Product Feeds
Introduction
This document will guide you through the processes and requirements involved in adding your stock to our Product Catalogue system using industry standard data transfer methods.
If you have an existing product feed please upload it by going to Tools > Product Feeds and click Configure New Product Feed - we can usually work with most existing product feeds.
We will import your formatted data into our product catalogue on a daily basis.
Our product catalogue, containing your products, is distributed through our affiliate network and made available as a data feed in XML/CSV.
You will be able to track sales of your products through our tracking system which will identify items sold and commissions due if you also implement our Basket Tracking.
Terminology
Although this document should be accessible to individuals with no technical knowledge, there are a number of common terms and processes used throughout that are briefly explained below.
- The Product Catalogue is a centralised database of products stored on high specification servers with product data sourced from multiple Advertisers.
- A Feed is a structured set of data designed to either populate the central Product Catalogue by Advertiser's or delivered from the Product Catalogue typically to Publishers.
- A Data Source is the individual data document (either XML or CSV) that populates the Product Catalogue via a Feed. Data Sources can be either Remotely defined or Uploaded manually. A Remote Source is a Data Source that is made available from a Advertisers web server.
- XML (Extensible Mark-up Language) is a general-purpose markup language. It is classified as an extensible language because it allows its users to define their own tags. Its primary purpose is to facilitate the sharing of data across different information systems, particularly via the Internet.
- CSV (Comma Separated Value) (also known as a comma-separated list or comma-separated variables) file format is a file type that stores tabular data. The format dates back to the early days of business computing. For this reason, CSV files are common on all computer platforms.
Product Data
The Product Catalogue is stored in a centralised database and regularly populated with Advertiser product data from various sources. Advertiser data is organised into Feeds, each Feed is a distinct group of product data, for example a Feed could contain your entire inventory, seasonal sale offers or just a subset of best sellers. Feeds are populated with data identified through Data Sources. Each individual Feed can have any number of Data Sources. Data Sources are added to Feeds and identify where data for that feed will be sourced as well as how often that data should be refreshed. Data can be delivered through a source as either XML or CSV (these are explained in more detail later in this document).
Data Sources
Data Sources identify where Feed data will be sourced. Data can be sourced as XML or CSV documents. You can upload data documents on a regular schedule directly from your web server or upload a single document on an ad-hoc basis. Which source format you use, be it XML or CSV, is a decision that may be dictated more by your current data systems rather than preference. We would suggest, where you have the option, that you use XML as your preferred data source. XML offers the highest level of flexibility, validation and support and there are distinct advantages in using an XML data source rather than CSV. Some of the advantages you can derive from using XML are listed below.
- XML validation (via XSD). You can ensure the data you are adding to the Product Catalogue is correctly formatted and valid.
- Data transformation. If your XML isn’t structured as we require we are able to transform this into the correct format using an XSLT, this isn’t possible if you are supplying us with a CSV document.
- Future proof. Your XML data will be future proof against additional constraints and attributes.
- Error reporting. Where there are problems with your XML document we are able to provide more concise error reporting than with a CSV document.
Shopify
If you are using Shopify take a look at this useful article. You might want to use an App to create your product feed:
SKU (Stock Keeping Units)
It is critical that each product you add to the Product Catalogue has a unique SKU. Products without a SKU will be rejected when imported. As products are imported into the Product Catalogue individual products are identified by their SKU and if the item already exists in the database it is replaced, otherwise it is treated as a new product. The SKU must correspond to a unique product; for example, if you add a kettle with an SKU of ABC123 to your Feed then a week later add a toaster with an SKU of ABC123 both products will be treated as the same product.
Categories and Attributes
Categories
Product Catalogue Categories are structured in a parent/child hierarchy. It is a requirement of your Data Source that each product is assigned to at least one category. If your products are not already assigned to categories in your database please contact your Account Manager for instructions on using a default category. When notating a category structure in your feed document it is important that this is done accurately. Categories should be specified as a pipe separated string, i.e. if specifying in XML you would use: Root|Jewellery|Men|Cufflinks Root|Jewellery|Men|Watches.
Attributes
Attributes are simply properties of a given product, such as sizes, colours, dimensions etc. We have created a pre-defined list of common attributes which you can populate and also 5 "free-text" attributes: See the list of available fields Products can use as many of these attributes as you wish.
XML, XSLT and XSD
Submitting your Data Sources as XML documents offers you the greatest level of flexibility in managing your Feed and maximising the exposure and effectiveness of your inventory. Optimise XML Data Sources need to be structured as per RSS 2.0 specification. RSS is simply a standardised structure (or schema) used to syndicate data across web sites and as such should be familiar to developers. We have extended the RSS specification with the “omg” namespace. If you have an existing XML feed we can usually translate this into our format. Please contact your Account Manager to discuss this.
