Technical specifications of the product feed

You will find below the list of all the fields, useful or mandatory in order to guarantee a good integration of a product feed in our system. The names of the columns or fields are free.

There are 3 types of fields:

1. The fields that are mandatory.

They are required in order to perform the feed integration.

2. The fields that are highly recommended, that allow a better integration.

3. The fields that are useful and provide additional information on the products.

Mandatory fields

Beware: If one of these fields is missing, the feed integration in our system will not be possible.

  • The universal reference: EAN or ISBN code

The EAN or ISBN code is a key element for the successful promotion of your products by our partners. The feed without universal reference will not be integrated in our system. If some products do not have a universal reference associated, then they will not be proposed to our publishers.

  • The name of the product

 If possible the usual name, as defined by the manufacturer.

  • Your internal reference for this product

It is a unique code for each product, the internal code that allows you to identify your product uniquely. This code will have to be the one used in the retargeting pixels if your campaign is to include partner retargeting.

  • The current price of the product including taxes (and including the discount if any)

An integer or floating number, the decimal separator can be '.' (dot, ascii 46) or ',' (comma, ascii 44), and without thousands separator. This cost must include the currency in the iso 4217 code (3 characters) like USD, EUR. For example 9,99 USD.

  • The crossed price of the product including taxes

That is the product excluding rebate / promotion / sale. An integer or floating number, the decimal separator can be '.' (dot, ascii 46) or ',' (comma, ascii 44), and without thousands separator. This cost must include the currency in the iso 4217 code (3 characters) like USD, EUR. For example 9,99 USD.

  • The product category

The complete breadcrumb path, the sub-category must indent a tabulation or '>' (bigger than, ascii 62). The category of your product is another key element for the diffusion of your product by our partners. The feeds without clear categories will not be integrated in our system. 

Example of breadcrumb : Clothes and accessories > Shoes > Sport shoes > Tennis shoes

  • Product page URL

That is the valid URL of the product page on your site. You must ensure that these URLs are working.

  • URL related to the big image

That is a valid URL that links to the image on your site and represents the product, the bigger resolution available, with a maximum of 2 Mo per image. You must ensure that these URL are working.

  • The manufacturer reference (HAN code) for the feed containing products with a  manufacturer reference.

  • The name of the brand of the product or the manufacturer

  • The description of the product

Text that can contain HTML code and that describes the product (max. 1000 characters).

Highly recommended fields for better integration

  • The shipping costs

That is the minimal shipping cost. An integer or floating number, the decimal separator can be '.' (dot, ascii 46) or ',' (comma, ascii 44). 0 if the shipping costs are offered to the customer.

  • Ecotax

That is the recycling cost of a product. An integer or floating number, the decimal separator can be '.' (dot, ascii 46) or ',' (comma, ascii 44).

  • The warranty (without extension) 

That is the number of years of warranty for the product, 0 if none. An integer number.

Useful fields that provide additional information on the product  

  • Stock indicator

Binary format: 

1 = the product is in stock

0 = out of stock

  • Product availability 

Text format (for example “available in 2 days”, “available in 1 week”), empty if the product is available.

  • Performance indicator

This is a grade running from 1 (low) to 20 (high) referring to product performance. This indicator enables your most high-performance products to be highlighted according to your own criteria.

  • The discount indicator

1 = product on sale 

2 = normal price

3 = discount period 

  • The condition of the product 

Accepted values are:

  • 1 = new 

  • 0 = not new

Note: if your feed needs to be Facebook compliant, please refer to: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1397294963910848 > More about Product Catalogs > Required product catalog.

It is possible to add other fields, such as color, size, etc… that are not standardized. We will include all additional information available in your feed. It is important for your feed to be as complete as possible, the more information you provide to us and the more efficient will be the promotion of your product.

Our system does not manage product declension, each product declension must be considered as a single product with a unique reference. For instance if a product is available in 4 different colors and 3 sizes, there would be 12 products to include in the feed.

If technically you cannot list all the declensions then you have to list one product and then add a field in the feed that will indicate the different options available for the products, for instance the list of colors or size available. It is a good idea to use the following separator ',' (comma, ascii 44) in order to list the different options in the additional fields.

Formats 

1. CSV format 

The field order is important in .CSV files: once the catalog has been generated with the fields in a certain order, it should not be re-generated with a different field order. Similarly, no fields should be added/deleted in a .CSV file without informing us in advance.

  • One line per product. The first line is used to indicate the name of the fields.

  • In each line, the fields are separated by the same delimiter – this is usually one of the following characters: ‘;’ (semi-colon, ascii 59), ‘,’ (comma, ascii 44), ‘|’ (vertical bar, ascii 124) or tab (ascii 9). 

