Lotame is a popular data management and enrichment platform, used mainly for digital advertising. Its unique data solutions allow you to find new customers, improve engagement with them, and grow your revenue.
RudderStack supports syncing Lotame's BCP Pixel and DSP Pixel through our page
and identify
call.
- BCP:The BCP, or Behavior Collection Point, is a JavaScript snippet that is placed on a web page. It is responsible for capturing the relevant user activity.
- DSP: The DSP, or Demand-Side Platform, allows digital advertising inventory buyers to manage their ad exchange as well as data exchange accounts through a single interface.
Getting started
RudderStack supports sending event data to Lotame via the following connection modes:
Connection Mode | Web | Mobile | Server |
---|---|---|---|
Device mode | Supported | Supported | - |
Cloud mode | - | - | - |
Once you have confirmed that the platform supports sending events to Lotame, perform the steps below:
- From your RudderStack dashboard, select Lotame as a destination.
- Give a name to the destination and select the source to connect to this destination. Then, click Next. You should see the following screen:
You can provide multiple BCP and DSP URL templates in the settings dashboard by clicking on the ADD MORE option as seen above. Once specified, RudderStack includes these sources of image pixels in the web app. To provide the URLs, please use the below template:
https://bcp.crwdcntrl.net/1/c={{clientId}}/b={{behavioralId}}
RudderStack supports simple Handlebar expressions for the URLs. It uses the values provided by you in the Map all the fields section to replace the expressions, and the final URL as src
.
Adding Lotame to your mobile project
- Add the following
repository
to yourapp/build.gradle
file.repositories {mavenCentral()} - Then, add the following
dependencies
in the same file:implementation 'com.rudderstack.android.sdk:core:1.+'implementation 'com.rudderstack.android.integration:lotame:1.+' - Finally, change the initialization of your
RudderClient
in yourApplication
class, as shown in the snippet below:val rudderClient = RudderClient.getInstance(this,WRITE_KEY,RudderConfig.Builder().withDataPlaneUrl(DATA_PLANE_URL).withFactory(LotameIntegrationFactory.FACTORY).build()) If your Lotame URLs follow the HTTP protocol, you need to allow
ClearTextTraffic
for your app. To do so, addandroid:usesCleartextTraffic="true"
in the<application>
tag of your app'sAndroid Manifest
file. After adding this, the file should look like the following:<application...android:usesCleartextTraffic="true"...><activity>...</activity></application>
- Open the
Podfile
of your project and add the following linepod 'Rudder-Lotame'followed by
$ pod install - Finally change the SDK initialization with the followingRSConfigBuilder *builder = [[RSConfigBuilder alloc] init];[builder withDataPlaneUrl:DATA_PLANE_URL];[builder withFactory:[RudderLotameFactory instance]];[builder withLoglevel:RSLogLevelDebug];[RSClient getInstance:WRITE_KEY config:[builder build]];
Identify
For each identify
call, RudderStack will sync the DSP Pixels provided by you in the DSP URL Settings, in the destination configuration settings. As DSP Pixels need to be synced for every user only once in 7 days, RudderStack will sync the DSP Pixels in every identify
call and if the same user remains active after 7 days, it syncs the same DSP Pixels in subsequent page
calls once in every 7 days.
A sample identify
call is as shown in the code snippet below:
rudderanalytics.identify("12345", { name: "my-name", email: "name@domain.com", country: "India",})
The above identify call will sync the DSP Pixel, modify the template to place the userId
in the source URL where required, and use it as {{userId}}
in the template, as shown:
http://ab.cdef.com/getapi?http://sync.crwdcntrl.net/map/c={{clientId}}/rand={{random}}/tpid={{userId}}/tp={{clientIdSpace}}
RudderStack will replace the {{userId}}
expression with the userId
provided in the identify
call. We will also replace {{random}}
with a random value. The rest of the expression's values ({{clientId}}
, {{clientIdSpace}}
) are to be provided in the mapping fields section, i.e. Map all the fields section in the Destination Settings, as covered in the Getting Started section.
Important Notes
- If you mention
userId
in the URL template in the Destination Settings, RudderStack replaces it the with the ID from theidentify
call. - RudderStack also replaces the value of the
{{random}}
expression with a random integer.
Page
For each page
call, RudderStack will load the BCP Pixels. A page
call with a payload having userId
triggers the syncing of DSP Pixels once in every 7 days too. So, a page
call serves the purpose of loading BCP Pixels and syncing DSP Pixels.
A sample page
call is as shown:
rudderanalytics.page()
Screen
For each screen
call, RudderStack will send GET
requests for BCP Pixels. A screen
call with a payload having userId
triggers the syncing of DSP Pixels once in every 7 days too. So, ascreen
call serves the purpose of sending requests for BCP Pixels and syncing DSP Pixels.
A sample screen
call is as shown:
[[RSClient sharedInstance] screen];
Sync Pixel Callback
To get a track of every sync Pixel call (once in every 7 days), you may register a function that will be executed when the syncing of DSP Pixels takes place from the SDK.
ready
A PI to register the callback. We execute the function provided in LOTAME_SYNCH_CALLBACK
window object after calling the sync pixels.- An example of the above is as shown:rudderanalytics.ready(() => {window.LOTAME_SYNCH_CALLBACK = () => {rudderanalytics.track("synch lotame",{},{integrations: { All: false, S3: true },})}})
- The above callback triggers a call to RudderStack SDK's `track`API which dumps the
track
call payload to a configured S3 destination in your RudderStack dashboard, each time the syncing of the DSP Pixels happens.
- Use the
onIntegrationReady
method to register theonSync
callback (which will be called every time the DSP URLs are synced). You'll get notified for all the sync pixels through this callback. You'll receive the type of the pixel and the final compiled URL through the callback.rudderClient!!.onIntegrationReady("Lotame Mobile") {(it as LotameIntegration).registerCallback { urlType, url ->// urlType => "bcp", "dsp"// url => complete url with all values replacedprintln("LotameSync: $urlType : $url")}}
- Register your callback to get notified when the pixel has been synced
[LotameIntegration registerCallback:^{ // your custom code}];
FAQ
How and when does the syncing of DSP Pixels take place?
Syncing of DSP Pixels happens in each identify
call, and once in 7 days for page
calls having userId
in payload. RudderStack stores the sync timestamp in storage. So, in every page
call for web and in every screen
call for mobile platform, RudderStack checks for the identified user (i.e. payload having userId
) and the last syncing timestamp. If it is before 7 days or more, RudderStack automatically triggers the syncing.
How do we validate the Pixels on Mobile devices?
You can validate the Pixels in two ways on Mobile devices.
- You can register a Sync Callback with
rudderClient
and you'll get the type of the pixel which is getting fired along with the compiled URL with values replaced. We replace theuserId
andadvertisingId
automatically. For other values, you can use the settings on the dashboard. - You can turn on
DEBUG
log in yourrudderClient
initialization. It'll also set theDEBUG
logging in Lotame implementation. And you can check logs generated by the SDK. It'll help you to understand the steps taken by the SDK.
Contact us
For more information on the topics covered on this page, email us or start a conversation in our Slack community.