Use pound sign or hash mark in click-through

There are several ways to use a hash mark or pound sign (#) in a click-through URL. But first, some background.

In a URL, a hash mark, number sign, or pound sign (#) points a browser to a specific spot in a page or website. It is used to separate the URI of an object from a fragment identifier.

In DoubleClick, when you use a URL with a #, it doesn't always go to the correct part of the page or website. Sometimes Internet Explorer has problems with the # in URLs when tracking clicks on them. If you use %c to track clicks on URLs that include a # sign, Internet Explorer might not display the # and the fragment identifier in the URL. 

For example, if the following is clicked:

%chttp://www.click-through-url.com/#section2

IE or Safari shows the destination as:

http://www.click-through-url.com

Depending on the site, content might not be displayed correctly because the # and fragment identifier are missing.

While the DoubleClick ad server doesn't remove the # and fragment identifier, some browsers don't pass that information to DoubleClick when you use a click tracker or %c to track clicks. As a result, the # and fragment identifier are missing.

The following are suggested workarounds for including a # in the click-through URL.

Workaround 1: Create a vanity URL that redirects to the click-through URL. For example, http://goo.gl accepts a URL and provides a short URL to be used as the click-through URL.

Workaround 2: Fully escape the string explicitly, where # = %23. This may be different from what the JavaScript encode() call does. For example:

http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eclickthroughurl%2Ecom%2F%23section2

Depending on the site, the escaped URL might not work correctly.