If you’re in the digital marketing and advertising space you have probably heard the word ‘AD TAG’ thrown around. (We’re guilty of it.) But what does it mean and how is it used? Here is the ‘What’, ‘How’, and ‘Why’ behind tags.
WHAT?
An ad tag is a snippet of code that needs to be inserted within the HTML code of a webpage where an ad is due to be displayed. They are used for many purposes in display advertising, including providing the creative in a programmatic ad buy, collecting information about users who are shown ads, and generating campaign reports.
These sometimes get confused with site pixels which are snippets of code that usually placed in the <head> of a page which enables third-party tracking, analysis, and reporting. Google Analytics and other analytics platforms are an obvious pixel, but remarketing, conversion tracking, affiliates, and advanced customer insight services utilize pixel as well (and, of course, Choozle enables you to use the Choozle Smart Container Tag).
WHY?
Ad tags enable marketers to streamline their digital advertising execution. The management of these is usually set by an agency that provides the third-party ad tags to the publisher or demand-side partner which give marketers the control to adjust creative and view reporting within their ad server. Ad tags are used for many purposes in display advertising:
- Publishers place ad tags on a website in order to sell ad space
- Advertiser use them to direct the browser to a particular image or creative
- Ad servers use them to move ad calls along to the next step in the decision chain
- Third-party data providers use them to collect segment information about users
These are all essentially the same in structure: they are all requests for content of a certain size and type from a certain URL. The content is either a creative or another and it may be returned immediately in one step or after multiple steps (an auction, redirects, etc.) each with its own. An ad tag may look very long and complicated if information about the ad call is included in the tag itself, or it might be very short and simple if ad call information is stored in the server to which the tag’s URL is pointed.
In this webinar, we’ll highlight what ad tags are, the types of tags, troubleshooting, and how to upload tags in the Choozle platform.
