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Creating Data Files for EMEA Countries

When creating and uploading data files for EMEA countries (countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, such as the United Kingdom, France, or Germany), be sure to strictly follow all of the requirements listed below (in addition to the various guidelines in "Uploading Data").

Warning

Failure to follow these requirements exactly will result in your file being rejected.

General Requirements for EMEA Data Files

When creating EMEA data files, keep the following general requirements in mind:

  • Files cannot be processed without headers. Include a header row in the first line of every file that matches the contents of the file.

  • Only files containing offline identifiers are allowed.

  • File headers must be consistent and in the same order for subsequent uploads to a given workflow (new and existing segments can be included, but all identifier fields must remain the same).

  • If you work with LiveRamp across multiple geographies, split out your files by country (e.g., one file with French customer data, one file with UK customer data, etc.) (see "File Naming Requirements for EMEA Data Files" for more information).

  • Files must be rectangular (have the same number of columns for every row).

  • If any values contain the file’s delimiter character (for example, a comma in a .csv file), make sure that your values are contained within quotation marks.

  • Keep the uncompressed size of each file to 50 GB or smaller. These are our recommended limits but if you send larger files we cannot guarantee that the processing time will meet our 48 hour SLA.

Contact your Product Operations Manager if you will have difficulty meeting any of these requirements.

Other EMEA Data File Requirements

When creating data files for EMEA countries, keep these additional requirements in mind.

Item

Difference(s) from U.S. Data File Requirements

Key-value files

Key-value files not allowed (column-based files only)

File compression

Only gzip (.gz) compression allowed

File limits

  • Maximum rows per file: 100,000,000 for UK data files and 30,000,000 for French and German data files

  • Maximum characters per line or row: 1,000

Audience limits

Maximum average of 1 file upload per day for PII-based UK data and 1 file per week for PII-based French or German data

Identifier Data for EMEA Data Files

Including as many identifiers on the user as possible yields the best results. All identifiers are optional, but make sure to follow these formatting guidelines, including using the exact header names listed below.

The bolded headers listed below are required, with the exact heading, for every file of PII identifiers you upload to LiveRamp. Additional headers are shown with their recommended header labels.

Note

  • Match the case: The headers given are case sensitive. Failure to match the case will cause the file to fail.

  • Want a template? Click here to download a .csv file with these headers and several rows of sample data that you can use as a template.

  • Don't have all identifier types? If you cannot supply a given identifier (such as name and postal, email, or phone), include the respective header(s) anyway and simply leave the column(s) blank. However, if including name and postal, make sure to include all required name and postal fields.

Field

Guidelines

CUSTOMERID

  • The unique identifier (customer ID) should be persistent across all uploads - the unique identifier will allow us to de-duplicate rows in the uploaded file (in case a file has multiple rows related to the same person).

FIRSTNAME

LASTNAME

  • No special formatting required

ADDRESS1

ADDRESS2

ADDRESS3

ADDRESS4

  • A single address for a consumer can be split across up to four address fields, or included in one field. If the address is split over more than four fields, the additional values will be dropped.

  • If you have more than one address for a consumer (such as a work address and a home address), place each address on a separate row (but segment data values do not need to be duplicated/included on the additional rows). Make sure that all rows for a particular consumer have the same CUSTOMERID so the rows can be tied together.

TOWN

COUNTY

POSTCODE

  • No special formatting required

EMAIL1

EMAIL2

EMAIL3

  • Include up to 3 plaintext emails. Additional emails will be disregarded.

MD5EMAIL1

MD5EMAIL2

MD5EMAIL3

SHA1EMAIL1

SHA1EMAIL2

SHA1EMAIL3

SHA256EMAIL1

SHA256EMAIL2

SHA256EMAIL3

  • Include up to 3 of each email type. Additional email hashes will be disregarded.

  • Before hashing apply the following normalization rules:

    • Lowercase all characters

    • Remove any extra spaces before, after, or within the email address

    • Remove periods before "@" sign

    • Remove accents

MOBILE1

MOBILE2

LANDLINE1

  • You can include up to two plaintext mobile numbers and one plaintext landline number for each record.

  • Phone numbers should not include the country code.

  • Remove any parentheses, but you can leave any hyphens or spaces.

  • No hashed phone numbers allowed

Segmentation Options for EU Data Files

We are flexible with how you choose to upload your user segments. You may include:

Segmentation

Guidelines

One Segment per File

All the records in the file are members of one particular segment (also known as a "file-wide field"). The file should only contain records with identifiers. We will group all records from the file into one segment with the name of the file as the segment name.

Binary Fields

You can include fields with only two values (for example, a field with values of only "0" or "1", or a field with values of only "true" or "false"), which is used to indicate whether a particular consumer is a member of a certain segment. Binary fields create two segments: one for the consumers who are members and one for the consumers who are not.

Enumerated Fields

A field containing 100 or fewer distinct values is considered an "enumerated" field and the values for that field will be viewable as segments (enumerated) in Connect.

Caution

  • A given field in an EMEA data file can have a maximum of 100 distinct values. If a field has more than 100 distinct values, this will be a raw field and the values for that field will not be viewable in Connect. If you require an exception, contact your Product Operations Manager.

  • Field values accumulate with each import. If the first import for a given field has 75 distinct values, we will enumerate those values. But then if a second import has that same field with 85 new distinct values (now a total of 160 distinct values), that field will be passed as raw in the second import rather than enumerated. This would then cause there to be two fields with the same name in Connect, but only one will show the field values (the enumerated field from the first import) and the duplicate field (the raw field from the second import) will not show any enumerated values to activate on.

If including a date segment, use the preferred date formats (i.e., YYYYMM or YYYYMMDD if necessary). Do not include additional characters, such as “/“.

Supported File Formats for EMEA Data Files

The following file types are supported:

  • Comma delimited (.csv files)

  • Tab delimited (.tsv files)

  • Pipe delimited (|) (.psv files)

Caution

Excel files (.xls or .xlsx) and .txt files not allowed. Export your Excel spreadsheets and text files to a supported format before sending to LiveRamp.

File Naming Requirements for EMEA Data Files

File names for EMEA data files must be in the following format:

LiveRamp_<Country Code>_<Your_Company_Name>_<Description>_<MMDDYYYY>.<FileType>

Example file name: LiveRamp_UK_JoesAutoShop_NewCustomerTargeting_02172016.csv

Do not include spaces or special characters in the file name.

Files should be split out by country, where Country Code must be one of:

  • UK (for files containing data from the United Kingdom)

  • FR (for files containing data from France)

  • DE (for files containing data from Germany)

Warning

Be sure to include the country code! Files with names that do not include the country code will be rejected.

Note

Contact your LiveRamp representative if you are not able to meet these file naming requirements.

Getting EMEA Data into LiveRamp

After you've finalized your file for uploading, there are several methods you can use to get your EMEA data into LiveRamp:

In this section:

A field name entry for a particular column of data in a column-based file.

Usually refers to PII identifiers such as name and postal, email address, and hashed email address. These identifiers are also referred to as "known identifiers."

A type of data file where each row contains key/value pairs in the form of "key=value" (for example, "gender=female").

A type of file where every row has the same number of fields and the field names are contained in a header row, as opposed to a key/value file.

Data that are used to identify something, such as a person, mobile device, computer browser, or household.

A value or set of values that are distinct from all other values for a given field in a data file.