Prerequisites

To get started with Dynamic Product Ads, be sure to review the topics in this section. The section is intended to provide Yahoo Native UI and API partners, account managers and developers with information about important prerequisites when implementing your DPA product catalogs.

For API & UI Developers

If you’re working with the Yahoo Ad Tech RESTful API, you’ll need to have a basic understanding of HTTP, XML, JSON, as well as a cursory knowledge of query languages. The API is documented in detail at Yahoo Native Developer Documentation. For DPA, check out the section that describes the steps to get started at Dynamic Product Ads - API.

If you’re working with the Yahoo Native UI, you’ll want to sync-up with your Account team before getting started. Review the steps in the section Dynamic Product Ads - UI.

For Feed-Based Ads (Retargeting)

To take advantage of feed-based ads with retargeting, consider the following:

  • You’ll need to instrument a Dot tag and a Custom Event Script. The Dot tag and script needs to be placed across your product pages on your website.

  • Product Feed setup

  • Retargeting works effectively if you have a high volume of website visitors

  • Helps if you’re familiar with Facebook Dynamic Ads or Google Ads

Sync-up Questions

Following are some of the critical questions you’ll need to address when syncing-up with your Account team:

  1. Are you already running Feed Ads (Dynamic Product Ads) with other ad networks? If so, do you target users by purchase funnel (i.e., Viewed the Product or Add to Cart)? And do you run upsell and cross-sell campaigns by product sets?

  2. Can you implement Dot tags to pass back the event action and source id? This is required if you want to retarget users at different purchase funnel stages. Both the image pixel version or the JavaScript version of Dot can be used for this (similar to how Facebook offers Dynamic Product Ads).

  3. How large is your feed? How many items are included in the feed? How does do plan to upload the feed? Do you require scheduled feed updates on a daily or weekly basis? If so, can you provide us with an ftp address with user name and password, or can you utilize a our FTP site?

Important

Yahoo Native can support tens of millions of products in a product feed. If you have a product feed larger than 1.5M products, be sure to inform our product team, so the initial ingestion can be monitored for potential issues. The first feed upload can take several hours or even longer due to initial image processing. Subsequent feed updates (non-image related) can be processed several million per hour.

  1. What are the dimensions of your product images? In square or rectangular sizes?

Important

We prefer high-quality images at 1200x627 pixels. We also support square images at 600x600 pixels (i.e., the Facebook standard). Images should not have padding if possible, and landscape (horizontal rectangle) and square images are preferred over portrait (vertical rectangle) images. A 300x300 minimum image resolution is supported. Anything lower will generate an image error for that record and row in the feed.

Instrument Dot Tags

You’ll use Dot tags (Yahoo Ad Tech’s universal tracking tag) to communicate website and app events when you want to track performance and optimize your search, native and display campaigns. Dot tags also enable you to leverage retargeting and advanced audience targeting for various Yahoo channels.

A Dot tag will record all events for conversion tracking and retargeting. This simplifies instrumentation and maintenance of tags.

Dot tags and how to use them are described in detail in Dot tag instrumentation.

Use Third-Party Tag Managers

You can use third-party tag managers to set up and deploy Yahoo Dot tags:

The API Team

Work with the team of Yahoo Ad Tech Solutions Engineers. The team will assist you with

  • API onboarding, so you can get started quickly and easily, using time-tested best practices for making API calls and maximizing conversions. Our onboarding guide will systematically walk you through all the necessary steps and address your individual concerns.

  • API ongoing issues. The team will address any issues that surface when working with the programmatic API and escalate those issues to the appropriate engineering teams for rapid resolution.

  • API feature and enhancement requests. The team will handle your requests for new features, enhancements and updates to the API, per your input and feedback.

Important

To reach out directly for more information, contact the team at <solutionsengineering@verizonmedia.com>.

Key Partners

Note some of Yahoo’s key partners using the RESTful API shown in this graphic.

api clients

Partner Support includes product bulletins updated on a monthly cadence for Yahoo API partners, account managers and developers.