LiveConnect Configuration Guide for Publishers
Introduction
LiveConnect is a core component of LiveIntent’s identity resolution framework, crucial for transforming anonymous website traffic into identifiable, addressable interactions. Aligned with industry best practices for privacy and data security, LiveConnect helps publishers manage their first-party data effectively, boosting monetization through precise user identification.
What is LiveConnect?
LiveConnect is a standalone web tag and a key component of HIRO that enables deterministic identity resolution for publishers. In order to harness the performance and addressability that HIRO delivers, implementing the LiveConnect tag on your website is essential. This tag generates first-party cookies and captures key user interactions, allowing publishers to map users to stable identifiers, such as the nonID. This process is vital for delivering accurate, targeted advertising and personalized content, while ensuring compliance with user privacy standards. By embedding LiveConnect into your website, you can increase the accuracy of user identification, leading to more effective audience engagement and higher monetization potential.
What problem does LiveConnect solve?
With the increasing restrictions on third-party cookies—already blocked by default in browsers like Safari and Firefox, and soon to be optional in Google Chrome—publishers face challenges in maintaining effective identity resolution and understanding user behavior. Traditional third-party cookies often have a short lifespan, making them less reliable for long-term tracking and engagement.
LiveConnect addresses these challenges by using first-party cookies that have a significantly longer lifespan (up to 7+ days). This approach provides a more robust and durable solution for identifying and understanding user behavior, even as the industry shifts away from third-party cookies. By extending the lifetime of cookies, LiveConnect helps publishers maintain strong relationships with their audience. This improves ad monetization by giving brands longer access to user behavior data, enabling more personalized and relevant content delivery.
LiveConnect Implementation
Depending on the use case, a publisher will receive a specific LiveConnect Tag. Place the LiveConnect tag provided by your account team across your website so that it loads on all pages. You can deploy LiveConnect by adding it to the global header of your website through a tag manager or you can add it directly into the HTML.
To add the LiveConnect tag directly to your website HTML:
- Locate the <head> and </head> and tags in your webpage or the head template in your tag management system or web platform. Please be sure that once in the tag manager, that LiveConnect is not placed into an iFrame or floodlight. This will prevent LiveConnect from properly firing.
- Paste the LiveConnect tag code at the bottom of the header section, just above the </head> tag. The LiveConnect tag can be added above or below existing tracking tags in your site header, as long as it is above the </head> tag.
Please do not make changes to the LiveConnect tag structure when placing the tag on your website.
Example LiveConnect tag shown below.
Note: Each LiveConnect tag is unique, and you should only use the tag provided by your account team.
When you’re done, please reach out to your LiveIntent Customer Success team to confirm your implementation is operating properly.
LiveConnect is the primary tool for collecting user identifiers within LiveIntent’s identity resolution framework, transforming anonymous website traffic into identifiable, addressable interactions. It supports the collection of first-party identifiers such as email addresses/HEMs and IP addresses, which are essential for enhanced identity resolution.
Placing LiveConnect down complements the LiveConnect Email Extension (LCEE) implementation, as both share the common goal of increasing the volume of stable and deterministic data points. We specifically aim to have user HEMs integrated into LiveConnect whenever the publisher’s site supports a logged-in experience, ensuring more robust identity resolution and data quality.
- Place the LiveConnect base tag implementation (mentioned above) on the website.
- Trigger on all pages
Add the following event script:
<script type="text/javascript">
window.liQ = window.liQ || [];
window.liQ.push({
"event": "pageView",
"email": "[USER_EMAIL]"
});
</script>- Trigger on all pages
- Populate the [USER_EMAIL] placeholder value with the website’s correct data layer variable for rendering the user email
- When an email is not available, the publisher should configure the variable to render an empty/blank string instead of a null or undefined value.
| Note: Accepted email formats are plain text or md5/sha1/sha256 hash. Plain text is never seen by LiveIntent and will be hashed to the three hash variants in the user’s local browser before data is pushed to LiveIntent. |
4. Verify implementation with the Technical Account Management team and by checking data output in LiveConnect Manager for the specific LiveConnect tag.
Example outputs shown below.
- When email is available:
{"event":"pageView","email":"491475f2b80d43db279b7c08fcba0698"}- When email is not available:
{"event":"pageView","email":""}Have more questions?
Submit a request to [email protected]. We are here to support you with any additional configuration needs or questions you may have.