Marketing Channel Visits vs Marketing Channel Instances | Community
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J
JSP2
Level 2
July 7, 2022
Solved

Marketing Channel Visits vs Marketing Channel Instances

  • July 7, 2022
  • 1 reply
  • 4783 views

Hello,

 

My understanding is that Visits can be higher in the Marketing Channel Report over Marketing Channel Instances if Direct/Session refresh are set to NOT override Last Touch. Since visits are incremented each time a new channel is hit, a user could hit multiple channels in one session.  Is that a correct understanding?  

If the business just wants a very high level report of traffic (not conversions) coming from each Marketing Channel, which is the most accurate metric to use?  Visits? Marketing Channel Instances? or Campaign  Click Throughs (I read somewhere that this could be used as Visits metric)?   As you can see here, there is quite a discrepancy in values.  I don't know which metric accurately answers the question, "how many customers came from (Marketing Channel)?"

 

 

 

I know that this question has been asked here https://experienceleaguecommunities.adobe.com/t5/adobe-analytics-questions/marketing-channel-instances-not-equal-to-visits-why/m-p/364934#M6898 , but the answer in the post is comparing the SUM of the Visits in a Marketing Channel report vs the SUM of the Visits in a site wide report.  

 

On a given day, the sum of the Visits in the Marketing Channel report is higher, since a customer can touch multiple channels in a Visit.  As stated in the referenced post, the total Visits is always the same because of de-duplication.  I am specifically asking about the comparison between Marketing Channel Visits and Marketing Channel Instances, as shown in my original screen shot.

 

Marketing Channel Visits

 

 

Thanks

Site Wide Visits:

 

Thanks in advance!

Jen

 

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Best answer by yuhuisg

Unfortunately, the bolded part in this statement is wrong:

@jsp2 wrote:

Since visits are incremented each time a new channel is hit, a user could hit multiple channels in one session.  Is that a correct understanding?  

Visits are not incremented each time a new channel is hit. That might be how it works in Google Analytics, but not so with Adobe Analytics. In Adobe Analytics, visits are incremented only due to inactivity timeouts (and some other reasons, e.g. excessive hits in a short duration, but those normally apply to bots.)
E.g.

  • 12:00pm Tom arrives at your website from Natural Search.
  • 12:02pm: Tom goes to another page in your website.
  • 12:05pm: Tom goes to yet another page in your website.
  • Then, Tom goes for a toilet break.
  • 12:20pm: Tom arrives at your website from Email.
  • 12:22pm: Tom goes to another page in your website.
  • Then, Tom goes for lunch.
  • 2:00pm: Tom arrives at your website from Paid Search.

For the above scenario, Tom had 2 Visits (starting at 12:00pm and 2:00pm) but 3 Marketing Channel Instances (starting at 12:00pm, 12:20pm and 2:00pm).

Marketing ChannelMarketing Channel InstancesVisits
Natural Search11
Email11
Paid Search11
Total32

So, which metric to use to get a "very high level report of traffic (not conversions) coming from each Marketing Channel"?

If the nature of your property is that people are unlikely to get to it from more than one channel in the same visit (i.e. within less than 30 minutes between every interaction in your property), then you can use Visits as your metric. But if there is a high chance that people do use more than one channel in the same visit, then Marketing Channel Instances might be more useful.

1 reply

yuhuisg
Community Advisor
yuhuisgCommunity AdvisorAccepted solution
Community Advisor
July 8, 2022

Unfortunately, the bolded part in this statement is wrong:

@jsp2 wrote:

Since visits are incremented each time a new channel is hit, a user could hit multiple channels in one session.  Is that a correct understanding?  

Visits are not incremented each time a new channel is hit. That might be how it works in Google Analytics, but not so with Adobe Analytics. In Adobe Analytics, visits are incremented only due to inactivity timeouts (and some other reasons, e.g. excessive hits in a short duration, but those normally apply to bots.)
E.g.

  • 12:00pm Tom arrives at your website from Natural Search.
  • 12:02pm: Tom goes to another page in your website.
  • 12:05pm: Tom goes to yet another page in your website.
  • Then, Tom goes for a toilet break.
  • 12:20pm: Tom arrives at your website from Email.
  • 12:22pm: Tom goes to another page in your website.
  • Then, Tom goes for lunch.
  • 2:00pm: Tom arrives at your website from Paid Search.

For the above scenario, Tom had 2 Visits (starting at 12:00pm and 2:00pm) but 3 Marketing Channel Instances (starting at 12:00pm, 12:20pm and 2:00pm).

Marketing ChannelMarketing Channel InstancesVisits
Natural Search11
Email11
Paid Search11
Total32

So, which metric to use to get a "very high level report of traffic (not conversions) coming from each Marketing Channel"?

If the nature of your property is that people are unlikely to get to it from more than one channel in the same visit (i.e. within less than 30 minutes between every interaction in your property), then you can use Visits as your metric. But if there is a high chance that people do use more than one channel in the same visit, then Marketing Channel Instances might be more useful.

    J
    JSP2Author
    Level 2
    July 8, 2022

    Thank you so much for taking the time to respond.  I understand your example, but then how do I explain why Marketing Channel Visits are ALWAYS HIGHER than Marketing Channel Instances in this report below?  In your example, it is very clear that there are 2 Visits/3 Marketing Channel Instances.  If I needed to answer the question, how much Direct traffic did we get on this day?  Is it accurate to say "92,705 visits" or  "53,915 Marketing Channel Instances"??  The business won't understand what "Marketing Channel Instances" so not only do I want to ensure accurate reporting, but terminology/metrics that are familiar.      NOTE: It is likely that our customers can hit multiple channels in a single visit.        

    Thanks so much in advance for your time.

    yuhuisg
    Community Advisor
    yuhuisgCommunity Advisor
    Community Advisor
    July 10, 2022

    What you're seeing looks like a result of how your Marketing Channel Processing Rules have been configured, in particular, with those rules that don't have any conditions that use Tracking Code. E.g. for Direct, is it set to be set only with the First Hit of a Visit?

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