DFP Ad links with CACHEBUSTER

[Anonymous]

Has anyone come across problems with DFP Ad links in Marketo. for some reason Marketo always edits the link, especially one with the %%CACHEBUSTER%% DFP Macro and adds a number 25 between the % making the link end as such %25%CACHEBUSTER%25% and in turn breaking the link. If anyone has come up with a solution to fix this would be appreciative.

P.S I have tried making the links none track-able and still Marketo edits the link. Also to note, if I click to view the email online (open in browser) the links work fine, links are broken only in the actual emails (tried clicking the link in outlook, gmail, apple mail etc all dont work).

I have also tried to remove the CACHEBUSTER macro, and generating a random number instead, still does not work....

Even tried shortening the link using Google's Link Shortening API, no go...

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

Ed, the %%CACHEBUSTER%% doesn't do anything unless you replace it with an actual random number. Using the {{system.datetime}} should suffice.

[Anonymous]

I tried that, and the link would break, only way the link works is if I keep the %%CACHEBUSTER%% in... very strange

Is there a way to disable URL encoding in Marketo?

[Anonymous]

its a Doubleclick DFP Macro (DFP macros - DoubleClick for Publishers Help )

[SanfordWhiteman]

Yeah, I recognized it! You don't need it if it isn't unique (not necessarily random) as it serves no purpose. I haven't had a prob turning it off.

You can't turn off URL encoding because %% isn't a valid URL sequence. It has to be %25%25.

[Anonymous]

Actually your suggestion seems to work!, when I use just {{system.datetime}}, initially tried to add Date().getTime() as the cachebuster at the end of the link before it was sent to marketo.!

Again Sanford to the rescue!... you need a Marketo cape lol

[SanfordWhiteman]

     new Date().getTime()

would work, but would have to run in JS to be unique, thus the pixel would have to be injected via JS, too.