6sense Creative Validation

Upon campaign launch, and occasionally throughout a campaign, exchange partners and publishers often test advertising creatives and landing pages to assess ad quality and ensure brand safety. The 6sense dashboard automatically filters out creative validation clicks and related page views from reporting.

The 6sense Creative Validation Parameter is available for customers who are using 3rd party measurement tools (such as Google Analytics) and want to filter traffic out in order to have more accurate site analytics reporting.

Particularly for small campaigns, creative validation traffic may be 50% to 80% of all traffic reported in site analytics. Identifying creative validation traffic, and removing it from views used for performance reporting and analytics is critical for accurate performance, reporting and analytics.

How to Filter Out Bot/Validator Traffic

When 6sense detects that a click from creative validation, it sets the 6si_validation parameter to 1. When the traffic does not come from creative validation, 6si_validation will be set to 0.

6si_validation=0 – the click is organic and should be included in reporting.

6si_validation=1 – the click is coming from creative validation and should be omitted from reporting.

Example:

Landing page entered in 6sense platform:  https://www.landingpage.com/awesomepage

Corresponding landing page in measurement (with 6si parameters): 

https://www.landingpage.com/awesomepage?6si_validation=0 – the click is organic and should be included in reporting.

https://www.landingpage.com/awesomepage?6si_validation=1 – the click is coming from creative validation and should be omitted from reporting.

The 6si_validation parameter will not be appended if you enter a redirect URL for the landing page in the 6sense platform. 6sense needs to send traffic directly to the final landing page URL in order to accurately append the parameters.

How to Filter Out Creative Validation Traffic in Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

1. Navigate to Variables in the left side menu.

2. Under User-Defined Variables click New.

3. Give the variable a name such as “TrafficType”. Click the Variable Configuration and select Custom Javascript as the variable type.

4. Paste the following code into the Custom Javascript input box:

   function() {
     var ret = "";
     if ( (/6si_validation=1/i).test({{Page URL}}) ) {
       ret = "6si_validation";
     }
     return ret
   }

5. Click Save.

6. Navigate to Tags and select your Google Analytics: GA4 Configuration tag.

7. Expand Fields to Set and click Add Row. Set the Field Name as “traffic_type” and the Value as “{{Traffic Type}}”

8. Click Save then Publish your new container version.

In GA4

1. From your GA4 home screen, navigate to Admin in the bottom left.

2. From the dropdown menus, select the Account and Property used for reporting and analysis. Click Data Settings underneath the View column then click Data Filters.

3. Click the blue Create filter button.

4. Click Internal traffic.

5. Give the new data filter a name such as “Ads Creative Validation 6sense”. Ensure the Filter operation is set to Exclude. Set the Parameter value to 6si_validation. Finally, set the Filter state to Active.­

6. Click Create and then Activate filter.

How to Filter Out Creative Validation Traffic in Google Analytics (Legacy)

1. From your home screen, navigate to Admin in the bottom left.

2. From the dropdown menus, select the Property and View used for reporting and analysis. Click Filters underneath the View column.

3. Click the red Add filter button.

4. Ensure the “Create New Filter” method is selected and then provide a Filter Name. 6sense recommends: “6sense Creative Validation Parameter”.

5. Under the “Custom” filter type, select:

   • Exclude

   • Request URI

6. Enter “6si_validation=1” in the Filter Pattern text box.

7. Click Save.