Attribution IQ best practice

[David_Jerome]

Hi all,

I am not sure exactly what to get from you all but I thought I would ask anyway.

I am in a very unique situation where I can essentially "start again" with marketing channels (COVID made such an impact that YOY reporting is no longer required).

However looking at the adobe documentation, best practice for Marketing channels is to no longer use "Direct" or "Session Refresh". Is anyone else doing this as it seems like a very odd choice.

Thanks

[vibhatna]

@David_Jerome ,

Seems like the best practice related to not to use Direct and Session refresh was in context of Custom Attribution Models.

If you are using default attribution(like First/Last touch) for marketing channel you can still use Direct/Session refresh channels.  

[KristiB1]

Hi @David_Jerome I've just done this!

in the case of my client we chose to override EVERY channel, so Direct/Session refresh didn't come into it.  So it was easy to follow.

However, if you are looking at having Direct (and/or other channels) not override, you need to follow the new Best Practice guide.  This is because Attribution IQ does not take into account the Override settings of Marketing Channels. Any channel that you set up in Marketing Channels will always override in the Attribution IQ reports.

This is REALLY frustrating and now we are forced back into having to explain to Clients that "None" means "Direct" when they used to see a report that used to say Direct.  

Don't even think about using the default attribution First/Last Touch reports.  It's 2021 not 1970!

(NB - Adobe's documentation is still really confusing on this, and I wish they would remove the First/Last touch all together)

[David_Jerome]

@KristiB1/ @vibhatna Thanks for coming back to me on this.

I spoke to Jen Lasser (Adobe's Analytics Product Manager)  about this week and her understanding (as per the documentation) is that if you are starting fresh you should not have a direct or session refresh (as per the documentation). I guess it does make sense that direct is not technically a "marketing" channel.

I guess that is one way of looking at it.