Understanding Events

Events in Ours represent key interactions or actions taken by visitors on your website or app. You can track events, enrich them with event and user properties, and securely forward them to your configured destinations. This guide explains how events work, default behaviors, and best practices for ensuring secure and effective tracking.

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Tracking Events

Tracking Events via GTM (Google Tag Manager)

Ours has a custom GTM template that makes it easy to trigger your events. While you can use our Javascript API, we recommend using our GTM template for added organization and triggering simplicity.

Read More Here

Tracking Events via Javascript

Track events by calling the ours function:

ours('track', 'Event Name');

If you'd like to capture additional attributes:

ours('track', 'Event Name', { value: 1, color: 'red' }, { first_name: "First name" });

Key Points:

There are four parts

1. Event name
   • The event name is what you will see in your Ours recent event view. You will need to "Allow" this event name on all destinations it should dispatch.
2. Event properties
   • The event properties are optional. You can pass whatever you would like here. Example: {value: 100} to specify the event had a value of $100.
   • $distinct_id is a special event property - It can be used for de-duplicating your events. Please use a sufficiently random value here, and avoid passing this property if you are not sure how to use it.
3. User properties
   • User properties only accept specific user properties specified by Ours. You can see the complete list here. These properties can be mapped to your various destinations
4. Default properties
   • Default properties are things specific to where the event happened. Ours automatically captures many things like utm_campaign, fbclid, browser type, IP address, and 100+ more properties. These can be mapped back to various destinations. You can optionally override any of these using our GTM template.

See Data Mapping, and User Properties for more details.

Both the Javascript library and GTM template support sending all of the four properties above.

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Event Names

We recommend sending semantically named events to Ours, and then using the built in renaming feature to rename the events before sending them to a destination.

For example, we recommend sending Ours:

• "Summer Therapy Special Button Click" and then using our one-click renaming feature to rename the event to "MagicalElf" before sending it to a destination like Facebook

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Ad-Specific Event Tracking

For advertising campaigns, Ours automatically captures and dispatches key query parameters from clicks, such as gclid (Google) or fbclid (Facebook). These parameters are included in tracked events and forwarded to relevant ad platforms.

Automatic Ad Conversion Tracking:

• Ours detects sufficient properties to trigger conversions (e.g., for Google Ads).
• Automatically handles dispatching conversions without manual intervention, improving tracking reliability.

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Default Parameters Collected

Ours automatically collects a variety of default parameters with each event to provide a comprehensive view of user behavior.

You can review all parameters collected by navigating to the Mappers inside of any destination. From here, open the variable dictionary to explore:

At a highlevel, we collect things like:

Ad Tracking Parameters:

• gclid, gad_source, gc_id, gbraid, wbraid, utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_content, utm_term, fbclid, ad_id, msclkid, ttclid, rdt_cid

Session and User Information:

• sessionCount: Tracks the user’s session count.
• user_agent: Captures device and browser details.

Device and Browser Details:

• browser, browser_version, device_type

Page and Referrer Details:

• current_url, referrer, pathname, host

Screen Resolution:

• screen_height, screen_width

Other:

• title: The current page’s title.
• fbp and fbc: Facebook tracking identifiers.
• browser_language: The default browser language.

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Best Practices for Event Tracking

1. Add Events:
   • Add custom events to your Allow List before sending them to destinations.
2. Use Semantic Event Names:
   • Name the events in Ours with a pattern like: "Name Action". For example, "Summer CTA Click" or "Homepage Video View".
3. Use Event Renaming:
   • Protect sensitive data by avoiding event names that reveal personal or identifiable information.
   • Click "rename" event from your destinations allowed event list. And, automatically generate a unique name.
4. Leverage Default Properties:
   • Take advantage of automatically captured properties to enrich your events without extra effort.
5. Test Events with a Test Token:
   • Use test tokens to safely debug events without impacting production data. See Tracking and Debugging Events.

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Platform-Specific Recommendations

When sending events to platforms like Facebook and Google, ensure that your event names and properties align with their guidelines. These platforms often have unique requirements, such as specific event names or mandatory properties for accurate tracking.

Refer to each destination's documentation in Destinations for a detailed overview of optional and required properties.

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Summary

Events are at the core of the Ours platform, allowing you to track key user actions and forward them securely to destinations. By following best practices for event naming, leveraging default properties, and managing user privacy, you can optimize your tracking workflows while maintaining compliance with privacy standards.