How to avoid caching and tracking discrepancies?

The following article applies to cache management and how to overcome possible tracking discrepancies between publisher’s adserver and Brand Central tracking platform.

Brand Central provides tracking codes that will display the digital ad creative on a publisher’s website without having to send any creative files to the publishers. These invocation codes are typically inserted into the publisher’s ad server or web page in order to display the creative.

Every time a user requests the publisher’s website, the Brand Central tracking code should be requested from the Brand Central server in order to monitor and track impressions and other user interactivity.

However, due to the fact that Brand Central’s tracking script is very likely to get cached in order to minimize bandwidth on ad creative, there might be a (sometimes substancial) discrepancy in the impressions recorded on publisher’s ad server when compared to Brand Central. Please note that the discrepancy will always be in the favour of the client e.g. less impressions on Brand Central versus more on the publisher who should deliver as per Brand Central tracking results.

Requirements:

• Administrator or web master of ad server
• Basic knowledge of HTML and Javascript

Solution:

Enable anti-caching technique by adding a random parameter with time stamp and random number dynamically to Brand Central tracking code before inserting it to the publisher adserver:

<script src="http://mybrandcentral.com/ads/?id=1
&cacheBurst={timestamp}{random}” …>

Please note that publishers need to define a dynamic variable or place holder for {timestamp} and {random} which is typically availabel within all common ad servers.

A detailed description is included in the trafficking codes when downloaded from Brand Central into Excel.