Add Product Catalogs as a Brand
A product catalog is a data feed that holds a list of your products and their metadata. These are commonly used if you're selling products online, but can also be used in other verticals, such as credit cards, travel, home listings, and more. Many brands will create a product catalog through their e-commerce (or shopping cart) solution, which can be exported and shared with impact.com.
When adding a retail product catalog, there are a series of steps you need to complete, which help showcase your offerings, enhance customer experience, and streamline the buying process. Follow the steps below:
Prepare your catalog for upload
Do the following to set up your catalog for the best possible visibility and performance.
Ensure Marketplace visibility requirements are met
Every product in your catalog file must include complete data for the following critical fields, or they may be excluded from Marketplace surfaces like the Product Marketplace and Mobile App:
SKU /
CatalogItemIdProduct URLImage URLStock AvailabilityPrice(only products priced > $2.00 USD will appear)See Product Catalog Field Requirements for the full list of fields.
To avoid unnecessary validation errors and ensure you have all required fields, it's also best to align your catalog file with our Product Catalog Best Practices before continuing.
Check your program ad settings
Before adding product catalogs to your program, ensure that they are enabled in your ad settings. Partners will not be able to view your product catalogs unless this setting is enabled.
From the top navigation bar, select
[User profile] → Settings.In the right column, under General, select Ad Settings.
In the Ad Types section, under Product Catalogs, ensure that
[Checked box] Enable product catalogs for this program is checked.Select Save.
Connect your catalog
Do the following to add your catalog to impact.com and make its products available to promote.
Upload your product catalog
From the left navigation bar, select
[Engage] → Content → Products → Product Catalogs.In the upper-right corner, select Create Product Catalog Asset → Retail.
For credit card catalogs, see Add Credit Card Catalogs.
Enter a unique Product Catalog Name (this is how your partners will search for it).
Optionally, enter Labels that partners can use to search for this product catalog.
Optionally, upload a PDF document with Catalog Instructions so partners understand how to navigate your product catalog.
Select an upload method for your product catalog (methods listed in order of recommendation):
Pull From URL: impact.com will pull the catalog from your server.
Integrated Shopping Cart Import: impact.com will pull the catalog from your shopping cart.
Impact FTP Server: You push the file to our FTP server.
Impact SFTP Server: A specialized upload method reserved for specific integrations only.
Direct Upload: You manually upload the catalog file each time you want to update it.
If applicable, select a Format. Otherwise, select Integrated Shopping Cart Import.
Select the
[Drop-down menu], then select a format.Enter the Upload File Name for the product catalog with its file extension. The name you enter here must match the name of the file you upload.
E.g.,
starks_catalog.xml,starks_catalog.txt,starks_catalog.csv.If you're using a CSV file, replace spaces in the field names with underscores.
Google Merchant Center
impact.com currently supports Google Merchant’s text-based formats (tab-delimited TXT files, not CSV files), as well as XML files (RSS and Atom).
Custom format
impact.com also supports custom-formatted catalogs. You can upload files in .XML, .TXT, .CSV, and .PSV formats.
1. Specify your custom catalog's Link URL Field, Catalog Item ID Field, and Name Field in the respective textbox. These fields are mandatory.
2. Fill in the Catalog Item ID and Name mandatory fields.
View the Custom Format file fields for a full list of fields.
See the example below of formats to follow when entering product details.
3. Optionally, you can add custom fields to your product catalog. Select Add Another Field, then select the [Drop-down menu] and select an option.
Review the Custom Format file fields to learn more about the options in the drop-down menu.
eBay Commerce Merchant Center
impact.com supports both text-based (.TXT and .CSV) and XML formats for eBay Commerce. When using a .CSV file, ensure you replace spaces in the Field column with underscores. You can also view the eBay Commerce merchant file fields here.
Connexity Merchant Center
impact.com currently supports .TXT and .CSV file versions of Connexity's product catalogs. After generating your product catalog, you can upload it to impact.com.
CJ Affiliate by Conversant
impact.com supports various formats for CJ Affiliate product catalogs, including .TXT, .CSV, .PSV, and .XML files under the Product Feed Specifications: Shopping (Google Format) section. After generating your product catalog, you can upload it to impact.com.
Select your shopping cart solution:
Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Demandware, Shoplazza, or Amazon.
Enter your e-commerce access details. Select your e-commerce solution below for information on where to find these details:
Shopify
View our guide on the Shopify Product Catalog to learn how to find and set up your credentials.
Enter the Base URL of your store.
E.g.,
https://www.acmeacademy.com.
Enter your Access Token.
Learn how to get your Access Token.
Optionally, enter a Collection ID.
Optionally,
![[Toggle on]](https://help.impact.com/~gitbook/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpaligoapp-cdn-eu1.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com%2Fimpact%2Fattachments%2Ff01cdffa431a4d75ff09c130b66974d4-84d1224fd3bb6ba94b899febe2021eaa.svg&width=300&dpr=3&quality=100&sign=ea1f84a52318414ba51b9ab57e447ec0&sv=3)
[Toggle on] Include Product Variants to filter out variants.
