Product Bulletin

Welcome to the Yahoo Native API Product Bulletin. This update includes a quick snapshot of recent and upcoming releases and is focused on features supported by the API. A summary of supported functionality is also included.

Product Bulletins are updated on a monthly cadence for Yahoo Native API partners, account managers and developers.

August, 2021

Reminder: Best Practices Added to DataX

  • The document describes best practices for optimal performance and expected results when working with DataX APIs and endpoints. The document includes code examples, notes and clarifications on Production and Sandbox differences, polling, and FAQS. See Best Practices for more details.

Reminder: New Enhanced Attribution Implementation Spec v1.0

  • The document describes Yahoo Native’s new Enhanced Attribution implementation and outlines how the feature works, end-to-end, with step-by-step instructions for activating and operating this solution. Enhanced Attribution works by mitigating the lost conversion attribution on browsers and devices through the use of a click ID as an identifier instead of a cookie or device ID. See Enhanced Attribution for in-depth details.

Reminder: Updated Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO)

  • We’ve updated the DCO page with a new case study example, which illustrates how a digital bank was able to optimize their Native ad campaign results and increase their lower-funnel conversion (CVR) by as much as 54%. See Advanced Dynamic Creative Optimization for more information.

Reminder: Updates to DataX Partner Match API

  • New updates to the API with Error Messages, Rate Limits, Audience Identifiers, including a new EMAIL identifier. See Partner Match API for details.

Reminder: Vendor Id-Specific GDPR Macros Added

We’ve added two new GDPR macros for Native that are vendor-specific Ids:

  • {euconsent_<vendorIds>}

  • {gdpr_consent_<vendorIds>}

See Dynamic Parameters for more information.

Reminder: Upload DPA Product Feed From a Computer

  • As a new option, Yahoo Native now provides you the ability to directly upload a one-time product feed from your computer, rather than from a web server (FTP or HTTP server) dropbox. This is ideal for advertisers who simply need to perform a lightweight, quick, one-time feed upload. For examples of use cases and more details, see Upload Your Product Feed in the Dynamic Product Ads UI documentation.

Reminder: Additional Ad Object JSON Examples

  • We’ve added JSON examples for Portrait Image Ads, Portrait Video Ads, Panorama Ads, and Portrait Touchpoints Ads. See Ad Object documentation in the Native Guide for examples and additional resources.

Updated Recommends Guide Resources for Publishers

We’ve added and updated several resources in the Recommends Guide, intended for Publishers who are doing integrations.

  • To learn how Recommends works for Publishers using modules, tune into this new walkthrough video by Marco Morais, Senior Principal Software Dev Engineer on the Yahoo Native team.

  • Updated Recommends page on Tracking beacons, which describes the tracking beacons used by the Yahoo Native Recommends client and includes example beacons and requests.

  • Updated Recommends page on Events and Page-Module Relationships, which describes the supported types of event beacons, including image and video tracking.

  • Updated Recommends page on Mobile Instrumentation, which describes AMP Tag required and optional parameters. AMP is a web component framework that you can use to easily create user-first websites, stories, emails and ads.

Reminder: New Expanded Targeting

  • Yahoo Native introduces a new targeting feature enhancement for Native Ad Platform advertisers: Expanded Targeting. This new feature enhancement takes advantage of a proprietary machine learning algorithm developed by Yahoo Native that enables advertisers to expand their reach beyond targeted audience segments that advertisers have specified for new and existing Native ad campaigns. That means, you can now increase reach to better performing audiences. You’ll be able to identify more audiences that produce a greater number of conversions at the same or lower cost, thus increasing performance and ROI. See Expanded Targeting for details about how it works, plus implementation details, Native Ads API & Bulk Support, FAQs and more resources.

Reminder: Rate Limits for API Endpoints

  • For all object APIs (i.e., campaign, ad group, ad, targeting attribute, and so on), the API quota is 100,000 calls per hour. Read operations (such as GETs) have a lower cost factor than write operations (POST/PUT/DELETE). See Objects for details. Also, see Resources for info about error responses and the return of the HTTP 429 error code, which specifies Too Many Requests.

Reminder: Moments Ads

  • Introducing Moments, a new Native ad canvas that scales across Yahoo’s category-leading mobile app and web properties. Leveraging the interscroller format, a Moments Ad is revealed as a user scrolls vertically until the experience fills the entire screen. Moments supports both static and video portrait assets, and is available for both managed and self-serve advertisers. See the new Moments Ads guide for Video Examples, Types & Formats, downloadable Moments Guidelines PDF, downloadable Matrix View of Required Fields, Technical Requirements, and links to more resources. API support for Moments is provided with additional fields that are available in Ad Fields and Ad Asset Fields. For details about Bulk support, see Bulk Ads and Ad Assets documentation.

Reminder: New Workflow for Post App Install Integration

  • Yahoo Native has added a new workflow for post-install integration for Native Platform API partners and developers. The integration enables post-install events for conversions that are attributed by a 3rd Party Data Provider to a previously self-attributed app install claim or an in-app claim. See User Acquisition Post-Install Specification 1.0 documentation for requirements, typical workflow, endpoint, request URL parameters, and related resources.

Reminder: New Rebranded Shopify App from Yahoo Native

  • The new Shopify app from Yahoo Native provides advertisers with a Shopify extension as part of the Dynamic Product Ads (DPA) integration. The app is available for download on the Shopify app store. The app, which is free, offers a very simple setup and workflow that lets you create a DPA ad campaign in less than 5 minutes. See Shopify App - Product Ads for more information on campaign setup, workflow, sample e-commerce sites and FAQs.

