Event API overview
Rokt’s Event API is a flexible and robust interface that can receive any type of client event (e.g., purchase, app open, or store visit) along with any associated attributes (e.g., email address, purchase amount, credit card BIN) for two use cases: conversion attribution and anomaly detection.
Conversion attribution
For campaigns run on the Rokt platform, accurate measurement of marketing outcomes is critical to success. Using a mechanism like the Event API for closing the loop on conversion attribution unlocks a rich set of insight, measurement, attribution, and bidding tools, resulting in better optimization of your campaigns, performance measurement, and anomaly detection.
Using the Event API as a standalone integration for conversion data provides multiple benefits:
- Speed. Enables a fully automated, near-real time data exchange, maximizing the potential of Rokt’s automated optimization tools.
- Coverage. Permits integration of events across all channels and devices, resulting in coverage for conversions across web, mobile, and in-store.
- Reliability. As a server-to-server integration, the Event API is not susceptible to any interference by web technologies such as browser or ad blocking. It also supports error handling, ensuring that data is never lost.
For best performance, we recommend integrating with the Event API either as a standalone integration or in conjunction with the Web SDK. When both the Event API and Web SDK are used, you get greater attribution accuracy through both personal and device-matching capabilities.
Integration anomaly detection
For our partners, Rokt placements make up a key component of the e-commerce experience, providing value to your customers and generating significant value for your bottom line. Ensuring the Rokt placement is displayed as often as expected is key to maximizing the value Rokt can deliver.
Technical integrations, such as Rokt’s Web SDK, iOS SDK, or Android SDK, can be impacted by small changes to the dozens of moving parts in the ecosystem. Rokt’s experience with over 4 billion e-commerce transactions has shown us that many things can go wrong with website updates, third-party integrations (e.g., tag managers and optimization systems), customer-installed applications (e.g., browser extensions), or even new browser versions. The severity of the impact can range significantly depending on the type of change, but even small errors affecting a tiny percentage of users can have significant impacts to customers, as well as the bottom line, if they linger undetected.
Rokt currently uses a range of tools, alerts, and reporting to track these types of issues. For example, all deployments are set up with automated alarming on major drops in placement impressions by default. However, small deviations from the norm may be perceived as noise, so smaller errors (e.g., an error affecting some versions of Internet Explorer) may go unnoticed. To get the most accurate picture of performance, we need a trusted secondary data source that is independent of browser functionality. This secondary data source allows Rokt to run comparisons between actual placement impressions and events where a placement should have been displayed. When this data is made available, discrepancies can be quickly identified, diagnosed, and fixed—increasing the customer value and bottom line impacts delivered by Rokt.
We strongly recommend clients use the Event API to provide a server-to-server version of the truth, which enables rapid detection and correction of discrepancies that are unaffected by any browser issues.