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The Microsoft Advertising Store Sales Program for Offline Conversions

The Microsoft Advertising Store Sales Program for Offline Conversions enables advertisers to send offline conversion data to Microsoft Advertising (formerly known as Bing Ads). Microsoft performs attribution analysis on the impact of that advertiser’s Microsoft Advertising search campaigns on offline conversions. This allows customers to understand how Microsoft campaigns drive offline conversions and to find additional data to better optimize ad spend or customer experience.

The Microsoft Advertising Store Sales Program for Offline Conversions is a Microsoft-paid program, so there is no cost for brands and advertisers.

Note

  • Microsoft must approve all program participants. Contact your LiveRamp or Microsoft rep to find out about getting approved for the Microsoft Advertising Store Sales Program for Offline Conversions.

  • The Microsoft Advertising Store Sales Program for Offline Conversions should not be confused with Microsoft’s offline conversions API, which is used to upload click ID or hashed emails-based conversions.

  • The Microsoft Advertising Store Sales Program for Offline Conversions was formerly known as "The Bing Store Sales Attribution Program".

Program Benefits

Utilizing the Microsoft Advertising Store Sales Program for Offline Conversions, advertisers can:

  • Understand shoppers’ behaviour and track how online clicks are driving offline transactions.

  • Accurately attribute offline transactions to online campaigns and their true value.

  • Fully invest in online campaigns to help drive more traffic online and offline.

Overview of Steps Involved

The following steps need to be performed to enable the attribution analysis in Microsoft Advertising Search:

  1. You work with your Microsoft Advertising account team to create conversion goals for your offline conversions in the Microsoft Advertising platform.

  2. You send offline (in-store) conversion data from the last 90 days with PII to LiveRamp.

  3. LiveRamp matches the PII to RampIDs.

  4. LiveRamp delivers matched data to Microsoft Advertising.

  5. Microsoft Advertising matches RampIDs to Microsoft Advertising cookies.

  6. Microsoft Advertising generates offline conversion reports for the advertiser’s Microsoft Advertising campaigns.

See the appropriate sections below for more information on performing these steps.

Create Conversion Goals

Before integrating with Store Sales, work with your Microsoft representative to create a store sales conversion goal for your offline conversions. Conversion goals are a way for you to categorize your transactions in a way that makes sense for your situation.

Instructions on creating conversion goals can be found here.

Format the Conversion File Data

Before sending your conversion data to LiveRamp, make sure to strictly follow the guidelines listed below:

Note

Caution

If an uploaded file does not meet these requirements, you will need to reformat the file until it is formatted correctly.

  • Headers must be included in the exact order as listed below.

  • This program uses our Measurement Enablement workflow. Make sure to follow our recommended file limits for Measurement Enablement workflow files (such as a maximum of 500,000,000 rows per file and a maximum uncompressed file size of 50 GB).

  • Your conversion data file must use one of our allowed delimiters (commas, tabs, or pipes), and be one of our allowed file types (.csv, .tsv, .psv, or .txt).

  • Include all of the required columns listed below.

  • Fields must not have leading or trailing white space.

  • Unless values are required for a field, fields can be left blank if there is no data for the given row (do not include “N/A” or “null”).

  • The file must be rectangular. That is every row must have the same number of delimiters and columns of data.

Once the file has been formatted correctly, upload the file to LiveRamp. See the “Upload the File” section below for more information.

Tip

To download an Excel file template that contains all possible columns and formatting instructions, click here.

After transferring your data into the file template, be sure to delete the row with the formatting instructions and save the file in one of our allowed file types (.csv, .tsv, .psv, or .txt) before uploading.

Note

Once you set up the file format for an existing conversions program feed, try to keep the file format (such as the column headers or the column order) the same for all subsequent files. If you change the file format for an existing feed, create a support case before uploading the new file to ensure your existing feeds are not impacted. For more information, see "Changing the Format of an Existing File".

List of All File Columns

See the table below for a list of columns and formatting instructions:

Field Name

Column Required?

Values Required?

Notes

first_name

Yes

Yes (if name and postal address (NAP) is used as an identifier)

last_name

Yes

Yes (if NAP is used as an identifier)

address_1

Yes

Yes (if NAP is used as an identifier)

address_2

Yes

No

  • Include values in this column if you have additional street address info for a given row.

city

Yes

Yes (if NAP is used as an identifier)

state

Yes

Yes (if NAP is used as an identifier)

  • Must be a two-character, capitalized abbreviation ("CA", not "California" or "Ca").

zip

Yes

Yes (if NAP is used as an identifier)

  • ZIP codes can be in 5-digit format or 9-digit format (ZIP+4).

email_1

Yes

Yes (if email address is used as an identifier)

  • Can be plaintext or one of our allowed hash types (SHA-256, MD5, or SHA-1).

