Do individual website clicks and conversion events actually differ or matter to customers?

[jeffcunning]

Hi there,

We’re creating ads for customers typically leveraging the website clicks and conversions objective and through the API. We’re running into an issue though where we’re not able to properly set the conversion event. We’re properly setting the objective and otherwise creating the ad correctly — but if I go to edit the campaign in the UI after I’ve created it through our platform, there is no conversion event selected. Additionally, I’ve noticed that when using the universal website tag that it seems the event code is the same regardless of the conversion event I am trying to set.

Is this by design? Is the only difference in those events where the user places them on their own websites? Should we worry about not setting the event properly?

Any insight here would be super helpful. Thanks as always for being so helpful and responsive in this forum!

• Jeff

[goforbrent]

Hi @jeffcunning,

When you are trying to set the conversion event, is the conversion event already created and tracking (IE firing on the clients site)? That information will help me try to replicate the issue on my end. The universal website tag does have a few different tag types, but in most cases clients only need the generic PageView event type which is the same code you are seeing. With UWT you can do URL matching on the Twitter end to track specific actions or events. The conversion event type chosen in the twitter UI is mostly to better structure reporting such as attributed sign ups, downloads, site visits, or purchases. The same UWT tag code could be used across an entire site, but the URL rules on each event is what makes the event tracking unique.

Hope this helps a little more.

[jeffcunning]

Aha - thanks very much for the info. Makes perfect sense on using the URL rules to match with actual events.

As for trying to set the conversion event, yes the conversion event is already created and tracking. It appears to be setup properly when I’m in the Twitter Ads UI (i.e., if I try to create a Website Clicks campaign, I can choose any of these events and they have a green “Tracking” status). It’s our own website that we’re using as a test bed (www.thenewnewthing.com) and I believe we have the UWT properly embedded in that website code.

I just tested again just now and had the same results … we attempted to set the key conversion event as Page View, but when I went to edit campaign in the Twitter Ads UI there was no key conversion event selected (and the drop-down was not clickable at this point either). Any ideas / does that help you recreate on your end?

[goforbrent]

Yes I can recreate on my end, however, can you give me all the info for one of your campaign creation requests? I want to review the conversion event and check the database values stored for your campaign creation (campaign ID). Thanks!

[goforbrent]

Hi @jeffcunning!

I tested myself by doing following and was not able to reproduce the issue:

$ twurl -X POST -H ads-api.twitter.com "/2/accounts/18ce5475gij/campaigns?funding_instrument_id=k10dn&name=demo&start_time=2017-07-25&daily_budget_amount_local_micro=14000000&entity_status=PAUSED”

$ twurl -X POST -H ads-api.twitter.com "/2/accounts/18ce5475gij/line_items?campaign_id=92afc&objective=WEBSITE_CLICKS&product_type=PROMOTED_TWEETS&placements=ALL_ON_TWITTER&bid_type=AUTO&entity_status=PAUSED&primary_web_event_tag=nzqwm"

Then verified via the Twitter ads UI that the key conversion event (primary_web_event_tag) as set properly.

Can you please put in your steps to reproduce the issue as I have laid out?

Thank you!

[Gowabash]

We don’t use twurl, but here is the relevant trace from the ruby gem

POST https://ads-api.twitter.com/1/accounts/18ce54glvsr/campaigns {:name=>“Quantifi-1106-10204 Campaign”, :funding_instrument_id=>“ntywj”, :end_time=>“2017-08-12T16:00:00Z”, :start_time=>“2017-08-08T15:06:50Z”, :paused=>true, :daily_budget_amount_local_micro=>305670000}

POST https://ads-api.twitter.com/1/accounts/18ce54glvsr/line_items {:name=>“Quantifi-1106-10204 Campaign Line Item”, :campaign_id=>“97h31”, :charge_by=>“LINK_CLICK”, :objective=>“WEBSITE_CLICKS”, :optimization=>“WEBSITE_CONVERSIONS”, :paused=>false, :primary_web_event_tag=>“nxcph”, :product_type=>“PROMOTED_TWEETS”, :placements=>“ALL_ON_TWITTER”, :bid_unit=>“LINK_CLICK”, :bid_type=>“AUTO”}

[jeffcunning]

Hi @goforbrent ! Is it possible to pick this issue back up? My colleague @Gowabash added all the info for one of our campaign creation requests, which you recommended we do to troubleshoot here.

[goforbrent]

@jeffcunning - Can you give me the ID of the key conversion event you keep trying to set that doesn’t seem to stick when you click edit on the campaign? Thanks!

[jeffcunning]

Hey @goforbrent - here’s the code for the UWT / Page View event that we’re trying to set:

!function(e,t,n,s,u,a){e.twq||(s=e.twq=function(){s.exe?s.exe.apply(s,arguments):s.queue.push(arguments);
},s.version=‘1.1’,s.queue=[],u=t.createElement(n),u.async=!0,u.src=’//static.ads-twitter.com/uwt.js’,
a=t.getElementsByTagName(n)[0],a.parentNode.insertBefore(u,a))}(window,document,‘script’);
// Insert Twitter Pixel ID and Standard Event data below
twq(‘init’,‘nwepq’);
twq(‘track’,‘PageView’);

[goforbrent]

@jeffcunning - I meant what is the ID of conversion event that you are setting as the key conversion event when setting up the campaign?

I also reviewed your account through UI to check the conversion events. These events were created using the Twitter universal website tag, and therefore need URL rules in order to track the appropriate action. See my screenshot below from the Twitter UI.

Thanks!

[jeffcunning]

@goforbrent sorry I thought the code i shared included the ID of the event … but maybe i’m looking at the wrong thing. Here’s the Website Tag ID: nwepq. The event we are setting we named “Page View” in the Twitter UI. I am not seeing another ID for the specific event. Am i looking in the wrong place?

Also - definitely aware of the URL conditions but thanks for sharing that. This example is from a test account that we use for development … so while we would need to treat it differently for a real customer to track results, I assume we should still be able to set the event programmatically through the UI, right?

[goforbrent]

nwepq

@jeffcunning - It looks like the issue is the wrong ID value is being set as the key conversion event for the campaign.

First you have to execute GET web_event_tags to retrieve values:

$ twurl -H ads-api.twitter.com "/2/accounts/18ce54glvsr/web_event_tags?" | jq

One of the values returned is your Page View conversion event created.

  {
      "name": "Page View",
      "view_through_window": 1,
      "click_window": 30,
      "embed_code": "<script src=\"//platform.twitter.com/oct.js\" type=\"text/javascript\"></script><script type=\"text/javascript\">twttr.conversion.trackPid('nwepq',  { tw_sale_amount: 0, tw_order_quantity: 0 });</script><noscript><img height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"display:none;\" alt=\"\"  src=\"https://analytics.twitter.com/i/adsct?txn_id=nwepq&amp;p_id=Twitter&amp;tw_sale_amount=0&amp;tw_order_quantity=0\" /><img height=\"1\" width=\"1\" style=\"display:none;\" alt=\"\"  src=\"//t.co/i/adsct?txn_id=nwepq&amp;p_id=Twitter&amp;tw_sale_amount=0&amp;tw_order_quantity=0\" /></noscript>",
      "id": "o00f8",
      "retargeting_enabled": false,
      "status": "TRACKING",
      "type": "SITE_VISIT",
      "website_tag_id": "nwepq",
      "deleted": false
    },

You need to use the ID o00f8 in order to set it as the key conversion event in the campaign.

Thanks!

[jeffcunning]

Aha perfect - thanks @goforbrent! I appreciate you following up and getting us to a resolution on this one even though it may have taken a little while on our end