FAQ for Tapad

1. Who is Tapad and what kind of data do they provide?
   Tapad is owned by Experian, one of the 3 major consumer credit bureaus in the United States.
   As of March 2023, we currently have 639 million IP address & SHA emails in the database which equals an average of 2 emails & 1 IP address for every human in the US.
2. What is sent to Tapad for matching and when?
   1. Email - On a weekly basis, on Tuesdays, we pull all new (since last week) emails in sales and leads and hash them to SHA256 and MD5.  Additionally we pull all new (since last week) distinct IP addresses from web_responses.  These are then shipped to Tapad.
   2. Pixel Data - Also, deployed with our tag are two Tapad pixels, one for Safari and one for all other browsers.  This enables Tapad to pull the same kind of data back as we do in our web responses, but most importantly the IP address and out td_client_id, which is our first-party cookie id.  This happens on every page load.
      Data is returned the following Wednesday and usually live in matching by Friday.  See Timing explanation below.
3. When do we do sales matching for MTSA?
   On a daily basis.  Each day we pull sales_id + email from sales.sales_standardized.  Again, we hash the emails to SHA256 and MD5. (HEMs)  We then join these HEMs on the Tapad Graph to get to an IP Address.  Once we have joined the sales_id to an IP address, we look at 90 days of Pageviews (web_responses) and match IP to IP.  These matches are then sent to the sales_tapad_attribution table to be included in Clicktrails for that cycle.
   For new Sales files, the Tapad email matches will not be live until the Friday following the Wednesday after the Sales file was loaded.
   The Pixel Data can be matched for any Sales file loaded between Wednesdays - within the normal 2 day matching/processing timeframe. We may match with Pixel data from previous weeks.
4. Should we expect all properties to have Tapad Results?
   Yes.  Given that the Tapad pixel is deployed with our tag on all MTSA customer sites and third parties, and that we include sales records for all MTSA customers, there should be Tapad-generated attribution for all properties.
5. What if a property has Low or No Tapad %?
   A store with low volume has low web shopping/low web traffic in general, so it is possible to have no Tapad data for that property, but highly unlikely based on the large volume of data Tapad has.
   Dealers with low Sales with Email %s will very likely have low Tapad % as the majority of Tapad data is based on email addresses.
   See Researching Tapad QA Issues below.
6. Can Tapad affect LiveRamp data?
   Yes - Within Clicktrails Online attribution, Web category (which includes Tapad) takes precedence over LiveRamp attribution. So if we had a LiveRamp match and later got a Tapad match on the same customer, the match will be attributed to Tapad instead and the LiveRamp match will disappear.
7. Can Tapad affect Offline Matching?
   Online and Anonymous matching should not affect Offline because Offline is PII to PII.
   Online Leads matching can “steal” from LR or Tapad because they are matching to a web_response… first come first serve. But an offline lead is a distinct discrete object we are matching a sale record to.
8. Will Canada see any results from Tapad?
   Yes.  Tapad states that they have Canadian data.  The degree of impact is yet to be fully understood because we had a lack of Canadian rooftops active during the R&D and testing phase of development.
9. Will Tapad affect attribution in months prior to February 2023?
   No.  There was an intentional clean slate applied to Tapad beginning on 3/1/2023 so that only February MTSA attribution moving forward would be attributed using Tapad data.

Timing for Tapad

Sales data email addresses are shipped to Tapad on Tuesdays and they return the Tapad matching data on the following Wednesday (8 days later). Then we need 1-2 days to process the returned data (match the customer ID to our existing leads).
Overall, It can take 10 to 17 days for full Tapad attribution.

Tapad can appear in about two days IF a customer's email address from a sales file already exists in our Tapad graph (matching database). This would happen if the customer had purchased a vehicle from any of our dealers before. You may see some Tapad within a few days, but the full Tapad attribution will take additional timing as outlined here:

• If a sales file is loaded on a Monday, it can be up to 11 days for full Tapad attribution to be returned (waiting for Tapad to return the data + 2 days of processing once received on our end)
• If a sales file is loaded on a Tuesday prior to shipping Tapad data out, it can be up to 10 days
• If a sales file is loaded on a Tuesday after our Tapad data shipped out, it can be up to 17 days
• If a sales file is loaded on a Wednesday, it can be up to 16 days
• If a sales file is loaded on a Thursday, it can be up to 15 days
• If a sales file is loaded on a Friday, it can be up to 14 days

Researching Tapad QA Issues

If a dealer has low Tapad Attribution, the following steps can help determine the cause:

1. Is it too early to expect the Tapad back?  Check the Timing chart above.
2. Tapad attribution is based primarily on email addresses. If there are no email addresses in the dealer's sales file, or the Sales with Email % is low then that is the cause.
3. If low Sales with Email %, double check the sales file (collect, DV file, Tekion file, CDK API data) to see if it contains email addresses
4. A store with low Sales volume generally has low web shopping/low web traffic, so it is possible to have low or no Tapad data for that property.  Keep in mind percentages are relative to the total number of sales.  When sales volume is low, do not look at percentages; Instead you should focus on the actual numbers.
   

   Example:  A store with low sales may have:
   Month 1 =  5 sales and 3 Tapad matches = 60% Tapad attribution
   Month 2 =  5 sales and 2 Tapad matches = 40% Tapad attribution
   Month 3 =  7 sales and 2 Tapad matches = 28% Tapad attribution
   While this may look like a drop of 20% in Tapad attribution from Month 1 to Month 2, the reality is they only had 1 less attribution than the month before.  This is not concerning or unusual.  

    
5. Verify that all email columns are being ingested into sales_raw properly (if not, it could be a column mapping issue)
6. Verify that the Is Tapad? flag is set to TRUE for the property in the DMUI
7. If a property has no Tapad matches after waiting the appropriate amount of time, and the above do not explain the issue,  open a help ticket for Engineering.  Be sure to specify that you have checked the above and what you found.