Merchant Feeds

Overview

Howl provides the ability for our publisher partners to download merchant feeds in a standardized format for monetization. This enables product data to be integrated into your CMS, allowing for more control over monetization decisions and integration of multi-button formats.

Feed Schema

Please note: all fields are nullable due to incomplete and/or inapplicable data. The feeds will only include products that are in-stock at time of file generation.

Field Name

Type

Description

brand

String

Name of product brand

colors

List<string>

List of colors for the product (if applicable)

currency

String

Currency code of price

description

String

Description of the product

google_product_category

List<string>

List of Google Product categories for this product

gtin

String

Global trade item number; a unique product identifier

image_url

String

URL of product image

item_group_id

String

ID for a group of Item IDs

item_id

String

Individual Item ID

manufacturer

String

model

String

mpn

String

name

String

Product name

price

Float

Regular price of product

sale_price

Float

Sale price of product

sizes

List<string>

List of sizes for the product (if applicable)

sku

String

Stock keeping unit; a unique product identifier to specific retailer

store_page_url

String

Product page URL

Formatting

Please make note of below formatting standards when ingesting the product feeds:

  • All headers are wrapped in double quotes

  • All string type fields are wrapped in double quotes

  • All empty fields are denoted by empty double quotes

Feed Delivery

Howl supports two methods of feed delivery:

Amazon S3: Feeds will be delivered in a shared S3 bucket configured to have a sub-folder for each merchant.

If the publisher has their own AWS account, we will configure a shared S3 bucket that can be owned by either party. Access will be managed using IAM roles.

If the publisher does not have their own AWS account, we will configure a shared S3 bucket accessed by secret key & access key. Credentials will be shared in a 1pass vault for security purposes.

SFTP: Feeds will be delivered to publisher’s SFTP location.

Configuring the URLs

Product URLs contained in feed must be wrapped in our click wrapper (Clickmate) before publishing to the site. This ensures the link is properly monetized with Howl tracking appended on click.

Publisher JS Tag

It is recommended to add our Publisher JS Tag for this integration method. The JSTag allows for real-time optimization utilizing dynamic links and dynamic button displays as detailed in the linked documentation page. Additionally, the JS Tag unlocks higher rates by enabling impressions tracking and post-impression attribution.

Getting Started

Please contact your account manager or support@planethowl.com and we will reach out with next steps.