XML Schema (XSD)
We have made available an XML Schema Document (XSD) for you to use to build your XML output to our requirements, you can find this at http://feeds.omgpm.com/ns/1.0/import.xsd. Your XML Data Sources should comply to this schema otherwise you will encounter difficulties importing your sources into the Product Catalogue. The following list details the requirements of each node in your XML document. You can find a sample XML Data Source document at http://feeds.omgpm.com/ns/1.0/sample.xml. SAMPLE FEED HERE
Entity escaping
Your data document must be UTF-8 encoded (you can generally do this when you save the file). As with all XML files, any data values (including URLs) must use entity escape codes for ampersands (&), single and double quotes (‘ and “), greater than (>) and less than (<) signs. You should also use numeric character entities (such as Ö) for certain symbol or international characters and not their equivalent HTML predefined entity since this will not produce well-formed XML. Channel node The channel node can contain the following elements, none of these elements are mandatory but may assist you if there are problems with the document and you need to reference back from an Import Report (explained later in this document). All dates are referenced using ISO 8601 formatting.
| Node | Mandatory? | Format | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| pubDate | Yes | yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss | The date and time of this document's creation. Document processing is skipped if the document date is not different from the previous Data Sources document date. |
| title | Yes | String (100) | A title for this feeds document. |
| link | Yes | String (200) | A URL reference for the document. |
| description | Yes | String (250) | A brief description of the documents contents. |
| language | Yes | character RFC 1766 standard | The principle language of the document, default en-gb. |
| copyright | Yes | String (250) | A brief copyright declaration. |
| processCount | Yes | Integer | The total number of items in this document, this number will be used to check that the correct number of items has been transferred to the Product Catalogue database when imported. |
Within the channel node you may also have an unlimited number of items. An item is a single product from your inventory. Please note the omg: namespace declaration above, please ensure that this declaration is added to the appropriate nodes and elements as indicated in the Item list below. It is also worth remembering that XML is case sensitive so an element called is different to an element called .
Item node
Your XML document can contain an unlimited number of Item nodes. See the list of nodes
Documents
Comma separated documents are documents that have their fields separated by a “delimiter” and in the case of CSV this is a comma. If you would like to use a different delimiter such as Pipe | or Tab we can also support these. All string columns should have an additional speech mark qualifier (“). A sample CSV document can be found at http://feeds.omgpm.com/ns/1.0/sample.csv. Items stored in CSV documents are stored 1 item per row and for this reason it is not possible to represent more than one category or attribute per item. You should use the first row of your CSV document to display the column headings as shown in the table below. If you enter product data into the first row or leave the first row empty the CSV import will fail. The same product fields are available in a CSV document as are in an XML document, these are listed below.
Available Fields
| Parameter | Data Type | Mandatory? | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| ProductSKU | String | Yes | Product SKU provided by the Advertiser |
| ProductName | String | Yes | Product Name |
| ProductDescription | String | Yes | Product Description - this may contain formatting provided by the Advertiser |
| ProductPrice | Decimal | Yes | Product Price |
| ProductPriceCurrency | String | Yes | Product Price Currency as 3 digit ISO standard value. eg. GBP, USD, INR |
| DiscountedPrice | Decimal | No | The Product Price with any discount applied |
| WasPrice | Decimal | No | The Previous Price of the product before any discount was applied |
| ProductURL | String | Yes | The Deeplink URL of the product |
| PID | Integer | Yes | Optimise PID/CampaignID |
| MID | Integer | Yes | Optimise Advertiser ID |
| ProductSmallImageURL | String | No | URL to small product image |
| ProductMediumImageURL | String | No | URL to medium product image |
| ProductLargeImageURL | String | No | URL to large product image |
| MPN | String | No | Manufacturer Part Number |
| StockAvailability | String | No | Indicates whether item is in stock or not |
| Brand | String | No | Brand associated with product |
| Colour | String | No | Colour of the product |
| Location | String | No | Location of the product such as with a Daily Deal |
| Custom1 | String | No | Free text custom field |
| Custom2 | String | No | Free text custom field |
| Custom3 | String | No | Free text custom field |
| Custom4 | String | No | Free text custom field |
| Custom5 | String | No | Free text custom field |
| CategoryName | String | Yes | Category Name as supplied by the Merchant |
| CategoryPathAsString | String | Yes | Full Category Path |
FAQs
- What happens when I remove an item from the Product Catalogue, will Publishers still see it? No Publishers will not see the item, all updates are made in real time.
- How will access to feeds be managed? Product feed access will be managed and controlled by the Advertiser and Account Manager. Campaign approvals will initially act as the gateway with additional control to be configured in the product feed interface.
- Will the UID/SubID parameter be passed in reporting? Yes the Publisher will be able to pass any UID/SubID into the URL that is generated.
- How should I format a date? Dates should be formatted as per ISO 8601 specifications.