Digital Analytics Impression Attribution is an optional module that allows you to track impressions from offsite marketing placements directing traffic back to a Digital Analytics-tagged website.

Through sophisticated cookie mapping and attribution logic, it is possible to understand basic information such as impressions, clicks, and click-throughs, in addition to advanced metrics such as "attributed" sales, orders, sessions, and events over defined attribution windows and selected credit logic. This module may require a tag library update. To determine if you need an update, please contact your assigned Implementation Engineer or Customer Support.

Using Impression Attribution, it is possible to answer questions such as:

• Am I under-invested in Display Advertising with a particular publisher or network?
• Do those who convert on my site ever view our ads? Where do they see them?
• Does someone who views our High Interest Checking ad banner on a particular site sign up for a new account on our site within 90 days?
• How often is a particular ad viewed across all sites? By how many unique viewers?
• Do those who watch our syndicated video or view our micro-sites ultimately convert on our site?
• What components of our widget are people viewing/utilizing? Does interest in a particular widget component signal a high likelihood of a downstream Home Goods purchase?

Independent Request

In order to limit the impact on performance/latency on the publishing site, independent requests are preferred. In the case of a micro-site, the request may simply be included directly into the page source. In the case of a display ad, the request would be called simultaneous with the ad request. In other words, the publishing site code would make a request for both the Digital Analytics Impression Attribution tag and the actual advertisement content at the same time.

Sample Independent Request:

http://data.cmcore.com/imp?tid=17&ci=11111111&vn1=4.1.1&vn2=imp&ec=UTF-
8&rnd=1234567890123&cm_mmc=Washington%20Post-_-Display%20Ads-_-Boat%20
Insurance-_-Boat_vA_c432&cm_mmca1=300x250&cm_mmca2=german

Redirect request

The 'redirect' request leverages a redirect through which the publishing site requests the Digital Analytics Impression AttributionMarketing Impression Attribution tag and it, in turn, redirects to the advertisement URL. The redirect URL (?ul=) must come before the tag parameters.

Sample Redirect Request:

http://data.cmcore.com/imprd?ul=http://ad.doubleclick.com/ad/N733/B32049394.2%3
Bsz%3D300x250%26lang%3Dgerman&tid=17&ci=11111111&vn1=4.1.1&vn2=imp&ec=UTF-8&rnd
=1234567890123&cm_mmc=Washington%20Post-_-Display%20Ads-_-Boat%20Insurance-_-
Boat_vA_c432&cm_mmca1=300x250&cm_mmca2=german

Marketing impression tag specification

The Marketing Impression tag is a lightweight direct image request to Digital Analytics that sets or collects a 3rd party cookie (CoreID6).

Digital Analytics records an "impression" for each tag received. Data.cmcore.com responds to requests with a transparent 1x1 pixel GIF image.

Marketing program and impression correlation

The Marketing Program link URL and associated Marketing Impression requests for the same Advertisement should contain the same Marketing Program (cm_mmc=) and Marketing Attribute (cm_mmca1-a15) parameter values.

For the following display Ad example linking to your site's home page:

http://data.cmcore.com/imp?tid=17&ci=11111111&vn1=4.1.1&vn2=imp&ec=UTF-8&cm_mmc=
Washington%20Post-_-Display%20Ads-_-Boat%20Insurance-_-Boat_vA_c432&cm_mmca1=
300x250&cm_mmca2=german

The target URL should contain:

http://www.yoursite.com?cm_mmc=Washington%20Post-_-Display%20Ads-_-Boat%20
Insurance-_-Boat_vA_c432&cm_mmca1=300x250&cm_mmca2=german

Matching Marketing Program parameters and Marketing Attributes across the Marketing Impression and Marketing URL ensures correct marketing reporting.

Independent request HTML example

In order to limit the impact on performance/latency on the publishing site, independent requests are preferred. In the case of a micro-site, the request may simply be included directly into the page source. In the case of a display ad, the request would be called simultaneous with the ad request. In other words, the publishing site code would make a request for both the Digital Analytics Impression Attribution tag and the actual advertisement content at the same time.

Sample HTML for Independent Request:

<a alt="banner ad link" href="http://www.thesite.com/landingpage.html?
cm_mmc=Washington%20Post-_-Display%20Ads-_-Boat%20Insurance-_-Boat_vA_c432&
cm_mmca1=300x250&cm_mmca2=german"><img alt="a banner ad image" height="45" 
width="60" 
src="http://www.thesite.com/images/Boat_vA_c432-banner.jpg"</a>

<img src="http://data.cmcore.com/imp?tid=17&ci=
11111111&vn1=4.1.1&vn2=imp&ec=UTF-8&
cm_mmc=Washington%20Post-_-Display%20Ads-_-Boat%20Insurance-_-Boat_vA_c432&
cm_mmca1=300x250&cm_mmca2=german">

Testing marketing impression tags

The Marketing Impression Attribution reporting module is not available in Digital Analytics test reports.

To test new impression requests, follow these steps.

1. Create a local HTML page for your new Impression tag following the HTML example in the Independent request HTML example and modify it as needed if you are testing a Redirect request.
2. Modify the HTML anchor href= to point to a tagged production website page sending data to the same Client ID (&ci=) value as the new Impression request.
3. Run the local HTML in your browser to send the impression tag and display the link.
4. Click the link to navigate to the tagged production landing page and use tagbar to verify a Page View or Technical Properties tag is sent with the expected cm_mmc= value in the Destination URL (ul) parameter.
5. The next day, generate an Explore / Marketing module report for the prior day, including relevant Impression Attribution metrics. To reduce the number of rows in this production report, consider Filtering the report by the Marketing Program (cm_mmc=) VCPI value associated with the test.