Deduplication is the conditional activation on the confirmation page of a website, of the tag(s) responsible for the conversion.
This activation is possible by capturing and reading the parameters of your tracking URLs through TagCommander.
Within our interface, tags can be deduplicated with configurable rules depending on their position throughout the customer journey: at the beginning, at the end, or anywhere.
For example, if before converting on your site a user saw and clicked a banner served by your retargeting partner, you can set up a rule to call only that partner’s confirmation tag on the confirmation page.
The deduplication module in Commanders Act is included in your TagCommander offer.
It allows you to create rules to fire confirmation tags (mostly but not only) based on:
A digital marketing channel (SEM, Display, Retargeting, Affiliation, etc).
A traffic source linked to that channel (digital marketing solutions such as Criteo, Netaffiliation, Marin, Tradedoubler, etc).
The position of the touchpoint throughout the customer journey.
Whether a click or impression – or both – are involved.
Note: Channel and source information is read and captured from the parameters in your tracking URLs if you use our “TagCommander” product only. However, if you have subscribed to other products in our suite (“MixCommander”), you can use Commanders Act redirects, in which case there would be no URL parameter capture.
There are many benefits from activating the deduplication module:
Preserving information confidentiality: by activating solely the tag of the partner responsible for a conversion, you limit information leakage about your sales, leads, order amounts, among others, to all your providers, and communicate only what pertains to a specific conversion generated by a specific solution to that very partner.
Saving time: Commanders Act’s deduplication module allocates conversions to partners in real time, helping you save time and not having to allocate conversions manually afterwards from information obtained through reports generated by your analytics tools and your partners.
Before you begin creating deduplication rules in the interface, you should define the following things and inform your Commanders Act consultant:
The digital marketing channels you wish to include in the configuration of the deduplication interface. Commanders Act allows you to configure natural and paid channels to take into account for the deduplication rules.
The “cookie window” (lookback window) settings you wish to configure for every channel: information on the channels that drove a user to your site are stored in a cookie whose lifetime usually is of 30 days. You can, for example, set it to 15 days for channel A and 30 days for channel B.
Setting deduplication rules is a two-step procedure:
Defining and configuring channel and sources recognition in the interface.
Applying deduplication and other rules to activate tags according to your needs.
/!\ If you wish to track impressions, you need to make sure a Commanders Act subdomain has been created for you and have your account manager confirm that the feature is enabled. Please note that setting up the subdomain and tracking impressions with our pixel is a paid service.
Click the Deduplication link in the TAG menu from the home logo
The Channel Identification menu will open, then
Click the ADD CHANNEL button.
Your channel will be displayed afterwards in the channels list.
When you click “ADD CHANNEL”, a new window will be displayed to allow you to configure a new paid channel (natural channels are set-up by default).
You can configure channels with one or more “channel” parameters and one or more “source” parameters (or no “source” parameters at all).
In the window that opens after you click “ADD CHANNEL”, enter your new channel’s name (Display, Affiliation, Retargeting, etc) – this is only a label to identify it in the Channel’s list in the interface – and click “ADD CONDITION”.
In the menu that appears (see below)(2), select the parameter that will store the information defining the channel (there are default parameters such as those used by Google Analytics, AT Internet as well as the possibility to add custom parameters)(2).
Select the condition (whether the value of the parameter matches or doesn’t match the value you are about to enter)(3).
Enter the value that will identify the channel (4). /!\ If a parameter’s value is made of more elements than the one you require, you need to use a star (*) to indicate what chunk is to be considered. For example, let’s say you only need “Retargeting” in this parameter: utm_medium=Retargeting-A1B3C3-crt. You need to write “Retargeting*” (values are case sensitive):
Click ADD (5) on the line of the channel declaration to confirm the creation of the condition.
Click SAVE (6) at the bottom, right-hand corner of the window.
In the window that opens after you click “ADD CHANNEL”, enter your new channel’s name (Display, Affiliation, Retargeting, etc) – this is only a label to identify it in the Channel’s list in the interface – and click “ADD CONDITION”.
In the menu that appears, select the parameter that will store the information defining the channel (there are default parameters such as those used by Google Analytics, AT Internet as well as the possibility to add custom parameters).
Select the condition (whether the value of the parameter matches or doesn’t match the value you are about to enter).
