Manage variables for tag-based audiences

If you don't use Campaign Manager 360 to track conversions, you can add custom variables directly to Display & Video 360 that you can use to build tag-based audiences.

How custom variables work

Custom variables use the (case sensitive) keys u1, u2, and so on, and can take any values that you choose to pass to them. You can include custom variables in any of your Floodlight activities. You can create up to 100 custom variables per Floodlight group and select up to 100 in each Floodlight activity. You can also add friendly names to make these parameters easier to understand in reports.

There are lots of creative ways that you can use custom variables:

• Location: Pass the area code, the shipping or billing postal code, the region, etc.
• Travel and vacation: Pass the number of nights booked for hotels, participation in a rewards program, route or fare details for travel, etc.
• Products: Pass the SKU, product name, sales tax amount, shipping amount, etc.

There is no character limit for custom variables, but remember that the length of your variables adds to the total length of the URL in the user's browser. This is important because total URL length is limited in some browsers. For example, Internet Explorer has a maximum URL length of 2,048 characters. If your custom variable is very long, it may make the URL too long.

Manage your advertiser's custom variables

1. In Display & Video 360, navigate to your advertiser, then click Floodlight in the Resources menu.

2. In Basic details, click Custom variables, then:

   • Enter a descriptive name for the variable you're tracking.

   • Specify whether the variable you're tracking is text or numeric.

     • Text variables are used to track unique identifiers, such as product names, postal codes, locations or other types of IDs. You can use operators like is and is not to build tag-based audiences based on text variables. 

     • Numeric variables are used to track quantities of things, such as a number of items purchased or amounts of money. You can use operators like equals, does not equal, between, less than, and greater than to build tag-based audiences based on numeric variables. 

3. Click Save.