Only available in Google Ad Manager 360
Audience Solutions is a Google Ad Manager 360 feature which might not be turned on for your network.
This article has been updated in alignment with upcoming changes to Audience Solutions.
To adhere to the EU user consent policy and continue creating audience segments for users in the European Economic Area (EEA) based on audience pixels, publishers must make updates to pass the required consent signals to Ad Manager by March 2024.
Build first-party audience segments without serving any ads by adding a 1x1 transparent Audience pixel tag to your site or mobile app. You can use the pixel tag at no extra cost, without being charged for serving an Ad Manager impression. For example, you could use pixel tags to track who goes to your checkout page but not to your purchase confirmation page.
How to use Audience pixels
- Collect users on a page of your site or app section where you have no ad tags.
- Collect users from a third-party site or app (for example, a landing page of your advertiser).
- Collect users who view a particular creative (by embedding the pixel in the creative code).
We recommend populating a segment either using your own inventory or with a pixel, but not both. If you do need to collect users according to your inventory and an Audience pixel, you can create a third segment that includes the other two segments in the Behavior targeting.
Consent
To adhere to the EU user consent policy and continue creating audience segments, Google requires that publishers obtain consent for user identifiers added to audience segments using pixel tags. The tags shown below will either implicitly or explicitly contain parameters specified in the IAB TCF framework. If user consent is not obtained from users originating in the EEA, any fired pixel tags will not add the user to the appropriate audience segments.
For web display sites using a pixel, the site must be integrated with a consent management platform. For apps, your app must be integrated with a consent management platform and you must manually create the pixel tag using IAB TCF well-known locations.
Collecting users on web and mobile apps
You can use tags to build first-party segments on web or apps.
Web
Example tag for web:
ad-manager-network_code}/DFPAudiencePixel;dc_seg={segment_ID}"></script>- TCF parameters are not required in the tag for web because it relies on JavaScript to retrieve the consent string.
- Cookies will automatically be added to the segments that match the ad unit and key-values specified in this pixel tag.
- Publisher provided identifiers (PPIDs) can be used in place of cookies. Learn more about PPIDs
Apps
Example tag for apps:
ad-manager-network_code}/DFPAudiencePixel;ord=%%CACHEBUSTER%%;dc_seg={segment_ID}?gdpr=<0,1>&gdpr_consent=<tc string>&tfua=<0,1>&tfcd=<0,1>- Cookies will automatically be added to the segments that match the ad unit and key-values specified in this pixel tag.
- Pass additional parameters to pull in the mobile advertising IDs (AdID or IDFA). Learn how to pass mobile ad IDs.
- Publisher provided identifiers (PPIDs) can be used in place of cookies or mobile advertising IDs. Learn more about PPIDs.
Collect members who have seen a specific ad
You can include a customized Audience pixel tag in a custom or third-party creative code snippet to add users who see that creative to an Audience segment.
You can also use audience pixel tags in creative impression tracking URLs along with supported macros.
Example:
https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/activity;dc_iu=/{ad-manager-network-code}/DFPAudiencePixel;ord=%%CACHEBUSTER%%;dc_seg={segment_ID}?gdpr=${GDPR}&gdpr_consent=${GDPR_CONSENT_755}&tfua=%%TFUA%%&tfcd=%%TFCD%%
Create an Audience pixel segment and generate pixel tags
To use audience pixel tags, create a first-party segment in Ad Manager. Since each Audience pixel is tracking a specific user activity, you should create a separate segment for each Audience pixel tag so you can report on each activity separately.
- Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
- Click Inventory, then Audience.
- Click New audience segment.
- Enter a "Name" and "Description" for the segment.
- By default, Active is the segment's status.
- (Optional, but recommended) Assign "Categories" to the segment.
- Select the Pixel-based option.
Selecting this option generates a new top-level ad unit named "DFPAudiencePixel" (if this ad unit does not already exist) and populates the "Behavior" section with the required inventory and key-value targeting. Good practice suggests you not remove these default targeting values—you can, however, add additional targeting. The segment ID value is assigned when you save the segment.
If your network uses Teams, your Team must be associated with the "DFPAudiencePixel" ad unit before the Audience pixel segment can be created targeting this ad unit. - Define the membership criteria.
To ensure that users are added to the segment after viewing a page or app section, we recommend populating the segment based on a single page view or app activity. To achieve this, the membership criteria values will be automatically populated as shown below. These values can be changed, depending on your needs.
Page views: 1
Recency: 1 day (not relevant, since only a single page view is required for membership)
Membership expiration: 30 days (the default; however, you may choose other values)
- Click Save.
- Search for the name of the audience segment and click on it.
- Click Generate tag.
- (Optional) Select the Insert PPID or Mobile ID checkbox to add the desired identifier type.
The "Insert PPID or Mobile ID" checkbox is currently in beta and may not be enabled for your network. Watch the release notes for when this feature becomes generally available.
- Click Copy tag and share the generated code snippet with your developers to implement in your content.
Related topics
Add a publisher provided identifier (PPID)If you have opted to use a publisher provided identifier (PPID) for audience segmentation in place of a Google Marketing Platform cookie or mobile advertising ID, select the Insert PPID checkbox when generating a tag (Inventory, then Audience, then Audience segments, and then Generate tag).
The "Insert PPID" checkbox is currently in beta and may not be enabled for your network. Watch the release notes for when this feature becomes generally available.
+, =, /, or $, you need to URL-encode the value before inserting it into a URL placeholder.
Example tag for web:
ad-manager-network_code}/DFPAudiencePixel;dc_seg={segment_ID};ppid={your_ID}"></script>
Example tag for apps:
ad-manager-network_code}/DFPAudiencePixel;ord=%%CACHEBUSTER%%;dc_seg={segment_ID};ppid={your_ID}?gdpr=<0,1>&gdpr_consent=<tc string>&tfua=<0,1>&tfcd=<0,1>Audience pixel tags take 48 hours to generate a full inventory forecast. There is no cookie or mobile advertising ID pool size requirement to be able to generate a forecast. To report on forecasting data as soon as a campaign starts, we recommend putting the Audience pixels on your site or app at least 48 hours before the campaign launches and be sure to create an audience segment that targets the ad unit called in the pixel tag.
Tip: To report on forecasting data as soon as a campaign starts, put the Audience pixels on your site or app at least 28 days before the campaign launches and be sure to create an audience segment that targets the ad unit called in the pixel tag.
If you are putting Audience pixels onto a third-party website, it’s expected that forecasting results will initially be incomplete and inaccurate since the segment memberships are being collected on a website that’s outside of your network. However, as the deployment time of the third-party pixel tag and the audience segment approaches 30 days and the amount of available data increases, these features will approach their normal levels of accuracy. Accordingly, a best practice is to deploy any third-party pixel tags and associated audience segments as soon as possible.
