Back in May we launched custom Floodlight variables (CFVs) in DoubleClick Search. CFVs allow you to track and report on non-PII user activity associated with conversions. If you use Floodlight tags to track conversions, you can now leverage CFV data in your DoubleClick Search reports.
CFVs can be either metrics or dimensions. Metrics reflect numeric data and dimensions reflect alphanumeric or numeric strings. Let’s say that I represent a bank and created a metric to capture the number of credit card sign ups and a dimension to track different credit card types, such as cc gold, cc silver...etc. With both metric and dimension data in DoubleClick Search I’m able to analyze the number of sign ups for each credit card type and make decisions about how to allocate the bank’s advertising budget.
Once CFVs are available in DoubleClick Search you can include CFV metrics in Floodlight columns and/or filter results by CFV dimensions. For example, I may want to see the number of credit card sign ups for a specific Floodlight tag and credit card type, such as “CC Gold”. For more info, please refer to this article.

For views containing Floodlight data, such as Actions, Transactions, or Floodlight columns, you can report on CFV dimensions using segmentation or dimension grouping. For example, I may want to understand how the different credit card types are performing across ad groups within a campaign. Segmenting a report by a CFV dimension will return a row with each ad group and CFV dimension value combination (e.g. one row for ad group #1 and cc gold & one row for ad group #1 and cc silver). If instead I want an aggregated view of CFV dimension data, I can select the CFV dimension from the Dimensions tab. This will return a row with data for each CFV dimension value (e.g. one row for cc gold & one row for cc silver).    

To take advantage of this feature you’ll need to take the following steps:
  1. Create CFVs in DoubleClick Campaign Manager (DCM). More info.
  2. Add the CFVS to the Floodlight tags on your website. More info.
  3. Set up CFVs within the Advertiser Settings section in DS. More info.

We encourage you to give CFVs a whirl and share your feedback and findings with your DS account management team.