Lotame

Send your event data from RudderStack to Lotame.

6 minute read

Lotame is a popular data management and enrichment platform, used mainly for digital advertising. Its unique data solutions allow you to find new customers, improve engagement with them, and grow your revenue.

RudderStack supports syncing Lotame’s BCP Pixel and DSP Pixel through our page and identify call.

BCP:The BCP, or Behavior Collection Point, is a JavaScript snippet that is placed on a web page. It is responsible for capturing the relevant user activity.
DSP: The DSP, or Demand-Side Platform, allows digital advertising inventory buyers to manage their ad exchange as well as data exchange accounts through a single interface.

Getting started

RudderStack supports sending event data to Lotame via the following connection modes:

Connection Mode	Web	Mobile	Server
Device mode	Supported	Supported	-
Cloud mode	-	-	-

In a web device mode integration, that is, using JavaScript SDK as a source, the Lotame native SDK is loaded from the URL you provide in the DSP URL Settings (Pixel) section in the RudderStack dashboard. Based on your website’s content security policy, you might need to allowlist this domain to load the Lotame SDK successfully.

Once you have confirmed that the platform supports sending events to Lotame, perform the steps below:

From your RudderStack dashboard, select Lotame as a destination.
Give a name to the destination and select the source to connect to this destination. Then, click Next. You should see the following screen:

Lotame Destination Settings on the RudderStack dashboard

You can provide multiple BCP and DSP URL templates in the settings dashboard by clicking on the ADD MORE option as seen above. Once specified, RudderStack includes these sources of image pixels in the web app. To provide the URLs, please use the below template:

https://bcp.crwdcntrl.net/1/c={{clientId}}/b={{behavioralId}}

RudderStack supports simple Handlebar expressions for the URLs. It uses the values provided by you in the Map all fields section to replace the expressions, and the final URL as src.

Adding Lotame to your mobile project

Please follow the steps below to add Lotame to your Android Project:

Add the following repository to your app/build.gradle file.

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

Then, add the following dependencies in the same file:

implementation 'com.rudderstack.android.sdk:core:1.+'
implementation 'com.rudderstack.android.integration:lotame:1.+'

Finally, change the initialization of your RudderClient in your Application class, as shown in the snippet below:

// initialize Rudder SDK
val rudderClient =
    RudderClient.getInstance(
        this,
        WRITE_KEY,
        RudderConfig.Builder()
            .withDataPlaneUrl(DATA_PLANE_URL)
            .withFactory(LotameIntegrationFactory.FACTORY)
            .build()
    )

If your Lotame URLs follow the HTTP protocol, you need to allow ClearTextTraffic for your app. To do so, add android:usesCleartextTraffic="true" in the <application> tag of your app’s Android Manifest file. After adding this, the file should look like the following:
<application ...="" android:usescleartexttraffic="true">
<activity>
      ...
    </activity>
</application>

Open the Podfile of your project and add the following line

pod 'Rudder-Lotame'

followed by

$ pod install

Finally change the SDK initialization with the following

RSConfigBuilder *builder = [[RSConfigBuilder alloc] init];
[builder withDataPlaneUrl:DATA_PLANE_URL];
[builder withFactory:[RudderLotameFactory instance]];
[builder withLoglevel:RSLogLevelDebug];
[RSClient getInstance:WRITE_KEY config:[builder build]];

Identify

For each identify call, RudderStack will sync the DSP Pixels provided by you in the DSP URL Settings, in the destination configuration settings. As DSP Pixels need to be synced for every user only once in 7 days, RudderStack will sync the DSP Pixels in every identify call and if the same user remains active after 7 days, it syncs the same DSP Pixels in subsequent page calls once in every 7 days.

A sample identify call is as shown in the code snippet below:

rudderanalytics.identify("12345", {
  name: "my-name",
  email: "name@domain.com",
  country: "India",
})

The above identify call will sync the DSP Pixel, modify the template to place the userId in the source URL where required, and use it as {{userId}} in the template:

http://ab.cdef.com/getapi?http://sync.crwdcntrl.net/map/c={{clientId}}/rand={{random}}/tpid={{userId}}/tp={{clientIdSpace}}

RudderStack will replace the {{userId}} expression with the userId provided in the identify call. We will also replace {{random}} with a random value. The rest of the expression’s values ({{clientId}} , {{clientIdSpace}} ) are to be provided in the mapping fields section, i.e. Map all fields section in the Destination Settings, as covered in the Getting Started section.

Important Notes

If you mention userId in the URL template in the Destination Settings, RudderStack replaces it the with the ID from the identify call.
RudderStack also replaces the value of the {{random}} expression with a random integer.

Page

For each page call, RudderStack will load the BCP Pixels. A page call with a payload having userId triggers the syncing of DSP Pixels once in every 7 days too. So, a page call serves the purpose of loading BCP Pixels and syncing DSP Pixels.

A sample page call is as shown:

rudderanalytics.page()

Screen

For each screen call, RudderStack will send GET requests for BCP Pixels. A screen call with a payload having userId triggers the syncing of DSP Pixels once in every 7 days too. So, ascreen call serves the purpose of sending requests for BCP Pixels and syncing DSP Pixels.

A sample screen call is as shown:

[[RSClient sharedInstance] screen];

Sync Pixel Callback

To get a track of every sync Pixel call (once in every 7 days), you may register a function that will be executed when the syncing of DSP Pixels takes place from the SDK.

Use the web SDK ready API to register the callback. We execute the function provided in LOTAME_SYNCH_CALLBACK window object after calling the sync pixels.

An example of the above is as shown:

rudderanalytics.ready(() => {
  window.LOTAME_SYNCH_CALLBACK = () => {
    rudderanalytics.track(
      "synch lotame",
      {},
      {
        integrations: { All: false, S3: true },
      }
    )
  }
})

The above callback triggers a call to RudderStack SDK’s track API which dumps the track call payload to a configured S3 destination in your RudderStack dashboard, each time the syncing of the DSP Pixels happens.

Use the onIntegrationReady method to register the onSync callback (which will be called every time the DSP URLs are synced). You’ll get notified for all sync pixels through this callback. You’ll receive the type of the pixel and the final compiled URL through the callback.

rudderClient!!.onIntegrationReady("Lotame Mobile") {
    (it as LotameIntegration).registerCallback { urlType, url ->
        // urlType => "bcp", "dsp"
        // url => complete url with all values replaced
        println("LotameSync: $urlType : $url")
    }
}

[LotameIntegration registerCallback:^{
    // your custom code
}];

FAQ

How and when does the syncing of DSP Pixels take place?

Syncing of DSP Pixels happens in each identify call, and once in 7 days for page calls having userId in payload. RudderStack stores the sync timestamp in storage. So, in every page call for web and in every screen call for mobile platform, RudderStack checks for the identified user (i.e. payload having userId) and the last syncing timestamp. If it is before 7 days or more, RudderStack automatically triggers the syncing.

How do we validate the Pixels on Mobile devices?

You can validate the Pixels in two ways on Mobile devices.

You can register a Sync Callback with rudderClient and you’ll get the type of the pixel which is getting fired along with the compiled URL with values replaced. We replace the userId and advertisingId automatically. For other values, you can use the settings on the dashboard.
You can turn on DEBUG log in your rudderClient initialization. It’ll also set the DEBUG logging in Lotame implementation. And you can check logs generated by the SDK. It’ll help you to understand the steps taken by the SDK.

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