THE ADACADO PIXEL

What does the pixel do?

A pixel is a piece of code placed on a website that runs when a page loads and records valuable information about website visitors and collects data about actions taken on that website, such as visiting the website, making purchases, viewing certain products, etc. 

Information collected from the pixel code is primarily used for enhanced ad targeting, mostly for retargeting campaigns. By tracking how people interact with your brand and website, pixels can help you measure campaign performance, track conversion, and build audiences based on behavior.

What is a Retargeting Campaign?

Retargeting campaigns deliver relevant ads based on data captured through pixels to users who have previously visited your website and have shown interest in your brand and products but have left without purchasing. This type of campaign increases ad effectiveness by explicitly targeting visitors who have previously demonstrated interest in your brand or product.

How the Adacado Pixel Works

Adacado pixel is a short JavaScript code snippet that you can implement on an advertiser’s website to collect data for ad generation and visitor information for targeted advertising. Each time someone using your website loads a page on which a pixel is placed, a pixel code is executed, and a tracking cookie is placed in that user’s browser, capturing information used to serve relevant ads.

This code is primarily used for dynamic retargeting campaigns, where ads show a specific product or service that visitors have previously browsed through on your website. Also, standard retargeting campaigns can use pixels to deliver ads to people who have visited your website before.

Depending on your retargeting goals, you can either use an Adacado pixel downloaded from the platform or a modified pixel with a manually added product ID placeholder.

*NOTE*

The Adacado pixel provides additional functionality for your ads, but it is not required to use Adacado. For example, multiple campaign targets in your target settings don’t need the pixel. 

Standard Retargeting: Implement Adacado pixel on your website without a modification

To achieve your retargeting goals, like the example below for people who have visited your website, download the Adacado pixel and implement it properly on your website. 

• Building brand awareness
• Introducing new products

*NOTE*

Standard retargeting with the Adacado pixel is only possible when using Adacado for your media buying for display ads and Facebook ads. If you use a third-party DSP as your media channel, contact your DSP to create an audience base with the DSP’s pixel.

Dynamic Retargeting: Implement a modified Adacado pixel with a Product ID placeholder added

When a visitor navigates to a product page on your website where the Adacado pixel is implemented, we may show the user an ad that contains a previously viewed product. 

For dynamic ad retargeting, the Adacado pixel must be present on all product (vehicle, service, etc.) pages of your website, and you need to manually add a line of code with the product ID “PLACEHOLDER” which must be filled in with the product ID. The product ID populated in the pixel must match the one mapped to the Product ID in the data feed mapping.

Requirements for Dynamic Ad Retargeting

• Add a.setAttribute("data-productid", "PRODUCTID_PLACEHOLDER"); to the downloaded Adacado pixel.

Example: Original Pixel

Example: Modified pixel with the Product ID placeholder

• Implement the pixel properly on all product, vehicle, or service pages. Once the data-product id is added, you should see the third line in the header passing the relevant product ID where the Adacado pixel is placed. Encode the product ID values with MIME encoding. Failure to do so can lead to unexpected behavior when retrieving the ads.

Example:

• Add a data feed and create individual product data with a unique product ID that matches the product ID passed to the pixel.
• Select product targeting using retargeting such as “Last Viewed” on your media channel configuration page.

*NOTE*

Abandoned Cart Retargeting

The modified pixel with the product ID placeholder can also be used for abandoned cart retargeting. You need to properly implement the pixel on the shopping cart page, and the product ID/s of the abandoned products in the cart must be passed to the pixel in the correct format. 

When a list of abandoned product IDs is passed to the pixel,

• • Encode the values with MIME encoding. Failure to do so can lead to unexpected behavior when retrieving the ads.
  • Make sure the values passed in are the same as the data in the data feed for the Product ID field.
  • If passing a list, the “,” is the separator.

Implementing the Pixel

Your Advertiser, Your Pixel

When you create an advertiser in Adacado, a pixel is automatically generated for you, even if you don’t plan to use it. Every campaign under a given advertiser will share the same pixel. Because of this, it is never necessary to add more than one pixel per page to your website, even if you are running multiple campaigns.

Where to Download the Pixel

You can download the pixel for a given advertiser on Ad Delivery Settings and Product Settings page.

Click on the “Show My Pixel” button in the top right corner, and a pop-up box with the pixel will appear.

Adding the Pixel to Your Website

Implementing the pixel is a technical process, and we recommend working with a professional web developer, your webmaster, or the development team.

Please give the person who will be doing this a copy of the pixel and the following implementation instructions to ensure correct placement. After the pixel has been added, ensure to test that the pixel works as expected!

Unfortunately, Adacado does not provide pixel implementation services.

Implementation Instructions

Please observe the following notes to ensure the proper implementation of your pixel:

• Place the pixel on product/vehicle/service pages only.
  • Pixels placed on other pages of your website may cause undesirable behavior for dynamic retargeting.
• Only put one pixel on each page.
• Add the pixel right before the </body> tag on all product pages where you want to generate ads and/or track user behavior.

Automate Pixel Placement

Many of our customers choose to use an external service to help them dynamically place the pixel on their website. Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a popular choice.

Using a service to automate the pixel placing process can be helpful, especially when you have many pages on your website. If your product pages all have a common string in their URLs (which is not shared by other types of pages), you may be able to automate the pixel placement. For example, you could set up a rule to implement the pixel on all pages which contain the URL string “/all-products/”.

If you learn more about how to add a pixel to Google Tag Manager (GTM), click here.

After Implementation

Once your pixel has been added to your website, it is important to check that the pixel is working as expected. Please follow our guide on testing the pixel here.