Enter the value that will identify the channel.
/!\ If a parameter’s value is made of more elements than the one you require, you need to use a star (*) to indicate what chunk is to be considered. For example, let’s say you only need “Retargeting” in this parameter:
utm_medium=Retargeting-A1B3C3-crt
You need to write “Retargeting*” (values are case sensitive):
Click ADD on the line of the channel declaration to confirm the creation of the condition.
Click the pencil icon next to “Source: Will not be captured” to modify settings for the source to be captured.
Select the capture method:
Taking all: the entire value of the URL parameter containing the source will be captured. For example, if the parameter in the URL is: “?utm_source=criteo” and you use “Taking all”, all the parameter’s value will be taken. In this case, “criteo”.
Splitting: splits the parameter’s value and takes the block you want. For example, if the parameter in the URL is: “?utm_source=retargeting|criteo|123456&(…)” and you use the setting depicted in the image below, you will obtain “criteo”.
Cutting: cuts a part of the parameter’s value and returns it. For example, if the parameter in the URL is: “?utm_source=criteo&”, you will obtain “cri” with the setting below.
Select the parameter containing the source that will be captured.
Save
Add the channel
This will allow you to have the tag fire depending on the value of the channel AND the value of the source.
In the window that opens after you click “ADD CHANNEL”, enter your new channel’s name (Display, Affiliation, Retargeting, etc) – this is only a label to identify it in the Channel’s list in the interface – and click “ADD CONDITION”.
In the menu that appears, select the parameter that will store the information defining the channel (there are default parameters such as those used by Google Analytics, AT Internet as well as the possibility to add custom parameters).
Select the condition (whether the value of the parameter matches or doesn’t match the value you are about to enter).
Enter the value that will identify the channel. Repeat these steps for as many possible combinations of parameters/values that could identify a channel. In the example below, if the utm_medium parameter in the URL takes the values “Retargeting”, “rtg”, “RTG”, or “retargeting”, the channel called/labeled “Retargeting” (1) will be recognized.
/!\ If a parameter’s value is made of more elements than the one you require, you need to use a star (*) to indicate what chunk is to be considered. For example, let’s say you only need “Retargeting” in this parameter:
utm_medium=Retargeting-A1B3C3-crt
You need to write “Retargeting*” (values are case sensitive):
You can also create conditions based on the “AND” operator. For example: if the UTM_MEDIUM parameter’s values are “Retargeting” or “rtg” AND the UTM_CONTENT’s parameter’s value is “email”, then, the Retargeting channel will be recognized (see second screenshot below).
If you wish to base your conditions on sources too (B), for every condition defining a channel, you will need to select a source.
When everything is setup, click ADD in the bottom, right-hand corner of the window.
In order to create groups of conditions combining “blocks” made of multiple channel+source parameters, follow the steps in C) (above), according to your needs. When you have created your first “block”, click the “ADD CONDITION GROUP” button to create a new set of parameters to be configured (1).
In the example below, the Retargeting channel will be recognized by the interface when either of the two conditions* is met.
*Condition 1: if utm_medium = “retargeting” or “rtg” and the source is captured and matches the configured value (said value is configured in the rules step).
OR
*Condition 2: if utm_medium = retargeting and utm_medium = email and the source matches the configured (said value is configured in the rules step).
Note:
You can select the default parameters (below) but also enter custom parameters or use the “Advanced” option to add custom JavaScript.
Example of custom parameter: “gclid” (SEM)
When you connect Google Adwords and Google Analytics, Google allows you to automatically link your two accounts by adding the “gclid” tracking parameter in your URL. This parameter replaces “utm_source = SEM” and indicates that traffic is SEM-originated. You can use a custom parameter to set this up.
When your channels and source-capturing methods are defined, you will return to the channel list and options.
You just need to write the iD values available on Mixcommander side. For each value you have to declare a channel. For example for the channel AFFILIATION, you have to create as many channels as IDs available on the mapping table ("Affiliation", "aff", "affiliate"). That's why it's very important when you create a campaign to use always the same id. Example : chn=affiliation.
Channel prioritization
You can change the order of paid channels and move them up and down according to the priority you want to give to each one of them. Channels are detected in the exact same order they are listed in the interface and do not exclude each other. So, in the event in which two or more conditions are true, the last condition will be taken into account.