Magento
Enter the Base URL of your store.
E.g.,
https://www.acmeacademy.com.
For the Consumer Key, Consumer Secret, Access Token, and Access Token Secret, access your authentication keys and tokens.
BigCommerce
Enter your Store Hash.
Enter your Access Token.
You'll need to create a store-level API account in BigCommerce and use the generated access token to connect your product catalog. This is an example of the BigCommerce API credentials you'll get:
For the store-level API Scopes, set both Products and Information and Settings to read-only. All other scopes may be left as is.
WooCommerce
Enter the Base URL of your store.
E.g.,
https://www.acmeacademy.com.
Enter your API Username and Password.
API username — enter your Consumer Key here
API password — enter your Consumer Secret here
Learn how to generate your keys. You'll also need to enable legacy REST API.
Demandware
Enter your Base URL and Site ID. They will be the same. Learn how to get your site ID.
E.g.,
https://www.acmeacademy.com.
Learn how to get the API username and password credentials.
Shoplazza
Enter the Base URL of your store.
E.g.,
https://www.acmeacademy.com.
Enter your Access Token.
Learn how to get your Access Token.
Optionally, specify a Collection ID to only add products from a specific Shoplazza product collection.
Amazon
Warning: Amazon shopping cart integration is currently exclusive to brands with Seller subscriptions and is not a self-serve feature.
If your Seller catalog has more than 1,000 products, use one of the manual file upload methods to import them instead. Automatic catalog ingestion is limited to 1,000 products due to Amazon API restrictions.
From the
[Drop-down menus], select the Language and Currency in which the catalog will be displayed for partners.Use the
[Drop-down menu] to select Service Areas for geo-targeting.Your Available areas are the service areas targeted by your program. You can change this in your program settings as follows:
Manage available service areas
From the top navigation bar, select
[User profile] → Settings.Under General in the right column, select Marketplace Profile.
Under Program Information, navigate to Service Areas.
Use the
[Drop-down menu] and 
[Unchecked boxes] to select or deselect service areas as needed.Once you're done, select Save.
Optionally, you can manage your product catalog via API. Refer to Catalogs overview.
Optionally, set up mobile fallback.
Configure mobile fallback
You can set up mobile fallback on your product catalogs. This option allows you to send traffic to your mobile apps, which allows partners to use generic ads for a single app across many platforms.
In the Mobile App Fallback section,
[Toggle on] Mobile Fallback.Alternatively, find an existing product catalog and select Edit.
From the
[Drop-down menu] options under Android and iOS, select a fallback option for each platform. This selection will then be populated with the URL to download your app.impact.com will automatically detect the device type of the consumer and direct them to the appropriate app store to download your app once mobile fallback is set up.
Select Save.
Select Save.
Optionally, to restrict which partners can access this product catalog,
[Toggle on] Restrict Partner Access, then enter the names of Partners and partner Groups that should have access.Select which Partner Download Options you want to make available for this catalog. Options you can enable include FTP, API, or Partner Portal Browser Download
Select Save to create the product catalog entry and move on to the upload screen (for direct uploads).
Otherwise, if not adding your catalog via Direct Upload, you'll return to the Product Catalogs screen and continue the process below.
Review & troubleshoot catalog health issues
Each product catalog has a health score that highlights any issues. To reach the excellent range, resolve errors, warnings, and duplicates.
From the left navigation menu, select
[Engage] → Content → Products → Product Catalogs.If a catalog has any errors, warnings, or duplicate line items, you will see how many of each are present in the Health column.
Pending - Your catalog is being uploaded.
Processing - Your catalog is being processed.
Excellent - Your catalog is healthy. This product data set is complete and well-structured, giving it the best chance of performing effectively.
Good - Some crucial fields, like category or status, may be missing. Fixing this is necessary to improve the overall quality of the catalog.
Poor - More than 10% of required information is missing. The catalog must be fixed and re-uploaded.
Select errors, warnings, or duplicates to view line items with problems.
Only the first item in a set of duplicates will be represented in impact.com; all items duplicating the first will be ignored.
Address the issues, using Troubleshoot Product Catalog Errors & Warnings as a guide. Then re-upload the catalog to impact.com using the same method you used to upload the original catalog.
Upload methods that automatically fetch the catalog should automatically update when the next fetch event happens.
Important tip: To ensure your catalog is set up for the best possible visibility and performance, be sure to see Product Catalog Best Practices.
Make catalogs available to partners
After adding the catalog and reviewing its health, proceed to the final step to make it available for your partners and ensure your products are featured in the Product Marketplace. This could attract more program applications. Consider creating workflows to automate your program application processing.
From the Product Catalogs screen, find the catalog you just added.
Hover over the catalog you just added, on the right select
[More] → Make Available for Use.
Note: Enable direct product links, add the product landing page domain as a deep-linkable domain in the Allow Partners to deep link to specific pages on my site section of your tracking settings.
Last updated
Was this helpful?