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AntoineDabo
October 21, 2023
Question

Organic, Direct channel Attribution with Multiple open Blank Tabs

  • October 21, 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 807 views

Hi - I'm trying to get clarification on channel attribution with the creation of new tabs (new windows) and how AA correctly does this. I understand it takes all the sessions as one, so if someone is organic, they stay organic. However, data for a direct channel with many customised factors comes up per page with multiple-choice product makers and shows a very similar traffic value (50% + or - 5%). This suggests a session is broken and attributed (as seen elsewhere in other tools ). I wanted to know how AA counts and attributes '_blank' window open multiple sessions and they can be attributed to other channels - specifically direct which almost mirrors the organic traffic at a higher or lower traffic percentage.

  

I've noted a correlation between opening a new tab in Screaming Frog 'target' showing an attribute column for '_blank', and simply opening a new window. The site opens up various new tabs let's say, every time you try on a new pair of glasses, and you choose red, and square frame or a round frame in blue. Does AA record the actual engagement time in a session window tab? So if various tabs are open does the clock keep running and bouncing? 

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2 replies

RobertBlakeley
Community Advisor
RobertBlakeleyCommunity Advisor
Community Advisor
October 22, 2023

Moving from one tab to another (if in the same Chrome browser) is treated as if you used a single tab.

 

So the for the single visit:

  • Page A (tracking code)
  • page B (new tab, _blank link)
    page C (new tab, direct)
  • page D (new tab, direct)
  • page E (new tab, google)

The visit would show 5 page views.


What shows up in your Marketing Channel report depends on how you set up your channel attribution. For example, you might see the first touch for that visit attributed to tracking code or the last touch attributed to google.


Here is a Channel report example for the visit above. The channel attribution is set to first page of the visit. (The label says last touch channel, but it's set to first page of the visit). Because the attribution is set to first page of the visit, the Google and Direct entries are ignored. The Tracking code and Search Engine variables show one instance each of a value being set.

Does this help?

Jennifer_Dungan
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
Jennifer_DunganCommunity Advisor and Adobe Champion
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
October 23, 2023

There's a lot to un-pack here....

 

First off, opening a link with target="_blank" or opening a link manually as a new tab should pick up the referrer the same.. but this is all dependent on if there are tags in the site that are actively blocking the passing of referrers (i.e. rel="noreferrer")

 

Referral logic is based on HTML headers, so as long as the headers are working properly then Adobe Analytics (and other web analytics tools) should all be able to read the information properly).

 

Now, Referrer information is used in the Referrers Report (and when an internal referrer, the value is ignored/not included in the report). But referrer data is not used for flow diagrams (page to page to page) that is based solely on hit timestamp data.

 

Now.. when it comes to "engaged time"... this is always going to be an imperfect solution, since Adobe is not a heartbeat system. Time spent is based on timestamp differences between page views.... Time Stamp B - Time Stamp A.... 

 

If you are navigating in multiple tabs, the math for the time spent will not be isolated to individual tabs, As soon as Adobe sees a new page view (no matter which tab) that will be used to calculate the time on the last page viewed...

 

The last page viewed in your site (and subsequently single page visits) will not have any time spent associated to that view, as there is nothing to calculate the time spent against.

 

If you want more accurate time spend, you would be better off getting another tool (on top of Adobe) that uses heartbeats.. most of these also take into account if the tab is active or not.

 

The time spent metrics in Adobe are good for comparisons over time, are people spending more or less time on the site, or per page, etc... but its not good for accurate time spend... 

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