DCM Floodlight

Step-by-step guide to send your event data from RudderStack to DCM Floodlight.

DCM Floodlight is a conversion tracking system for Google Marketing Platform. It lets you track the users' activity on your site, compiles their list, adds conversion data to your reports, and then targets those users by subsequent campaigns.

Find the open-source transformer code for this destination in the GitHub repository.

Getting started

Before configuring DCM Floodlight as a destination in RudderStack, verify if the source platform is supported by DCM Floodlight by referring to the table below:

Connection Mode	Web	Mobile	Server
Device mode	-	-	-
Cloud mode	-	Supported	Supported

To know more about the difference between cloud mode and device mode in RudderStack, refer to the RudderStack Connection Modes guide.

Once you have confirmed that the source platform supports sending events to DCM Floodlight, follow these steps:

1. From your RudderStack dashboard, add a source. Then, from the list of destinations, select DCM Floodlight.

2. Assign a name to the destination and click on Next.

Connection settings

To successfully configure DCM Floodlight as a destination, you will need to configure the following settings:

• DoubleClick Advertiser ID: Enter your Advertiser ID visible in the Campaigns or Activities tab in your dashboard.

Refer to the FAQ section to know more on how to obtain the Advertiser ID.

• Activity Tag: Enter the Floodlight Activity Tag (cat) to define the same parameter value across all the conversion events. Alternatively, you can define this value for each conversion event mapping in the Floodlight Activity Tag field below.

• Group Tag: Enter the Floodlight Group Tag (type) to define the same parameter value across all the group conversion events. Alternatively, you can define this value for each conversion event in the Floodlight Group Tag field below.

For more information on finding cat and type in your Campaign Manager dashboard, refer to the FAQ section below.

• RudderStack Event Name: Enter your RudderStack event name which will be mapped to the Floodlight tag.

• Floodlight Activity Tag: Enter the cat of your tag string. If left blank, RudderStack will pick the value from the Activity Tag field mentioned above.

• Floodlight Group Tag: Enter the type of your tag string. If left blank, RudderStack will pick the value from the Group Tag field mentioned above.

• Fire as Sales Tag: Enable the toggle button for Sales tag. Keep it disabled if it is a Counter tag.

• Counter tag: Used to count the number of conversions. It is supposed to be placed on the confirmation page after a sale with information about the ord property passed to the tag.

• Sales tag: Used to count the number of conversions, the total number of sales that take place, and the total associated revenue. It is supposed to be placed on the confirmation page after a sale with information about the sales, like cost, qty, or ord properties passed to the tag.

• Custom Floodlight variables: Enter the custom Floodlight variables to capture additional reporting data beyond the usual metrics (like visits and revenue).

For more information on finding the custom Floodlight variables, refer to the FAQ section below.

Track

The track call lets you capture user events along with the properties associated with them.

A sample track call is as shown below:

client.track({
  userId: "1hKOmRA4el9Zt1WSfVJIVo4GRlm",
  event: "Checkout Started",
  properties: {
    orderId: 1234,
    quantity: 45,
    revenue: 800,
  },
  context: {
    device: {
      advertisingId: "2a3e36d172-5e28-45a1-9eda-ce22a3e36d1a",
    },
    userAgent: "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_2) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/79.0.3945.88 Safari/537.36",
  },
  integrations: {
    All: true,
    "DCM Floodlight": {
      COPPA: "false",
      GDPR: "1",
      npa: "true",
    },
  },
});

userAgent is a required field and must be passed. Otherwise, you will get an error.

The following table details the mapping of integrations object (as seen in the above code snippet) for DCM Floodlight:

RudderStack property	DCM Floodlight property	Description
COPPA	tag_for_child_directed_treatment	Imposes requirements on the websites/online services operators directed to children under 13 years of age. More reference here.
GDPR	tfua	EU law on general data protection and privacy. More reference here.
npa	npa	Law catering to users to wish to opt-out of remarketing.

The following table details the mapping between RudderStack and DCM Floodlight properties:

RudderStack property	DCM Floodlight property	Presence	Tag
context.device.advertisingId	dc_rdid	Required	Counter/Sales
context.device.adTrackingEnabled	dc_lat	Optional	Counter/Sales
messageId	ord	Optional	Counter
properties.orderId	ord	Optional	Sales
properties.quantity	qty	Optional	Sales
properties.revenue	cost	Optional	Sales

You must send the device-specific information for DCM Floodlight like IDFA or advertisingId, which are mapped to the context.device.advertisingId. You can do this using RudderStack's mobile SDKs as they collect this information automatically.

However, in case you are using a RudderStack server-side SDK, the advertisingId needs to be included manually.

The following table gives some more context on the above DCM Floodlight properties:

DCM Floodlight property	Description
dc_rdid	The IDFA or Android Advertising ID to be passed over SSL.
dc_lat	Indicates if the user has enabled the Limited Ad Tracking option for IDFA/Android Advertising ID.
ord	Used to make the Floodlight tag unique and prevent browser caching.
qty	Applicable for Sales tags only - RudderStack adds the quantity of all the products in the products array or refers to the top-level quantity property.
cost	Applicable for Sales tags only - RudderStack sends the revenue parameter to DCM Floodlight.

FAQ

Where can I find the activity tag string (cat) and group tag string (type)?

In your Campaign Manager dashboard, go to Floodlight > Activities. Here you can see all the activity names along with their Activity tag string (cat) and Group tag string (type), as shown:

Where can I find the Advertiser ID?

To get the Advertiser ID, go to your Campaign Manager 360 account and navigate to the Campaigns or Activities tab in your dashboard to obtain the Advertiser ID:

Where can I find the custom Floodlight variables?

To create custom Floodlight variables, refer to this Campaign Manager guide.

You can find the custom Floodlight variables for your activities by going to Floodlight > Activities. Then, click on any activity to view the custom variables associated with it, as shown:

How can I get the reports of the events in DCM Floodlight?

In your Campaign Manager dashboard, you get two reporting options under Report Builder - Instant Reporting and Offline Reporting, as shown:

To generate an offline report of the events, follow these steps:

1. Go to New > Floodlight.

2. Select the Floodlight Configuration and other fields like Activities, Dimensions, and Metrics as per your requirement.

What are unattributed cookie conversions?

A conversion is said to be unattributed if the user has a DoubleClick cookie but it is converted without any exposure. This means that the user did not click or view any ad from the advertiser within Floodlight, or the interaction happened outside the lookback window.

Contact us

For queries on any of the sections covered in this guide, you can, contact us or start a conversation in our Slack community.