Adobe Analytics offers two alternative ways of managing the tracking setup on your website. This is responsible for connecting the Ad information on the landing page links with the Adobe tracking & data management system.
We recommend using the Launch setup, as this allows for non-engineers to configure the connection. There is an alternative, advanced option which offers the most flexibility but most likely will require some engineering resource to set up.
Default: Setting up with Launch
These instructions assume that you have Adobe Launch installed on your website. It's a tool that makes it easy for non-engineers set up and modify the data tracked and sent by Adobe Analytics.
1. Login to Adobe Experience Platform Launch
2. Open up the Web Property you are using to track your website / landing pages:
3. Go to the Data Elements section and select Add Data Element:
4. Create a new Data Element with the type Query String Parameter and fill the name of the parameter ("ad") in the text field and save it:
5. Next, navigate to Rules and select your existing page load rule or add a new one. Click Add under Actions:
6. Set Adobe Analytics as the extension and Set Variables as the action type. Under eVars, click the icon to open the Data Element dialog:
7. Choose the Data Element configured in step 4:
8. Select the eVar you're using and save your changes:
9. Go to Extensions and click Configure under Adobe Analytics:
10. Check the value selected in Production Report Suites. You'll need this in Smartly:
Advanced: Setting up manually
If you don't have Adobe Analytics enabled on your website, you need to implement some changes more manually. These instructions will make more sense to the person responsible for your Adobe Analytics integration / your IT team / a software engineer, that to the layperson.
What you basically need to do is capture the value of a URL parameter called "ad" and store that in a data layer variable called "eVarX" (replace X by a number that is not yet in use on your website). That variable is then sent to Adobe, allowing Adobe to track which Facebook ad brought the user to the page, and thus attribute conversions to those ads. Smartly.io will handle appending that "ad" URL parameter to the ads' links.
In order to do this, you will need to modify your Adobe Analytics Javascript tracking code running on your landing page. See this Adobe Analytics documentation to get started.
For setting dynamic variables, like the eVar, see this documentation page (first example in the table).
Here's an example Javascript that attaches the Facebook Ad ID into an eVar using the Adobe Analytics Javascript library:
// Helper function for getting query parameters from the current URL
function getQueryVariable(variable)
{
var query = window.location.search.substring(1);
var vars = query.split("&");
for (var i=0;i<vars.length;i++) {
var pair = vars[i].split("=");
if(pair[0] == variable){return pair[1];}
}
return(false);
}
// Get "ad" query parameter from the current URL, it should contain the Facebook Ad ID
var fb_ad_id = getQueryVariable('ad');
// Set Facebook Ad ID value into "eVar34" in Adobe Analytics, remember to change it to your own eVar number!
// See https://marketing.adobe.com/resources/help/en_US/sc/ implement/appmeasure_mjs_ pagecode.html for how to invoke Adobe Analytics so that you have access to it ("s" variable here)
s.eVar34=fb_ad_id;