Third and fourth party ad tracking is allowed on Cars.com subject to the following guidelines and policies. Clients/agencies must comply with these guidelines to serve ads with pixel tracking (tags/beacons) on Cars.com’s websites.
Tracking Conditions
Pixels/tags/beacons or analytics scripts are allowed only for monitoring, advertising management, analytics and/or performance tracking (i.e., sales tiebacks).
Pixels can be utilized to improve creative performance, and data collected outside of Cars.com may be used to improve creative performance.
Client/agency may not associate cookies, web beacons or other tracking mechanisms with personally identifiable information (PII) for behavioral targeting, geo-targeting, retargeting or the creation of segments of the Cars.com audience. Without limiting the foregoing, client/agency agrees not to engage in any behavioral targeting, geo-targeting or retargeting of users of Cars.com’s website(s) outside of Cars.com website(s) using data collected from users of Cars.com website(s).
The storage of, or attempt to capture referring URL or Cars.com’s URL where the ad unit is placed, is prohibited.
Technical Requirements
Supported campaign tracking mechanisms are viewability, bot tracking and validating ad safe content.
Blocking the creative from rendering based on page content, geo-targeting or other criteria is prohibited.
Ad loading or page performance issues must not be caused.
Pixel must load after the initial ad load is complete.
Pixel request must be a direct request. Redirects are not allowed.
Pixel must be under 1K.
Pixel must be HTTPS compliant.
Flash cookies are not permitted.
Cars.com does not support site-served tracking.
Implementation
Cars.com accepts up to two pixels per ad, which should be served appended to the tag.
Multiple vendor tracking and/or fourth-party calls must be connected as a single asset, in a standard format 1×1 pixel, and fire simultaneous calls to each vendor.
Client/agency is responsible for stringing together the pixels.
Campaign Requirements
The pixel will not be used for billing by Cars.com to client.
Pixel must not add to any ad counting discrepancies.
Vendors
Third and fourth party vendors must be approved/certified by Cars.com and meet its quality standards for availability, response time, and security of the ad server.1
Cars.com will not maintain the relationship with any third and fourth party vendors.
Cars.com is not responsible for any fees associated with these services.
General
Pixels may not be added to ad tags without Cars.com’s prior approval and acceptance of these guidelines and policies. Specify the following in tracking requests:
