Get Started Guide - Accutics Validate

Welcome to Accutics Validate! Here's everything you need to know to get started. 

Learn how to connect your first source and create a validation rule. After running your first validation rule, we'll also help you understand your campaign findings. 

1. Creating a profile

You can easily access the Accutics platform through an invitation email. This is sent to you by someone from the Accutics team or someone from your company with an admin profile. 

All you need to do is to:

1. Open the email from Accutics > Click the `Join your team´ button
2. Complete your profile information
3. Accept the Terms & Conditions > Click `Get started´

You should now be logged in to the platform!

Click on the GIFs to expand them

2. Connecting a source

Once you're logged in the platform, you should see an overview of your Accutics Validate project. At this stage, the overview will show a list of marketing platforms. The first step is to connect to one of them to add them as a media source.

A source is a connection to a third-party platform that enables Accutics to access its data. 

Find the platform you want to connect to and click the `Connect` button. Then:

1. Authenticate by signing in and verifying your user profile

        Please, grant full access.

2. Choose an ad account(s) to connect

        Check the accounts you’d like to check the validation rules for. 

3. Name your connection

        This should be something easy for you to identify later. 

Note: Step 1 differs slightly for a Sizmek source since an API username and key are required. 
Please, contact Sizmek if you do not have such credentials. 

Example

Let's say you want to check the `health´ of your ads in Google Ads. To do so, the first thing you need to do is to connect to your Google Ads account so that we can access your campaign data and validate it. 

You can read more about how to connect sources here.

3. Creating a validation rule

Once you connect a data source, you can start setting up a validation rule. 

A validation rule verifies that the campaign data complies with the requirements you set. 

From the `Dashboard´ of the source you just created, click on the `Add a validation rule´ button. Then: 

1. Choose a validation rule type 

• * name: It checks the name of your ad account, campaign, ad groups, ads, etc.
• Landing page: It checks that your landing page works correctly.
• Destination URL: It checks your Destination URLs.
• URL suffix: It checks the suffix in your Final URLs in Google Ads. 
• Default impressions: It checks the number of default ads served by CM360.

2. Configure the validation rule

The configuration consists of setting the `Interval´ and the requirements that must be validated.

• Interval: When the rule should run and its frequency. This can be hourly, daily, or weekly

The second part of the configuration differs depending on the validation type:

• Naming convention

It consists of defining naming requirements to compare to.

This is composed of an operator (a comparison expression) and a value.

• Landing page settings

It consists of advanced settings regarding domains, redirects, query parameters, etc.

• Destination URL settings

It consists in settings regarding domains, third-party click trackers, and query parameters.

• Requirements for URL suffix

It consists in defining at which specific level of the ad account(s) the rule should apply to and requirements to compare to.

3. Add conditions (optional)

A condition is a logical comparison that must be fulfilled for the validation rule to run. 

This allows you to better define when and for which specific cases the rules should be validated. You can add a condition by switching to the `Conditions´ page.

4. Set reporting preferences (optional)

Reports let you set automated email reports. You can enable them from the `Reports´ page.

5. Save and close

Learn more about creating a validation rule here. 

Example

Let's say you want to check that the names of all campaigns in your account start with `Paid search´. You want this to be checked every day before you start your working day.

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Example with logic condition

This time, you want to check that the names of ad groups always start with `VIDEO´. However, you don't want this to be checked for every ad group, but only for the ad groups in video campaigns, which are labeled with `Video´ in their name. Again, you want this to be checked every day before you start your working day.

Let's break it down:

• Check that the ad group name starts with `VIDEO´ (this is a validation rule)
• IF the campaign names also contain `Video´ (this is a condition)

Click on the GIFs to expand them.

4. Running a validation rule

After you set up a validation rule, you can either (1) wait until it starts running automatically, e.g., at 8 am in our examples, or (2) start it manually at any time. 

To validate it manually, navigate to the `Dashboard´ of the ad source. Then:

1. Find the validation rule you want to run
2. Click on the rule > `Validate Now´ button
3. Close the side panel and wait once is completed - it should take a few seconds
   
   

Once it is completed you will see a number, this is the `Health Score´, along with the number of errors found. 