  • If you have multiple emails for a consumer, send your best one in the “email_1” column.

email_2

Yes

No

  • Can be plaintext or one of our allowed hash types (SHA-256, MD5, or SHA-1).

email_3

Yes

No

  • Can be plaintext or one of our allowed hash types (SHA-256, MD5, or SHA-1).

email_4

Yes

No

  • Can be plaintext or one of our allowed hash types (SHA-256, MD5, or SHA-1).

phone_1

Yes

Yes (if phone number is used as an identifier)

  • Do not include any hyphens or parentheses.

  • Can be plaintext or SHA-1 hashed.

  • If you have multiple phone numbers for a consumer, send your best one in the “phone_1” column.

phone_2

Yes

No

  • Do not include any hyphens or parentheses.

  • Can be plaintext or SHA-1 hashed.

transaction_category

Yes

Yes

  • Optional field for tracking transactions by conversion goals.

transaction_timestamp

Yes

Yes

  • Corresponds to the date/time of transaction in UTC - (example “2017-02-07T13:25:00Z-0800" should be the time the conversion happened in UTC).

  • Standard formats:

    • yyyy-MM-dd

    • yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss'Z'-0000 (for example, 2021-06-04T10:01:00Z-0000)

transaction_amount

Yes

Yes

  • Do not include any (currency) symbols.

  • Format required: XXX.XX

  • Do not include negative amounts (such as for returns).

order_id

Yes

Yes

  • A unique ID (such as a transaction ID) that corresponds to the order that the particular item belongs to (this is often referred to as an “ordinal”). If the value is not unique, a partner may deduplicate some of these events when ingesting your conversion data.

  • To measure item-level events, the value will need to be a unique value for each item within a basket. LiveRamp recommends using the concatenated value of the order ID + product SKU. For example, if the order ID is “123” and SKU is “456”, the “order_id” value would be “123456”.

  • Do not include special characters, currency symbols, or commas.

Header Row Example

The headers shown below are all required.

first_name|last_name|address_1|address_2|city|state|zip|email_1|email_2|email_3|email_4|phone_1|phone_2| transaction_category|transaction_timestamp|transaction_amount|order_id

Conversion Data Examples

Alex|Chen|44 Main Street|#12|San Francisco|CA|94100|alex@gmail.com|ac@ymail.com|||||In-store|2014-03-31|99.99|1234567890

Julian|Riediger|55 Mission Street||San Francisco|CA|94500|julian@gmail.com||||||Phone Sales|2014-03-30|55.55|2223334444

Send Conversion Data to LiveRamp

Your conversion data files should include all of your transactions (including non-PII/cash transactions). Do not include online conversion data. Simply leave the PII columns empty for non PII/cash transactions. We will not be able to match against these transactions, but they are required to calculate accurate conversion metrics.

Caution

While Microsoft Advertising does not have a minimum transaction count requirement, conversion attribution improves when conversion counts are over 1,000 per 30 days

Conversion Data Guidelines

Each conversion data record must include at least one PII identifier (name and postal address, email, or phone) and the required conversion data:

  • Transaction category

  • Transaction timestamp

  • Transaction amount

  • Order ID

Other optional conversion data (such as product group/channel or product ID) can be included as well. See the “Format the File” section below for more information.

Do not include any other conversion data (such as quantity).

Make sure to also follow these additional guidelines:

  • Avoid sending duplicate transactions (transactions already sent to LiveRamp). If you send weekly or monthly files, only send transactions that occurred since the previous file was sent.

  • Do not include transactions that occurred more than 90 days ago. Microsoft Advertising can only match transactions to clicks that occurred in the last 90 days.

  • Do not include conversions with a conversion date in the future.

Upload the File

Upload conversion data files using LiveRamp’s SFTP server or your SFTP server.

You can also have us pull files from an AWS S3 bucket or GCS bucket. See “Getting Your Data Into LiveRamp” for more information.

Caution

Files for this program cannot be uploaded via Connect.

After uploading the first file, email your LiveRamp technical account email alias to confirm that you have uploaded conversion data.

Note

For future uploads, you do not have to email LiveRamp to confirm that you have uploaded data assuming headers have not changed or additional columns have not been added.

Once the file is uploaded, information on file processing status can be viewed in Connect.

Most customers automate this process to send files on a regular cadence. Contact LiveRamp (bingstoresales@liveramp.com) if you have any questions.

FAQs

At what cadence should I send my conversion data files?

LiveRamp can receive conversion data files for this program on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, but we highly suggest automated daily delivery as it gives LiveRamp the greatest ability to match. If you prefer not to send daily files, the next best option is weekly delivery as this enables data to be reported within the same month.

What conversion data should I include in my conversion data file?

LiveRamp can receive conversion data files for this program on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, but we highly suggest automated daily delivery as it gives LiveRamp the greatest ability to match. If you prefer not to send daily files, the next best option is weekly delivery as this enables data to be reported within the same month.

How long until I see conversion data in Microsoft Advertising?

It usually takes 3-5 days after you upload the data before it’s available.

In this section:

Personally identifiable information (such as name and postal, phone number, or email address) which, on its own or when combined with some other data, can be used to identify an individual.