Postback calls are a way for advertisers to send conversion information back to Outbrain DSP from their own servers or third-party tracking solutions like Adjust, Kochava, MAT, Tune, Voluum, and others. Information passed on postback calls enables Outbrain DSP to optimize campaigns. This article will guide you through the basics of postback calls and how to set them up.
Introduction
Understanding which click led to a conversion is crucial to successful optimization. Outbrain DSP connects conversions to clicks via the postback ID parameter that must be passed on each postback call. The postback ID is passed to the advertiser (or third-party) server via {postbackid} macro with every click generated by DSP.
This is what happens in a typical ad conversion scenario:
The user clicks on the link in the ad served by Outbrain DSP.
The user’s browser reaches the DSP server, which redirects the browser to the advertised page. The {postbackid} macro on the link URL is replaced with a unique value that identifies the click in the DSP system.
When the user’s browser reaches the advertised page, the page or third-party system stores the postback ID that was passed in the URL for further reference.
Once the user converts, the advertiser page or third-party tracking system issues a postback call to the Outbrain DSP server with the corresponding postback ID value.
Setup Guide
To set up the callback in your system, follow these steps:
Step 1: Ensure every ad URL contains {postbackid} macro (more information on macros can be found here). This allows the postback ID value to be passed to your system. This value is stored for every visit to your site that was generated by advertising campaigns.
Step 2: Set up a conversion definition (you can find instructions here). Your conversion definition URL is the postback URL that you need to call from your server on every conversion. You can see the postback URL in the image below.
Step 3: For every conversion, send an HTTP GET request to the postback URL with a postback ID value appended to the postback ID GET parameter.