For example, if you have two channels (Email Retargeting and Retargeting) configured as below.
Email Retargeting
Retargeting
The interface will only pay attention to the last condition (if utm_medium = retargeting) and will ignore the rest.
So if you have channels sharing one or more conditions, it is necessary that you place the channels with the least conditions first and those with the most conditions at the bottom of the queue so that all conditions are taken into consideration.
To reorder the channels, please use the handles to the left of the channel’s label.
Cookie Window Configuration
You can change the order of paid channels and move them up and down according to the priority you want to give to each one of them.
Check this box if the channel considers clicks.
Define the lifetime to the cookie storing click information (in number of days).
Check this box if the channel considers views.
Define the lifetime to the cookie storing views information (in number of days).
Define the number of touch points you want to store in the deduplication cookie. You can store no less than ten and no more than 50. The larger the amount of touchpoints, the heavier the cookie’s weight.
Enter the keywords for SEO brand identification, the full word or part of if (you can choose between “contains” or Regex). Declaring keywords is useful to differentiate branded and unbranded SEO in case one of both should be taken into consideration in the deduplication rules. Since some browsers, such as Google, have ceased to provide keywords – this is referred to as “not provided”-, the branded and unbranded SEO distinction is less complete than it used to be.
Add more keywords if necessary.
See the list of your keywords and how they are captured.
Configure your impression tracking pixel’s URL by replacing Channel with one of the channels you created and source with the desired parameter value.
/!\ If you wish to track impressions, you need to make sure a Commanders Act subdomain has been created for you and have your account manager confirm that the feature is enabled. Please note that setting up the subdomain and tracking impressions with our pixel is a paid service.
For more information on these fees please contact your account manager. For more information about Commanders Act’s view pixel, please refer to the “Tracking impressions” and “Structure of TagCommander’s impression pixel” articles.
When your channels are defined in the interface and you have specified whether the parameter storing the source of traffic will be considered or not to launch a tag, you will need to go to the “RULES” step in the TagCommander interface.
Set-up your deduplication rules by following these steps:
1.When on the RULES step, click the “Deduplication” button on the menu to the left.
2.In the new window, click “ADD DEDUPLICATION RULE” to open the rule configuration window. If you click “MANAGE CHANNEL(S)” you will be taken to the Channel Identification interface again
3.When the window opens, select the tag on which you wish to apply a rule from the dropdown menu.Please note: Deduplication is used on confirmation tags only.
4.Select the touchpoint’s position in the customer journey (beginning, end, anywhere).
First refers to the first touchpoint at the beginning of the customer journey (SEM/Google in the illustration below). A rule based on this position would call Google’s tag on the confirmation page and allocate the conversion to it.
Last refers to the last touchpoint before the conversion, at the end of the customer journey (if we consider paid traffic, it would be RETARGETING/Criteo in the image below, and Direct Access overall). A rule based on this position, would call Criteo’s tag on the confirmation page and allocate the conversion to it.
Any refers to any place throughout the customer journey (in the example below, all paid traffic solutions contributing to the conversion would be called on the confirmation page. That is Google, Tradedoubler and Criteo).
5. Select the nature of the touchpoint (click, view or both) you wish to include in your conversion attribution rules. For example, if you wish to consider only clicks, check that box and leave the view box unchecked. If you wish to consider them both, you should check both boxes.
6. Select your channel(s) (you must declare them first in the Channel Identification section; you can select more than one channel).
7. Select whether it corresponds or not to your channel.
8.State whether the source is ignored or (if you configured it to be captured in the channel identification interface) not. If not, define if all or only a part of it will be captured and if it has to match or not a certain value.
9.Enter the value of the parameter that will be compared to what was set in the interface, during the channel identification step, when you chose to capture the source.
10. Click “ADD” to add the rule.
After you create your rules, they will appear in the rules summary.
If your wish to edit a rule, click the pencil icon to the right on the line of each rule. If you wish to delete it, click the trash can.
The rules summary interface has a Deduplication column. A check mark will indicate what tags are deduplicated.
In order to enable the deduplication module, you will need to place the “Commanders Act – Get dedup cookie” and “Commanders Act– Reporting Deduplication v1.2” tags inside your container.
The “Commanders Act – Reporting Deduplication v1.2” tag
The “Commanders Act – Reporting Deduplication v1.2” tag allows you to collect conversion-related data (order ID and amount) and display it in the “By Tag” and “By Conversion” deduplication reports explained here.
You will then need to go to the tag library and add the tag to the container you placed in the confirmation page(s).
In the “Edit” section, map the “Commanders Act – Reporting Deduplication v1.2” tag with the corresponding variables from your data layer:
#TCIDORDER# (mandatory field) must be mapped with the data layer variable that collects the conversion ID (ex: tc_vars[“order_id”]).
#TCAMOUNTORDER# (optional field) must be mapped with the data layer variable that collects the conversion amount (ex: tc_vars[“order_amount”]). Whether you collect the order amounts excluding taxes or all taxes included is your choice.
In the “Rules” section, add a condition to your “Commanders Act – Reporting Deduplication v1.2” tag to call it only on your website’s confirmation page(s) (“confirmation page” perimeter).
The “Commanders Act – Get dedup cookie” tag
Important note: Before adding this tag, you need to make sure that a “commander1.com” subdomain has been added to your account from the “Admin”>”Domain management” interface (only administrators have access to this area). If the subdomain has not yet been created, please contact our support department (support@tagcommander.com).
The “Commanders Act – Get dedup cookie” tag lets you retrieve all the touch points from a user’s customer journey. These touch points are collected on the “commander1.com” subdomain that is associated to your account. This tag is indispensable if you track impressions for your deduplication rules.
Go to the tag library and add the tag to the container you placed in the confirmation page(s).
In the “Edit” section, make sure that the tag does indeed call your “commander1.com” subdomain (scriptElt1.src = “//domain.commander1.com/dg3/”). If it is not the case, please contact our support department (support@commandersact.com). No additional configuration is required for this tag.
In the “Rules” section, add a condition to your “Commanders Act– Get dedup cookie” tag to call it on all but the conversion page among the conversion funnel pages. This will allow you to retrieve all information stored in the “commander1.com” subdomain (especially impressions) when a user engages in the purchase process. Your tags will thus be called depending on the user touch points that are identified.
You work with Retargeting solutions and your tracking URLs look like:
mysite.com?utm_medium=RETARGETING&utm_source=Criteo
mysite.com?utm_medium=RETARGETING&utm_source=MyThings
Where the utm_medium parameter stores the channel and utm_source stores the source (namely your partners).
In order to fire only the tag of the partner to whom the sale is attributed, you would need to follow these steps:
Defining Channels and Sources
Adding a Channel: click “Add Channel” (1)
Name the channel and add the parameter that will store the value defining Retargeting (Add Condition)
Define the condition (Parameter Match or Not and the comparison value) and specify whether or not the value of the parameter containing the source will be captured (pencil icon).
Select the capture mode of the parameter containing the source (the whole value, or parts of it), then confirm the channel identification condition by clicking ADD.
Save the source-capturing settings and save the Channel configuration (Click “SAVE”).
Now that you have defined the retargeting channel, you can define firing rules for your retargeting tags Criteo and MyThings.
Click the edition tab and go to the Rules step. Once there, click “Deduplication” on the menu to the left (1).
In the new window, click “ADD DEDUPLICATION RULE” to open the rule configuration window.
When the window opens, select the Criteo OneTag Conversion tag from the dropdown menu (3).
Select “Last” among the options relating to the touch point’s position in the customer journey. This will fire the tag if it is the last paid solution in the customer journey, now you need to define if it is the last paid click, impression or both (4).
Let’s say you want to launch the Criteo OneTag Conversion tag only if it is the last paid click. Select “click” from the options (5).
Select whether it corresponds or not to your channel (6).
Select “RETARGETING” from the dropdown menu. All channels that you have defined will become available in this menu (7).
Select “EQUALS” for the source. When you configured the channel you indicated that the source of traffic (partner) would be captured by “taking all” the value of the “utm_source” URL parameter. Since your tracking URL for Criteo looks like this:
www.mysite.com?utm_medium=RETARGETING&utm_source=Criteo
You will need to select “EQUALS”.
Enter the value of the parameter that will be compared to what was set in the interface (“Criteo”) (9)
Click “ADD” to add the rule (10).
Repeat these steps for your MyThings Conversion tag.
When both your rules are created, they will appear in the rule summary.
If your wish to edit any of them, click the pencil icon to the right on the line of each rule. If you wish to delete it, click the trash can.
The rules summary interface has a Deduplication column. A check mark will indicate that your two tags are deduplicated.
The “Report by Conversion” report provides information pertaining to the tags that were called for every conversion on your site, according to the rules you defined in the rules section, more specifically deduplication rules. Data is collected by the “Commanders Act – Reporting Deduplication v1.2” tag.
Access
To access the report, please click the “Deduplication” entry from the main menu.
Then click the “Report by Conversion” tab (1).
Interface Description
Calendar
The calendar allows you to select a period of time to display deduplicated tag calls. There are eight predefined periods (Yesterday, Last Week, Last 30 days, Last Month, Last Quarter, Month-to-Date, Quarter-to-Date, Year-To-Date) and you can customize the period you wish to see tag calls for. You also have the possibility to compare periods to have a clearer vision of the way tags’ performance has evolved from one period to another.
“Report by Conversion” Table
This table displays the number of tag calls for every conversion:
“Conversion ID”column: displays your conversions’ IDs.
“Date”column: displays a conversions’ time and date.
“Revenue”column: displays the conversions’ amounts (including or excluding taxes, depending on the amount you chose to collect with the “TagCommander – Reporting Deduplication v1.2” tag).
“Tags” column: lists all tags that were called per conversion. Rules affecting tags are all considered, especially deduplication rules.
“Detail”column: it displays a popin with the detailed customer journey per conversion. The popin is made of four columns.
Position: displays, in descending order, the position of every touch point within the customer journey associated to the conversion.
Type: displays the touchpoint’s type (click or impression).
Channel/Source: displays the channel (lever) and source (solution) corresponding to every touch point.
Date: displays every touch point’s time and date.
The search engine above the table allows you to easily and quickly find a conversion simply by typing its ID.
The “Advanced Filtering” button lets you filter results by tag to find a conversion faster.
Exporting the “Report by Conversion” table
The “export” icon on top of the table allows you to export the “Report by Conversion” report:
If you click “CSV” you will receive the CSV report directly in your mailbox.
If you click “Email”, you will be able to enter the email addresses of people you wish to send the CSV report to.
The “Report by Tag” report allows you to see, over a specific period of time, the number and evolution of calls to the tags that were placed on your confirmation page(s), more specifically those of deduplicated tags. Data is collected by the “Commanders Act – Reporting Deduplication v1.2” tag.
Access
To access the report, please click the “Deduplication” entry fromthe main menu.
Then click the “Report by Tag” tab (1).
Interface Description
Calendar
The calendar allows you to select a period of time to display deduplicated tag calls. There are eight predefined periods (Yesterday, Last Week, Last 30 days, Last Month, Last Quarter, Month-to-Date, Quarter-to-Date, Year-To-Date) and you can customize the period you wish to see tag calls for. You also have the possibility to compare periods to have a clearer vision of the way tags’ performance has evolved from one period to another.
“Tag calls’ evolution” graph
The “Tag calls’ evolution” graph displays calls to the tags checked in the “Tag Calls Detailed” table. If you wish to display data for other tags, simply check the corresponding box and click the table’s refresh icon. A curve with a specific color is associated to every tag. When you click the tag’s name in the graph’s legend, the curve corresponding to the tag whose name you clicked will disappear or reappear.
The arrow in the graph’s upper right-hand corner allows you to unfold or collapse the latter.
The button in the graph’s bottom right-hand corner lets you see calls to deduplicated tags on a daily or weekly basis.
“Tag Calls Detailed” table
Tags listed in the “Tag Calls Detailed” table are tags placed on pages where the “Commanders Act – Reporting Deduplication v1.2” tag was included too.
The table displays the number of calls that were issued:
The “Conversions” column indicates the number of times a tag was called over a given period of time. This number considers deduplication and other rules placed on your tags.
The “Conversion Share” column displays the percentage of conversions a given tag participated in, according to the exact same rules as those considered in the “Conversions”
The “Detail” column allows you to see the IDs of conversions a tag was called for, as well as the corresponding time, date and amount (including or excluding taxes, depending on the amount you chose to collect with the “TagCommander – Reporting Deduplication v1.2” tag.
