Criteo Fake Feed hosted on Google Drive

A guide to create and host a Feed on Google Drive.

Overview

This tutorial will explain how to create and host your feed on your Google Drive account and share its link.

G-Drive Account Creation

Please refer to this link for the official documentation on how to create a Google Drive Account: G-Drive Support

Notes

This guide is intended for all the cases where:

  • a Fake Feed is needed;
  • the catalog as a limitaded number of product and these get frequently manually updated.

Remember that:

  1. Only feeds on CSV format are supported
  2. Huge files (100k+ rows) are not well managed on Google Drive
  3. Once a sheet is configured on Criteo side, structure updates are not recommended (as may break our config demanding immediate work on Criteo side), ie:
    • change column names
    • add/remove columns
    • add empty rows in the middle of the content

Steps

  1. Upload the existing Excel file (or create a new spreadsheet) on Google Drive 1
  2. Feel free to change its content 2
  3. Make it shareable
    • Click on "Share" on top right: 3
    • "Advanced" on bottom right: 4
    • "Change..." 5
    • Then, select the options below and Save:
      • On - Anyone with the link
      • Access: Anyone Can Edit 6
    • On the previous screen, you'll have the Shareable Link, giving access to this Google Sheet file in the editable format (still NOT the public link accessible for our platform) 7
  4. Publish the file to the web
    • On "File" menu, select "Publish to the web..." 8
    • Instead of "Web Page", select the format "Comma-separated values (.csv)"
    • Ensure that the option "Automatically republish when changes are made", under "Publish content & settings", is enabled
    • And "Publish" it 9
  5. Copy the published link and share it on your Criteo Contact 11

Attention

Multiple Sheets

In case the file was multiple sheets, ensure you select the correct sheet instead of "Entire Document"
10

Format

This is identified as the Published Link as it ends with:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/pub?output=csv