ORD values

Floodlight tags use ord values to prevent caching, a browser feature that can have a negative effect on the accuracy of tracking and reporting.

Caching is a technology used by modern browsers in order to speed up the experience of browsing the web. It allows information such as web pages, images, and so on to be saved on a user’s computer. If the user navigates to a webpage they’ve visited before, the browser is able to access the information for that page more quickly by recalling it from a cache (temporary memory), rather than by making a new request to the site itself.

The process of a browser firing a Campaign Manager 360 placement tag is similar to loading a webpage. When the browser loads an placement tag, it makes a request to the Campaign Manager 360 servers to retrieve an ad image and landing page, which are then returned to the browser. The particular ad and creative used are determined by Campaign Manager 360 settings. When the servers send an ad image, Campaign Manager 360 records an impression; when a click occurs, Campaign Manager 360 records a click. However, with caching, the browser or proxy server stores the ad image in a cache and retrieves it from that cache, rather than from the Campaign Manager 360 servers. As a result, Campaign Manager 360 does not record a new impression.

The ord parameter should be populated with a unique, random number every time the tags are loaded. This makes the overall placement tag unique each time it’s viewed, and prevents the browser from loading your ad image and clickthrough URL from the cache.

Learn more about cache busting and see some examples

How should the ord value be populated?

If the ord or num value is not correctly populated, discrepancies can occur.

There are many ways to populate a random ord value, and exactly which method to use is up to the website administrator who implements the tag. Here are some guidelines:

• Replace the [timestamp] placeholder with a random number string (it does not generate its own random number).

• Don’t remove the question mark (?) from the placement tag; it helps defeat caching at the proxy server level.

  Mobile tags do not include a question mark.

• Ord should be the last parameter in the URL, with the exception of Floodlight tags that use unique counters. If the ord value is in the wrong position, discrepancies can occur.

• Remove any square brackets ([ and ]).

• If you have exported or been provided with a non-standard tag (such as a Floodlight tag that uses unique counters), you may see an additional parameter called num=. In that case, place the random number string after num= and set the ord parameter to ord=1;.

What types of ord values are acceptable to use?

The ord value should contain only alphanumeric characters and periods (for example, 123abc.456789). Ord values must contain a minimum of 8 characters (though we recommend using 10-15).