Everyone knows what a hashtag is, right?
Well think of Product Tags and Placement Tags as a type of hashtag that's internal to Candid. They're used or organize and merhchadize stuff and they are extremely flexible.
A Product Tag is associated with the specific product(s) you're offering. Each of your products will have it’s own product tag on Candid, typically generated from your product feed, that control the shoppable links displayed alongside media.
A Placement Tag is used to group and organize media for specific placement. For example, if you want specific images on your homepage then you would create a placement tag named homepage that any image you want to showcase there will be tagged with. You can also use placement tags to customize the approval workflow in scenarios where multiple approvals from different stakeholders are required. You can create them for different seasonal campaigns, for different product categories, you name it. These are used to power the drill-down options you see on community galleries and our API also supports advanced lookup using combinations of these tags.
Both Product and Placement tags can be added to any media in your collection and both are added using the same "Map To" type-ahead box.
There is no limit for tags added to media and you can delete them at anytime.
You may notice both referred to collectively as Mapping Tags on the Candid dashboard and various support guides.
Both Product and Placement tags can be created in an "ad-hoc" (on the fly) fashion as well, just start typing in the 'Map To' typeahead and the system will guide you (the last option will always allow you to create a new tag if you don't find it in the dropdown):
Frequently Asked Questions
Where can I view and manage my Mapping Tags?
The top right of each collection dashboard has a panel dedicated to Mapping Tags. Within that panel there is an Edit Tags option.
How do I create a new Mapping Tag?
Within the Edit Tags interface above, there is a New Tag button on the left side. For Product Tags, all you have to do is paste in the URL of the product and the system will automatically load the thumbnails, id, label and potentially the description field. You can adjust these as needed but be sure to select Save at the bottom.
How do you decide what image to use?
If the product tag was auto-generated from your product feed, we use the URL provided there and any updates to it will be automatically reflected. If the product was created on Candid, we use meta tags to infer the image you and you can easily pick or change the image selected.
How do I control the hotspots (where products are positioned on the image when you hover)?
We can these Placement Markers, and you can control them using the map icon that appears to the right of the 'Map To' typeahead.
How can I view all media associated with a particular Product or Placement Tag?
You can drill down and see all associated content simply by clicking on the tag as it appears under an asset.
Can I re-arrange media under each tag so that I can choose the ordering?
Yes, please refer to the custom layouts guide for additional info.
Can I automatically add Placement Tag or Product Tag to incoming media, based on specific publishing rules?
Yes, please contact your account manager to enable this. The most common use-case of this is when the same collection is shared between onsite displays and your Instagram Store. In these cases, brands typically use a Placement Tag ("Instagram") to dictate which media should appear on the store and typically setup a rule such that any content posted from their Instagram account has the Instagram tag automatically added to it.
Can I change the call-to-action text or headline associated with a given product?
Yes, you can make changes at any time using the Edit Tags button on the dashboard; however, if your collection is set to auto-update from a product feed, these changes may be lost in the next update. Any new tags created outside of your product feed will be preserved.
What happens if I change the attributes of a Product Tag that's connected to my feed?
The next time your feed is refreshed, your changes will be lost. However, if you've created any variations for the tag, they will retain their changes across feed updates.
We're not using a product feed but have been manually creating Product Tags for shoppable products. Recently, we moved all of our media assets previously hosted on our site (e.g. brand.com) to a different host (e.g. cdn.brand.com). Is there a way we can bulk-update the image URLs for the few hundred product tags we have?
Yes, this is actually a common request that can be handled by our support team. Please create a ticket specifying the previous host (e.g. www.brand.com) and the new host (e.g. cdn.brand.com) and we can update them in bulk
Is there a way I can bulk upload Placement Tags? If so is this something I can upload or do I need to send a CSV to support as I would with Product Tags? What columns would I need? Is it possible to give a Placement Tag a searchable description?
Yes, if you can send us a 2-column CSV (ID, Description), we can get this imported for you. For placement tags, the Description field will only be used for searches executed on the Mapping Tags interface. Please also note the ID of the Placement Tag can only use alphanumeric characters and underscores.
You can also manage Placement Tags in an external GoogleDoc so that updates there are automatically pushed into Candid, once this option is enabled, you'll find an Import Placements command on your Mapping Tags interface:
