Offline conversions de-duplicated when not expected

[bhavik tanna]

Good morning all,

I have a problem using the Campaign Manager API using the batch insert.  I'm uploading about 10,000 offline conversions and i get no errors during the process.  However, there are a number of rows that have the same GCLID, floodlight and conversion date but a different conversion timestamp.

These conversions are valid, but seem to be de-duplicated when we upload them due to the fact the date is the same (we are uploading yesterdays conversions) and are not making their way into SA360.

So my question is around the ordinal value.  I'm a bit confused on how it is used, i have tried to set the ordinal value to the value of the conversion timestamp so that it is unique for the above conditions but it wont be unique for true duplicates.  But this seems to just allow everything to be duplicated (on a second test run of the data set).

Ive also tried setting the ordinal value to '1' for all conversions and then adding the timestamp as a custom floodlight variable, but that seems to go back to the original problem of data being de-duplicated.

For reference here is an example of the payload in our request where the conversions are being incorrectly de-duplicated:

{

"floodlightConfigurationId": "1111111",

"floodlightActivityId": "1111111",

"gclid": "__GCLID__",

"timestampMicros": "1641928437000000",

"value": 11.1111,

"quantity": "1000",

"kind": "dfareporting#conversion",

"ordinal": "1"

}

Can anyone help point me in the right direction of how to use the ordinal value properly?

Many thanks,

Bhavik

[DCM API (DoubleClick Campaign Mgr)]

Hello Bhavik,

 

I'm Michael from DCM API Team, allow me to answer your query.

 

Ordinal values control how duplicate conversions are processed. If multiple conversions are inserted with the same Floodlight values, user identifier, and conversion date, the ordinal is used to determine whether:

• The conversions are deduplicated and only one survives. This happens if all conversions have the same ordinal value.
• The conversions are processed individually and all survive. This happens if all conversions have a different ordinal value.

The values themselves don't need to be meaningful. In general, using a fixed value (such as 1) for all conversions will enable deduplication. Using a random or unique value for each conversion will disable it.

 

Let us know should you have any other concern.

Regards,

Michael Angelo Legaspi DCM API Team

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[bhavik tanna]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the reply, so i did see that in the docs, but as i mentioned it looks like the conversion date is being used as the check for duplicates and not the timestamp, and we have valid conversions where a person has used the same session to make multiple purchases.

So are you suggesting that using the conversion timestamp as the ordinal value, should be enough to de-duplicate?  Would that mean that the same GCLID can be used for multiple conversions to the same floodlight on the same day, but not be seen as a duplicate as the timestamp is different in the as the ordinal value?

Many thanks,

Bhavik

[DCM API (DoubleClick Campaign Mgr)]

Hi Bhavik,

Yes, the ordinal value should be enough for de-duplication of conversion.

Regards,

Teejay Wennie Pimentel DCM API Team

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[bhavik tanna]

Apologies for the late reply, it turns out it was our error, we had multiple branches writing to the same test floodlight.  Each of those branches had their own ordinal which was causing all of the duplicates.  Once everyone merged in the update and latest ordinal to their branches the duplicates stopped.

Thanks for the help,

Bhavik

[DCM API (DoubleClick Campaign Mgr)]

Hello Bhavik,

 

Thank you for updating us. Glad to help.

 

Let us know should you encounter another issue with DCM API.

Regards,

Michael Angelo Legaspi DCM API Team

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