The most common problem in Google Ads that seriously affects the performance of dynamic remarketing and Smart campaigns.
Due to the legislative adjustment of cookies, and the associated need to adjust and revise the measurement of web analytics on the website, we come to a large number of projects involving refactoring measurements. Data collection for Google dynamic remarketing or other marketing tools is often included in the transfer of data to Google Tag Manager, where it is then easy to check and edit what data is sent.
Audits and practice
Thanks to these projects, this year we have already carried out dozens of audits of the settings of the ecosystem feed + marketing tool + data layer.
The most common problem is that the product IDs that leave the site (often via hardcoded marketing tags hidden somewhere in the core of the system) do not match at all the product IDs that are in the feed.
A common reason is that there is a conflict between the so-called parent ID of the product (often generated directly by the e-shop with regard to the functionality of the system) and the specific stock number of the given variant (often the ID that connects the variants and the ID that you most often use from the business view).
The usual product ID solution
Modern marketing tools can work with both approaches: either you create a feed that contains the parent ID and thus group all variants under one ID, or you create a feed where each item means one sales item (often a combination of colour and size) without being merged.
Depending on which way you want to go, it is also necessary to correctly set up the sending of data directly from the website, where:
- either you send the mother’s ID (a common variant, because for example in the product list on the homepage, in the category or on the product detail you often do not know exactly which article the user selects)
or:
- variant ID, i.e. the ID that corresponds to the main feed that you use in the given system. Both IDs are then placed in the data layer so that you can simply change and test individual approaches without the intervention of the developer, or refine the sent data.
Two birds with one stone … by editing!
If you get your product IDs in order, you will also solve one unpleasant phenomenon in EEC Google Analytics 3, which we professionally call “ecommerce data disconnection”.
This problem arises again from bad work with product IDs within the data layer for EEC, when after adding the product to the cart, the product.id changes from the parent number to the variant number of the article. This is often due to developer logic, where the developer already knows a specific item and therefore sends a specific ID without knowing the potential impacts. But this will cause the entire e-commerce data to be disconnected. The data is then disguised in such a way that completely different products are bought than are viewed. At the same time, it is also a frequent reason for the aforementioned problem with marketing tools.
Parent ID
In the nomenclature of marketing tools, the parent id is referred to as item_group_id or product_group_id and is used precisely to group product variants, just as your e-shop probably does on the product detail.
We will be happy to help you
If your marketing tools in the administration warn you with messages that ecomm_prodid does not agree with your resource, or that item_id X% of products were not found in the resource, and your agency is short on these more complex implementations, contact us and we will put the above together. Our clients, when they realise how big a problem is potentially hidden behind this message, often choose our other services, during which the data layer will be revised and the latest codes of marketing tools will be reimplemented, which have changed a lot recently.
