Dynamic Text Replacement - Ignore if Blank?

  • 26 January 2016
  • 5 replies
  • 15 views
Phillip

I’d like to move all my AdWord’s Upgraded URL tracking templates to the campaign level.

The only thing preventing me from doing this is some ads have Dynamic Text Replacement, but not all. I thought I could move Dynamic Text Replacement tags to custom parameters. But if not all tags have the Dynamic Text Replacement tags, then the text goes blank on my landing page.

Is there a way I make my landing page ignore blank Dynamic Text Replacement tags?

If the landing page is…
http://www.mylandingpage.com/?dynamictext=

The “dynamictext” variable is ignored by Dyncamic Text Replacement.

5 replies

J

Hi Phillip, 
It doesn’t look like this one has been answered yet, so I thought I’d chime in. At this point in time there’s no way to stop the dynamic text replacement from reading a blank tag, meaning the landingpage.com/?dynamictext= will indeed populate as just a blank character like you’re seeing. The only way to stop this is to remove the parameter all together (landingpage.com/ leave-blank ) or remove the dynamic text variable on the page itself. 

This does bring up an interesting question though. Is there a use-case for using DTR to fill in blank text on a page? I can’t really think of one myself, so there might be a case for filing this as a bug and making ?dynamictext=  _just load the default text instead. 

The only other option I can think of would be a redirect in the header that looked for  _landingpage.com/?dynamictext=  _and changed it to  _landingpage.com _. This obviously wouldn’t be ideal, but it is a possibility. 

What do you think, Phillip? 

Phillip

Thanks!

I also contacted AdWords to see if they had a solution.

They recommend setting a default value at the campaign level. Then override the default value at the ad group or ad level on the few ads that use DTR.

The downside to this is there is more room for error since the landing page default text is now duplicated in AdWords. I’ll just have to remember to change the text in both places, if I want to modify the default text.

Also, on the campaign I’m working on, the default text is “IT Professional”. So when I use DTR in AdWords, the default text changes to “It Professional” because of the proper case setting. I had this problem on another page (word was HVAC-R), so I’ll likely just use JavaScript to detect and change to uppercase the “IT”.

J

Glad to hear that AdWords was able to recommend a solution. 

How do you feel about logging the blank parameter as a bug and changing how that aspect of DTR functions? Can you think of any use-case where a blank parameter would be useful?

Phillip

I can’t think of any use-case.

J

Just a heads up: we’ve submitted this as a bug so we can get this fixed. Thought you’d want to know!

Reply


Terms & ConditionsCookie settings