How To Setup TikTok Conversion API with Adobe Launch & Adobe Event Forwarding

The second post of the Server Side Conversion tracking series will cover TikTok CAPI using Adobe Launch and Event Forwarding,

Tiktok does not have any official extension on Adobe Event forwarding, nor any built by a third party vendor. For this use case we will use the “Adobe Cloud Connector Extension.”.

The Cloud Connector event forwarding extension allows you to create custom HTTP requests to send data to a destination or retrieve data from a destination. The Cloud Connector extension is like having Postman on Adobe Experience Platform Edge Network and can be used to send data to an endpoint that does not have a dedicated extension yet.

In this guide, I will walk you through the steps you need to take to get TikTok Conversions API working with Adobe Launch (Tags) and Adobe Event Forwarding.

How does it work?

Let’s quickly visualise how the set up works and the data flow which happens from the browser (client) to adobe servers and finally reaching the vendor destinations.

TikTok Server events Parameters

TikTok CAPI needs event specific contextual information for every event sent, listed below are some of the key parameters which will be sent within the payload.

• Event name: A standard event or custom event name. This field is used to deduplicate events sent by both web (via TikTok Pixel) or app (via SDK or App Events API) and the Conversions API.
• Event ID: This ID can be any unique string chosen by the advertiser. The event_id and event  parameters are used to deduplicate events sent by both web (via Meta Pixel) or app (via SDK or App Events API) and the Conversions API.

TikTok Customer information Parameters

This includes relevant customer information as required and agreed upon and respecting user privacy, regulation and guidelines.

• Hashed email: Trim any leading and trailing spaces. Convert all characters to lowercase.HASHING is REQUIRED

TikTok Custom Data Parameters

This includes relevant custom data information, usually products meta data, registration or other custom data attributes. In our context/example this would be the product meta data in productListItems Array.

TikTok Events Deduplication note

Deduplication is needed for advertisers who are using both TikTok Pixel SDK and Events API to send the same event. For example, if you are sending “CompletePayment” event from both TikTok Pixel SDK and Events API, then you need to set up deduplication correctly.
Deduplication will be based on the presence of a common “event_id” and “event” parameter with events shared via both Events API and Pixel SDK.

The event name (i.e. CompletePayment or AddToCart) and event_id must be exactly the same for deduplication to work correctly.

Adobe Tags (Launch) Payload

The adobe launch data via web SDK extension can send data to Adobe Datastream, here’s a quick snapshot of raw data

"xdm": {
    "web": {
        "webPageDetails": {
            "URL": "https://www.myshop.com/au/products/ct-all-star-70-hi",
            "pageViews": {
                "value": 1
            },
            "isErrorPage": false,
            "isHomePage": false,
            "name": "myshop:products:ct-all-star-70-hi",
            "viewName": "begin_checkout"
        }
    },
    "timestamp": "2022-08-06T05:21:56.964Z",
/* TikTok Custom data parameters */
    "productListItems": [
        {
            "SKU": "prdid-123",
            "currencyCode": "AUD",
            "name": "ct-all-star-70-hi",
            "priceTotal": 140,
            "quantity": 1
        }
    ]
},
"data": {
/* TikTok Server events Parameters */
    "vendor": {
        "eventName": "<FB-EVENT-NAME>",
        "eventID": "<UNIQUE-EVENT-ID>
    },
/* TikTok User data Parameters */
    "user": {
        "hashed_user_info": "<hashed_user_info>"
    }
}

Set up TikTok CAPI Event

Activate TikTok Events CAPI: Generate an access token using TikTok Ads Manager 

Configure action to send TikTok CAPI pixel

Here are few things that needs to be configured before we set up the action to trigger the CAPI

End to End Testing

An end to end testing would involve an event happening on browser –> Adobe Event Forwarding Pixel sent –> TikTok Diagnostic Log. use Adobe Debugger chrome extension for both Adobe Tags ( Launch) and Adobe Event forwarding logs, followed by Tiktok Diagnostic Log to confirm the event is received.

Use TikTok CAPI TEST Event Tool

Generate Test ID: Use Test Events tool in Events Manager to generate a test event code. 

Event forwarding testing

Event forwarding requests and status can be seen under “logs” within Adobe debugger, Here’s a snapshot of the debugger and a formatted view of the data sent to TikTok servers.

{
  "pixel_code": "TIKTOK-PIXEL-CODE",
  "test_event_code": "TEST38177",
  "event": "InitiateCheckout",
  "event_id": "a303587c-9ba2-4a60-a91f-77939b299e0a",
  "timestamp": "2022-09-05T09:05:01Z",
  "context": {
    "ad": {},
    "page": {
      "url": "https://myshop.com/au/checkout"
    },
    "user": {},
    "user_agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/104.0.0.0 Safari/537.36",
  },
  "properties": {
    "contents": [
      {
        "content_id": "prdid-123",
        "content_name": "ct-all-star-70-hi",
        "quantity": 1,
        "price": 140,
        "content_type": "product"
      }
    ],
    "currency": "AUD",
    "value": 140
  }
}

TikTok console testing

You can confirm the receipt of the event from adobe Tags & Event Forwarding pixel within Test Event tool to confirm either/both pixels did make it. here is how it looks within TikTok console.

Help articles

• Adobe Event Forwarding Overview
• TikTok Standard Events & Parameters
• TikTok Event Deduplication

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