SDK Sources

Loading data from sites and applications in real-time

SDK sources are sites or applications configured to send data to your DCN in real-time. You can configure your site or application to send data to your DCN by deploying one of Optable's lightweight Software Development Kits (SDKs). SDKs are currently available for JavaScript, iOS, and Android.

Using the SDKs

Visitor IDs

Every visitor or user of a site or application interacting with your DCN is randomly assigned an identifier called a visitor ID. The visitor ID is assumed to be unique to the user on a single site or application. Visitor IDs can be linked together by way of other connecting IDs, such as Email addresses and mobile device advertising IDs (e.g., IDFAs, GAIDs) when these are available and explicitly sent to your DCN via the SDK identify API. If you do not identify visitors to your sites and apps, your DCN will understand that they exist based on their visitor ID, but will not be able to connect these to any other identity.

On web sites the visitor ID is stored in a first-party cookie, which is either a secure HTTP-only browser cookie set by the DCN when it shares an effective top-level domain name plus one (eTLD+1) with your site, or browser LocalStorage otherwise. You can find more information about how to initialize the web SDK to use either visitor ID storage method in the SDK's README on GitHub.

If you have multiple sites all sharing eTLD+1 with your DCN and you are using the web SDK in its default browser cookie based setting, then the same visitor will have the same visitor ID across all of your sites. On the other hand, if you've deployed the web SDK with the localStorage storage setting instead, then the same visitor will have different visitor ID values across your sites.

In iOS and Android applications, the SDK always stores the DCN-assigned visitor ID in client-side storage on the user's device. The visitor ID's storage is only accessible to the application which has created it, such that the same device will have a different visitor ID value assigned and stored in each application.

APIs for Sending Data

The Optable SDKs provide the following APIs to send data directly to your DCN:

• Identify API is used to associate the visitor ID assigned to the user to one or more additional IDs, such as an Email address, IDFA, PPID, etc. For example, the effect of calling identify with an Email address is that the visitor ID assigned to the browser or device is loaded as an ID profile with a reference to a neighbouring Email ID.

• Profile API is used to load traits associated with the visitor ID. Traits are key value attributes associated with the visitor, such as for example gender, age, etc.

Note that the SDKs provide other APIs such as targeting, though the latter is not used to send data to your DCN, rather retrieve the list of matching and activated audiences for ad targeting.