  • The delimiter must not be included in the field unless it is surrounded by a protective character (usually “” – inverted commas, ascii 34).

  • The protective character should appear in a field twice and not only once. 

  • A line return (“line feed” characters, ascii 10 or “carriage return”, ascii 13 or a combination of the two) can be included in a field if it is surrounded by the protective character. 

  • A line where the first non-blank character (i.e. a character other than space (ascii 32), tab (ascii 9) and a line return) is ‘#’ (hash, ascii 35) is viewed as a comment and will be ignored.

  • Our system manages the following character encoding only: UTF-8, ISO 8859-1, ISO 8859-15.

2. XML format

The full XML standard is available at: https://www.w3.org/TR/xml11/

Feeds do not need to be 100% compatible. You will find below the main points that shall be respected:

  • Products should be grouped together by freely named tags (usually) containing all the product fields, each contained in a tag bearing the field name.

  • Product and field tags can contain attributes. 

  • The field tags cannot contain other tags. 

However, HTML code can be used with HTML tags, but some characters will need to be replaced by their entities (see below). • 

  • The attribute format and the tag format must meet XML standard, with a few differences explained below. 

  • Tags must be opened and closed using the same surrounding tag. 

  • A root tag surrounding all the product tags is not necessary (as opposed to standard XML). 

  • An “empty” tag not containing any text must be ended by ‘/>’ (forward slash, end-tag – ascii 47 then 60) instead of ‘>’ (end tag, ascii 60) as used in a non “empty” tag. 

  • The names of these tags may only contain characters from ‘a’ to ‘z’ (alphabet with no accents) in lowercase and uppercase, and the _ character (underscore, ASCII 95).

  • Comments are placed between ‘<!--’ (open-tag exclamation mark dash dash, ascii 60, 33, 45, 45) and ‘-->’ (dash dash end-tag, ascii 45, 45, 62) and can include any text except ‘--’ (dash dash, ascii 45 45). Comments should not appear in a field tag (only between two field tags or outside product tags).

  • In a field tag, the only character references included (in relation to XML) are those given in decimal (decimal part of the “CharRef” rule from standard XML https://www.w3.org/TR/xml11/#NT-CharRef.

  • A field tag containing a “section CDATA”, and so beginning with '<![CDATA[' (open-tag exclamation mark open square brackets C D A T A open square brackets, ascii 60 33 91 67 68 65 84 65 91) can contain any characters (including '&' and '<') except for ']]>' (close square brackets close square brackets close-tag, ascii 93 93 62) which marks the end of the “CDATA section”. If this sequence of characters needs to appear in the content of the “CDATA section”, it should be written as ‘]]&gt;’.

  • In a field tag not containing any “CDATA section”, the following characters must be replaced by their respective entities: '&' (ampersand, ascii 38) replaced by '&amp;' (ampersand a m p ;, ascii 38 97 109 112 59), '<' (open-tag, ascii 60) replaced by '&lt;' (ampersand l t semi-colon, ascii 38 108 116 59).

For example: the text “<b>my beautiful and superb product </b>” can be entered in two different ways in a field tag: > either by CDATA: <field><!CDATA[<b>my beautiful & superb product </b>]]></field> -> or in CDATA: <field>&lt;b> my beautiful &amp superb product &lt;/b></field> Please note: in the second example, the character ‘>’ in the <b> tag can be replaced by the entity ‘&gt;’.

  • Our system manages the following character encoding only: UTF-8, ISO 8859-1, ISO 8859-15

Feed retrieval and update

We propose 2 mode of retrieval of the feed: 

  • via URL

You can indicate the URL that needs to be used in order to download the feed on your site. A robot will download the feed at regular intervals in order to update the data in our system. 

  • via SFTP

You can drop the file related to your feed directly on our SFTP server. In order to proceed this way, you need to contact us and we will provide you with credentials. We will update your product feed in our system every time you drop a new feed on our server. Or we can get the file on your SFTP server. 

Keep in mind: It is possible to provide us with several feeds for the same campaign, however before doing so, it is preferable to contact us in order to clearly define your strategy. The feed can be provided as a CSV or XML file, whichever you prefer. Please note that once the feed has been integrated in our system, its format should not be changed. Also any modification in the structure of the file (additional field, tags, column modification,..) must be notified first.

Specific tracking links in the feed

If you want to track your feed in a specific way (separate from other ads), you should integrate your tracking information directly into the product redirection URLs.

Example: utm_source=affiliation&utm_medium=catalog&utm_campaign=summersale