This article will cover the following:
- Defining what Global Pixels are and the 4 types of pixels
- Global Advertiser Pixel
- How to enable global pixels
- The Global System Pixel
- The Global Offer Pixel
- The Global Affiliate Pixel
Section 1: What is a Global Pixel?
CAKE's global pixels refer to third party pixels that are fired on a broader level than an individual campaign. CAKE has 4 types of Global Pixels. The CAKE Global Conversion Pixel comes standard with every Enterprise CAKE system. The other 3 types can be enabled in your Setup>Settings> Tracking Settings. (Global Pixels are not available in CAKE Basic)
- Global Advertiser (conversion) pixel: this pixel is designed as a more generic conversion pixel that can be used in place of an offer-specific pixel in the event your advertiser wants 1 pixel to apply on all offers.
- Global System pixel: this is a system-wide pixel designed as a secondary pixel you might want to fire for conversions on all campaigns for any affiliate and any offer.
- Global Offer pixel: this pixel will fire in addition to any campaign pixels for a designated offer
- Global Affiliate pixel: this pixel is designed as a generic affiliate pixel to be used in place of individual campaign-specific pixels.
Section 2: Global Advertiser Pixel
The Global Advertiser Pixel is the one global pixel that’s pre-built into the system.
You can find it on the Advertiser Card > 'Generate Global Advertiser Pixel' button
- Tip: Take any Offer pixel, replace o=OFFER_ID with a=ADVERTISER_ID
What is it used for?
- The global advertiser pixel is a more generic version of the standard offer pixel.
- It’s designed to be used as 1 pixel that works to track any offer for the Advertiser and in order to be able to do that, the pixel references the advertiser ID instead of the offer ID – which leads us right into the warning (see below)
- Notes/Comments/Warnings
- Because the Advertiser Pixel doesn’t tell us exactly which offer converted, CAKE makes an educated guess and applies the conversion to the offer with the most recent click. That MIGHT be correct, but chances are it isn’t and there are no guarantees. We always recommend a dynamic offer pixel. The global advertiser pixel is a more generic version of the standard offer pixel. It's designed to be used as one pixel that works to track any offer for the advertiser and for this reason, the conversion pixel references the advertiser ID instead of the offer ID.
So the quick tip on generating the global advertiser pixel is to take any offer conversion pixel and replace o=OFFER_ID with a=ADVERTISER_ID.
But you can also generate a global advertiser pixel from the: Advertiser card > Generate Global Advertiser pixel button.
Section 3: How does a Global Advertiser Pixel attribute the conversion to the correct offer?
Because the global advertiser pixel doesn’t tell us exactly which offer converted, CAKE makes an educated guess and applies the conversion to the offer with the most recent click. While this may be the correct offer, there's an equally good chance that it isn’t and in order to ensure that the correct offer is credited with the conversion, we recommend using a dynamic offer pixel instead.
In order to implement a dynamic offer pixel, your advertiser will need to be able to receive an offer ID on the click (using #oid# in the offer link URL) and parse that value and pass it back in the conversion pixel.
Section 4: Enabling Global Pixels
You will find the checkbox to enable global pixels under Settings > Tracking Settings > Global Pixels & Postbacks.
Checking this checkbox will open 5 additional fields related to your system global pixel.
Section 5: Global System Pixel
These 5 fields are related to one specific type of global pixel - the global system pixel.
This pixel is intended for a third party pixel - generally not for any specific advertiser, offer or affiliate - that you want to fire for every conversion for every offer. Some examples of pixels used in this fashion include Forensiq (formerly CPA Detective), Fraudlogix or for a system like Google Analytics if your offers are all your own.
Please note that you must enable 'Fire Global Pixel By Default' in order for this specific pixel to work. You can then disable it where you do not want it to fire.
Section 6: Global Offer Pixel
If you don't want a pixel to fire for every conversion and instead you have a pixel that you want to fire sometimes conditionally, you might use a global offer pixel instead. So if adding the pixel where needed is easier than disabling the global (system) pixel where not needed, use the global offer pixel. Additionally, if you are a client with a mix of proprietary offers and third party offers, you may want to leverage a global offer pixel so that you can control which offers it's fired for.
A global offer pixel is located on the Offer card > Attribution tab.
This pixel type has an additional setting not seen on global affiliate pixels, to 'Fire Pixel On Non Paid Conversions' which means that CAKE will either fire the pixel for every conversion paid or unpaid that occurs on this offer or only for paid conversions.
Section 7: Global Affiliate Pixel
Last but not least, this is probably the most commonly used global pixel type as it's your affiliate equivalent of your global advertiser pixel. It's one pixel that your affiliate wants used for every campaign they run with you, essentially so that they don't have to remember to place a pixel every time they begin running a new campaign with you.
A global affiliate pixel is located on the affiliate card > pixels tab.
CAKE can fire a global affiliate HTML pixel and a campaign HTML pixel. If a campaign pixel exists, CAKE will fire the campaign pixel first and the global affiliate pixel second.
CAKE will not fire a campaign postback and a global affiliate postback. If both are placed, CAKE will only fire the campaign postback.
Please note that unlike regular campaign pixels, global affiliate pixels can only be placed by an admin.
Summary
