Background
On the web, https for secure communication is being more and more adopted as standard. However, you will still have cases where the publisher’s page is secure (https), while the ad served there via Equativ has a non-secure click URL (the advertiser landing page is http).
The
W3C referrer policy requires in this case of protocol downgrade, that the referrer is (by default)
not shared with the target page (security measure). Thus, web analytics tools (e. g. Google Analytics) implemented in the landing page cannot get referrer information: agencies and advertisers cannot properly measure the campaign success since they cannot put the incoming traffic sources in relation to the users’ behavior on the landing page (after users clicked on the ad).
To avoid this loss of referrer data, you can apply the workaround explained in this article.
Adding the meta referrer tag
You can use the
meta parameter to officially change the referrer policy, as described in the
W3C referrer policy: simply add the
meta referrer tag in the page where the banner is served with
referrer set to
”always”. This will preserve the referrer when an ad with a non-secure click URL is clicked on a secure website.
There are 2 ways of implementation.
Implementation #1 - Adding meta referrer tag through a customized script in Equativ (recommended)
Go to your insertion and paste the code below in the field
- Customized script for the creative - to use it for a single creative in the insertion or
- Customized script for the insertion - to use it in all creatives in the insertion:
<script>
setTimeout(function(){
var link=document.createElement('meta');
link.name = "referrer";
link.content = "always";
window.top.document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(link);
},2000);
</script>
Setting the meta referrer tag using the customized script of the creative/insertion is recommended since it does not involve the webmaster (no changes on the publisher website needed) and can be used on an as-needed basis.
More details on the Customized script fields in
this article (chapter “Customized scripts”).
Warning
With this implementation, all outgoing clicks from the secure (https) publisher page towards a non-secure (http) page will forward the referrer whenever the code above is delivered through Equativ’s platform. In some cases, this may represent a security issue.
Implementation #2 - Adding meta referrer tag in publisher website
Ask the webmaster in charge of the publisher website to add the following line in the
<head> of the website:
<meta name="referrer" content="always" />
Reminder: Make sure you place the meta referrer tag inside the
<head> of the website since Firefox is very strict in this regard - do not paste it in the
<body>.
Warning
Adding the meta referrer tag directly into the website means that the referrer policy will apply to any outgoing traffic without exception. It will apply even if there was no ad delivered by Equativ at all.
Make sure you validate this implementation with the webmaster in charge as this may represent a security issue.
External resources