Reminder: New Strategies for Optimizing Custom Audiences

  • Yahoo Native’s new guide, Strategies for Optimizing Custom Audiences, provides you with in-depth technical information on strategies for working with Custom Audiences. The document includes overviews of the audience types – Audiences by Dot Tags (Pixels), Audiences from Email Lists, and Audiences by Device ID – and provides pros and cons for each type, along with best practices.

Updated Authentication Documentation

  • We’ve recently updated our Getting Started documentation to further clarify the authentication steps. The steps include using a dedicated Yahoo domain specific username; creating the app and subsequent developer keys; and following the explicit grant flow to get an authorization URL and authorize access. To review the latest information and detailed steps, see the Before You Begin section of our Authentication page. The documentation also includes detailed OAuth 2.0 setup and usage information, best practices and FAQs.

Important: New Restrictions for Square and HQ Images in Single Image Ads

  • When creating your ad, you will need to include an imageUrl and imageUrlHQ in the API, and an Ad HQ Image URL in BULK. Note that the imageUrl must have a 1:1 aspect ratio. A square image (imageLargeUrl) is mandatory. If you upload an 800x800 image, for example, the asset will be resized down to 627x627 pixels. And if you upload an 800x850 image, the asset will be resized and cropped down to 627x627 pixels. If the image is off from the 1:1 aspect ratio by more than 10%, the asset will be rejected and ad creation will fail. For example, an 800x1000 image is more than 10% off from 1:1 square, so it will be rejected.

  • This applies to API, UI and BULK uploads. Ensure that you follow these requirements when creating single image and carousel ads. Use a 1:1 aspect ratio and an exact size of 627x627 for a square asset for carousel ads.

  • Note that this is a requirement now for Image ad formats. Video, Mail, and Carousel ads are unchanged, as they’re already required to meet these restrictions.

  • The image requirements for various assets is shown in the table below:

Asset

Required?

Aspect ratio enforced?

Rectangle image - 1200x627px

Yes

Yes - 1.9.1

Square image - 627x627px

Yes

Yes - 1:1

Thumbnail - 180x180px

Optional

No - 1:1

Note

Existing ads that are missing square assets will experience reduced supply as they are dropped from rendering on ad units that need the square asset.

Dynamic Product Ads Guide

  • We’ve recently rolled out a new portal dedicated to Dynamic Product Ads in our documentation suite. This empowers partners and advertisers with an expanded set of resources in one location, to help streamline DPA planning and setup. This guide is a repository intended for DPA partners, developers and account managers. It serves as the source of truth for the combined documentation suites for all technical content dedicated to DPA for the Native API and Native UI. Use our guide as a toolkit to navigate topics and essential reference material, and to explore implementation details, how-to’s, case studies, FAQs and best practices.

Native Ads Reminders and Resources

Important

For Advertisers Making GET Requests, only one adGroupId or advertiserId parameter is allowed to be passed in as a query parameter for all filtered list GET calls. See the latest documentation in the Ad Object section, What’s New, and Latest Updates.

  • We’ve updated our specification for the Server-to-Server In-App events integration with the Native Ad Platform API. Our spec is intended for 3rd Party Mobile Measurement Providers (3PMMP) who wish to integrate with Native Ad Platform via S2S. It is aimed at Data Providers, like Kochava, AppsFlyer, Adjust, Apsalar, CyberZ/FOX and others. The recent changes include updating all endpoints to replace http:// with https://. To review all in-app event fields, endpoints, request and response examples, and other requirements, see the updated Server-to-Server In-app Events Specification.

  • Site Group X Device targeting is now supported in the latest versions of the API, as well as both Bulk v2+ and API v2+. Site Group X Device targeting allows native advertisers to modify their bids on a per-site group, per-device basis on selected site groups, and is applicable to native channels-only, as well as VisitWeb, Shopping or PromoteBrand objectives-only. Site Group X Device targeting can be set at either the campaign or ad group level. See our Targeting documentation for details and an example.

Important

Some sites have been migrated to site groups. Advertisers should make a GET call to the site group API endpoint to get a list of all new site groups. See the Data Dictionary to get the latest list of valid site group names.

  • Site Blocking at the campaign level is useful for ensuring the safety of your brand as well as improving the performance of your Native campaigns. Subdomain Blocking allows you to block the subdomains beneath a domain, up to 3 levels.

  • We’ve updated the API documentation for Bulk operations, with the latest information on how to upload and download bulk files in your advertiser accounts. A sample tab-separated CSV file spreadsheet is provided, along with information on Bulk schemas and objects. Check out the latest documentation for Bulk Operations.

  • We continue to enhance our best-in-class Yahoo Native documentation suite, designed to help you simplify the process of integrating with us.

Important

We now have strict validation for our redirect URLs. This means that if a registered redirect URL is, for example, http://example.com, but the actual redirect URL is http://example.com/test, the redirect will fail. For more details, see Latest Updates.

Glossary of Key Native Ad Platform Terms, Definitions & Concepts

  • A Yahoo Native Glossary of Key Native Terms, Definitions and Concepts used within our ad platform is available. If you’re looking for definitions of key terms or an abbreviated listing of Native Ad Platform terms for advertisers who are getting started and creating their first campaigns and ad groups, you’ll find them in this alphabetical listing.

Reminder: Updated Postman to v3 Endpoint

  • Updated the Postman collection to the v3 endpoint for all API calls. Using Postman, you can test and verify the calls you make in the Yahoo Native API. See Postman API Toolkit.

Required Fields by Ad Type Matrix

  • A matrix is available which details the required fields when serving different ad types. For more information, see the Matrix view of required fields.

Resources