Rakuten Advertising Feed | Build Guide

Product Feed Overview

Below are the attributes you need to provide in order to enable Rakuten Advertising to promote and target your products. Some attributes are required for all items while others are recommended. We use the term item to describe a single product listing or single sale listing. When using a Text delimited format, an item is equivalent to one line in your data feed.

Product Feed File Format

We support various feed types but prefer a Google Product Feed/File. The product feeds we support are Comma Separated (.csv) or Tab Delimited (.tsv or .txt) as well as compressed Zip (.zip) and GZip (.gz) files. In the TSV format, you’ll include the attribute names in the first row (i.e. header) separated by a tab. Then starting on the second row, include the corresponding values under each attribute name. An example using some of the required attributes would look like this:

Product Feed Fields

Attribute	Inclusion Advice	Attribute Description
id	Required	A unique identifier for the item. Must not change after item is created. Must correspond with the item identifier used in the tagging on site.
title	Required	Item name. Text should be no longer than 70 characters.
brand	Required	Brand name of the product. Required for each product with a clearly associated brand or manufacturer.
description	description	Additional details about the item.
google_product_category	Required	Indicates the category of your item based on the Google product taxonomy. These are preset categories.
item_group_id	Required	Shared identifier for all variants of the same product
link	Required	URL that directly links to the product.
image_link	Required	URL that directly links to the product image. Minimum 600x600pm. We support multiple image_links when available. Use image_link_x and replace x with a number.
price	Required	Original item price value and currency.
sale_price	Required	Current item price value and currency.
availability	Required	Designates whether the product is currently available. The availability attribute has only three accepted values: in stock, out of stock, preorder.
gtin	Required	Use the ‘GTIN’ attribute to submit Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs) in one of the following formats: UPC (in North America): 12-digit number, EAN (in Europe/GTIN-13): 13-digit number, JAN (in Japan/GTIN-13): 8- or 13-digit number. Also, known as barcode.
mpn	Required	A Manufacturer Part Number is used to uniquely identify a specific product among all products from the same manufacturer.
sku	Required	The SKU Number must have unique value for each item (row) in the product file. Any duplicate values will be collapsed into one using the first occurrence in the file when possible. This attribute is the same as ‘id’.
additional image link	Recommended for Search; Required for Social/Publisher feeds	If you have additional images for this item, include them in this attribute. For example, if you have images that show the product from a different angle than the main image, or if you have images of the packaging or the product in various settings. You can include up to 10 additional images per item by including the attribute multiple times. For tab-delimited, separate each URL by a comma. For XML, include each URL as a separate attribute.
condition	Required	Condition of the product. There are only three accepted values: New, Refurbished, Used.
gender	Required	The gender for which your product is intended. Three predefined values accepted: Male, Female, Unisex.
age group	Required	The demographic for which your product is intended. The only two accepted values of this attribute are: Adult, Kids.
sale price effective date	Recommended for items which use the ‘sale price’ attribute	Used in conjunction with sale price. This attribute indicates the date range during which the sale price applies. Example format: 2016-02-24T11:07:31+0100 / 2016-02-29T23:07:31+0100
product type	Strongly Recommended	Use the product_type attribute to include your own product categorization system in your product data. Unlike the google_product_category attribute, you choose which value to include. Example: Home > Women > Dresses > Maxi Dresses
color	Required for all apparel; Recommended for non-apparel	Attribute used to describe the item’s color. When a single item has multiple colors, you can submit up to two additional values as accent colors: Combine the colors with ‘/’ in order of prominence (dominant color first, then at most two accent colors). For example, a black shoe with green accents should have a color value of ‘Black/Green’. For items such as jewelry or wooden accessories, the finish or material name can be submitted in the color attribute (e.g., ‘Mahogany’ vs. ‘Stainless Steel’ vs. ‘Rose Gold’). Limit the number of colors submitted to three values.
size	Required for all apparel; Recommended for non-apparel	This indicates the size of a product. You may provide values which are appropriate to your items. This attribute is required for apparel (clothing, shoes) and any items that vary by size.
material	Recommended for variant apparel products that differ by material	The material or fabric that a product is made out of. For example, a high heel pump might have values of “Leather”, “Denim”, “Suede”, etc. Each item that differs in ‘material’ must be submitted as its own item, in conjunction with the ‘item group id’. The values you provide may be displayed to users, so provide values that they will be able to understand.
pattern	Recommended for variant apparel products that differ by pattern	The pattern or graphic print featured on a product. For example, a t-shirt might have a logo of a sports team and have pattern values of “Bears”, “Tigers”, etc. A dress might come in two prints, and have pattern values of “Polka Dot”, “Striped”, “Paisley”, etc. As a rule of thumb, if a user can choose to select different patterns on the landing page of your product, include all variant items in the same item group. Otherwise, use separate item groups.
tax	Required; can be sent in the feed or set up in Merchant Center	Recommended to set up in Google Merchant Center apart from the feed.
shipping	Required; can be sent in the feed or set up in Merchant Center	Recommended to set up in Google Merchant Center apart from the feed.
shipping weight	Required if you setup a shipping rule based on weight in Merchant Centert	This is the weight of the product used to calculate the shipping cost of the item. If you have specified a global shipping rule that is dependent on shipping weight, this attribute will be used to calculate the shipping cost of the item automatically.
multipack	Required if applicable	Submit merchant-defined multipacks. The ‘multipack’ attribute indicates the number of identical products for sale as one item. The price attribute must contain the total price for the multipack. A custom multipack containing 6 bars of soap: the ‘multipack’ attribute should be 6, the unique product identifiers for a single bar of soap should be provided according to the Unique Product Identifier Rules, and we recommend that the description should include “multipack” and include the quantity (6).
adult	Required if applicable	Designed to indicate if individual products are for adult use only (i.e. items that contain adult content such as nudity or suggestive content). This attribute affects where product listings can show. For example, “adult” or “non-family safe” product listings aren’t allowed to be shown in certain countries or to a certain audience.

Rakuten Documentation

Rakuten product feed specification