The Health Score gives you a percentage indication of how many errors were found out of the total checks performed. You can also find this information by checking the history of runs. 

4. Click on the validation rule > Switch to the `History´

You can see a record of all the validation rules that were run and the number of errors out of the total number of checks for each run.

Note: Please keep in mind that data is reset at every validation run. This may affect your progress if a validation rule runs before you finish your work.

Example

By running the `Campaign name´ validation rule we created above, you should get some results. 

In our case, the Health Score is 85% and from the history, we can see it is due to 2 errors out of 13 checks. This means that out of 13 campaigns checked in our Google Ads account, 2 do not start with `Paid search´.

Remember the `Campaign name´ validation rule? It checks that the name of the campaigns in the source ad account starts with `Paid search´. 

You can read more about running validation rules here.

5. Reading findings

From the `Dashboard´ of the ad source, switch to `Findings’ to see the results from the validations.

Findings Table

The Findings Table contains detailed information about what did not comply with the validation rule(s) you set - errors.

Note: By findings we mean errors. Hence, if there are no errors, the Findings Table will be empty.

The table navigation is based on tabs, which reflect the structure of the source ad accounts. This means that the structure of the table changes depending on which source you chose.

For Google Ads, the structure would be Account > Campaign > Ad group > Ad

For DV360, the structure would be Advertiser > Campaign > Insert order > Line item > Creative

The rows of the table show the element containing errors for the level you are viewing, whereas the columns show information on the element. 

The type of error also reflects the level where the error lies:

• Error: It indicates the number of errors found for the level you are currently viewing 
• Underlying error: It indicates all the errors found at the levels beneath the level you are currently viewing

Tip: Clicking on the underlying errors, will show a breakdown of the errors per level.

You can read more about reading findings here.

6. Handling errors

Now that you have learned how to read the Findings Table, you can start considering how to handle the errors. 

Currently, the errors cannot be resolved from the Accutics platform. 

The Findings Table provides you with a detailed report of where you can find the error and what the error is. However, it is up to you to navigate to the source platform, find the specific element and correct the error. 

Once you've corrected the error, you can mark it as completed on the Accutics platform. Alternatively, you can also decide to disregard the error. Both completing and ignoring are considered resolving actions. However, please note that errors that are not corrected from the source ad platform will be listed when a future validation runs again. 

Hence, from the Accutics platform:

1. Navigate to an element with an error
2. Click on the element name
   An overview of the error will open. 
3. Take note of the error(s)

From your ad platform:

4. Find where the error(s) is located
5. Correct the error(s)

Back to the Accutics platform: 

6. Resolve the error(s) by either clicking on `Complete´ or `Ignore´ 

Tip: You can access the resolution buttons: 
 
· From the error overview panel
· By hovering on the element name and clicking on the meatball menu (…)
· By checking the checkboxes of the side of the element names (ideal for bulk resolution of errors)

Example

Continuing with the `Campaign name´ example from above, switch to the `Findings´ page to investigate where and what the errors are. 

Click on the GIFs to expand them.

From the Findings Table, we see at what level the error is located. In our case, we have 2 errors at the campaign level (as expected).

From the campaign tab, we can further check the error and see that it is due to the name of the campaign starting with `Paid-search´ instead of `Paid search´. 

Hence, from our Google Ads account, we can locate it and remove the extra hyphen (-) in the name. Then, we switch back to the platform and mark the error as `Complete´. 

It will disappear because the default view of the Findings Table is set to `See unresolved´ - you can change this by clicking on the dropdown in the upper right hand corner.

If we now exit the Findings Table and run the validation rule again, we can now see that the Health Score increased to 92% because one error was fixed. On the other hand, the error that was not fixed from our ad platform will reappear. Indeed, the findings indicate that out of 13 campaigns checked, 1 still does not start with `Paid search´. 

You can read more about handling errors here.

That's it! You are now ready to start validating your campaign data!

Up next: 
Dive deeper into configuring Accutics Validate here.