %p pattern matching macro in Google help docs.

landing page url

Step 3 Download and send the tags to Yahoo so the new click trackers can replace the old ones.

The dynamic click tracker tags will look similar to the following and will include the additional key-value pair vmcid=${CC} as part of the click-through URL:

https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/trackclk123/456;dc_trk_aid=123456;dc_trk_cid=123456;vmcid=${CC};dc_lat=;dc_rdid=;tag_for_child_directed_treatment=;tfua=

The ${CC} macro will expand into a value that will represent the user in the Yahoo ad platform which will be passed within the query string when the user clicks on an ad. That value is then passed to the Dot tag placed across the advertiser site and used to track to a conversion.

Add VMCID Click ID Macros to Google CM360 Ad Tags

Step 1 Update the ins ad tag with the vmcid=${CC} key-value pair using the data-dcm-param attribute.

The Google ins tag needs a custom HTML attribute included in the tag for vmcid=${CC}. The attribute to add is called data-dcm-param, which is used for Additional key-values - from the Google article:

ins tag

The tag [KEY] is custom-defined for the attribute and that’s where you can add the vmcid parameter and click macro. Here’s the code to add to the tag:

data-dcm-param-vmcid='${CC}'

After adding that attribute to the ad tag code, the output will look something like this after generating from CM360 (the order of attributes can vary):

<ins class=\'dcmads\' style=\'display:inline-block;width:300px;height:250px\'\n    data-dcm-reverse-click-tracker=\'1\' data-dcm-click-tracker=\'${CLICKURL}\' data-dcm-placement=\'ABC123\'\n    data-dcm-rendering-mode=\'scr'+'ipt\'\n  data-dcm-param-vmcid='${CC}\'  data-dcm-https-only\n    data-dcm-gdpr-applies=\'gdpr=${GDPR}\'\n    data-dcm-gdpr-consent=\'gdpr_consent=${GDPR_CONSENT_755}\'\n    data-dcm-addtl-consent=\'addtl_consent=${ADDTL_CONSENT}\'\n    data-dcm-resettable-device-id=\'\'\n    data-dcm-app-id=\'\'\n    data-dcm-keywords=\'ADCALL_D\'>

Then the last step in CM360 is to have the vmcid= parameter with the expanded click ID macro appended to the click-through/landing page URL.

Step 2 Update the ad tag Landing page URL suffix with the vmcid parameter and the click ID macro ${CC} and the DCM pattern matching macro %p.

Select the ad tag under that Placement from the Campaign screen:

ad tag

Click the ad tag (example VMCID Test Ad Tag) and scroll to the Landing page URL suffix section:

ad tag click tracker

Expand the Landing page URL suffix section to add the vmcid parameter and click ID macro. Since this is the landing page URL the expanded click ID value needs to appear here instead of the macro itself.

To do this, use CM360/DCM’s %p (pattern matching) macro to capture the expanded click ID macro value and include in the landing page URL.

Use the following structure to add the URL suffix. Here’s a reference to the %p pattern matching macro in Google help docs

another landing page url

Step 3 Download and send the tags to Yahoo so the new ad tags can replace the old ones.

The ad tags will look similar to the following code and will include the additional key-value pair vmcid=${CC}:

<ins class=\'dcmads\' style=\'display:inline-block;width:300px;height:250px\'\n    data-dcm-reverse-click-tracker=\'1\' data-dcm-click-tracker=\'${CLICKURL}\' data-dcm-placement=\'ABC123\'\n    data-dcm-rendering-mode=\'scr'+'ipt\'\n  data-dcm-param-vmcid='${CC}\'  data-dcm-https-only\n    data-dcm-gdpr-applies=\'gdpr=${GDPR}\'\n    data-dcm-gdpr-consent=\'gdpr_consent=${GDPR_CONSENT_755}\'\n    data-dcm-addtl-consent=\'addtl_consent=${ADDTL_CONSENT}\'\n    data-dcm-resettable-device-id=\'\'\n    data-dcm-app-id=\'\'\n    data-dcm-keywords=\'ADCALL_D\'>

The ${CC} macro will expand into a value that represents the user on the Yahoo platform, which will be passed within the query string when the user clicks on an ad. That value is then passed to the Yahoo Dot tag placed across the advertiser site and used to track a conversion.

Important

If you have any questions, contact your Account representative.