You’re nearly ready to launch your campaign on Stack Overflow. You’ve gathered your creative assets, arrived at a budget, and set up your targeting criteria. But you know that the developer audience can be tricky about clicking ads. How will you truly know if your campaign is effective? You need to set up an activity pixel.
This pixel (also known as an activity tag) is code placed on a web page that is used to understand if your ad campaigns are effectively influencing prospects to take desired actions. Using the pixel can help you attribute the actions users take on your site to an ad they were shown or that they clicked on.
Here’s how you set up an engagement or conversion pixel for your Stack Overflow campaign:
- Review your banner advertising solution with your Customer Success Manager (CSM). You must have an internal resource to implement the pixel (yourself, IT team at your company, agency, etc..).
- Confirm what your goal is for implementing a pixel. If you’re measuring conversions, it’s very important to place the pixel on the page where you want the user to end their experience. If a pixel is just placed on an intermediary page or any page prior to a confirmation page, conversions will not be tracked properly. Consult your CSM with any questions.
- Your CSM will then create a banner advertising pixel(s) based on your end goal for your campaign in Google Ad Manager.
- Once your CSM sends you a copy of your pixel code, provide that to your implementation contact. You should place the pixel near the top of the webpage as close to the<body>tag as possible (see documentation here).You can also use Google Tag Manager.
- Send the URL of the page where the pixel has been placed to your CSM. They will confirm it’s working correctly.
If you’re measuring conversions, the flow might look something like this:
Stack Overflow can provide up to three engagement or conversion pixels you can place across your website to measure a variety of actions. We typically suggest including the pixel on your home page, product landing page, and the post-conversion page (‘Thank You’ page), but this will vary based on your campaign goals and where the best measure of success can be found.
That’s it! Measuring engagement and conversions is a simple way to ensure that you are getting the most visibility into your campaign’s performance.
If you have questions or need help getting started, contact your Stack Overflow Customer Success Manager.
