List Variable Expiration and Allocation

[#1]

List variables are great, but they are not as user friendly as they can and should be.  I was really excited when they first came out, mainly to use them for internal campaigns.  I would be able to get impressions and clicks all in one variable.  I would set all of the internal campaign impressions with an impression event on one page, and then if the user clicked through one of them, it would take over and receive credit for any downstream conversions.

However, the whole "full allocation" is what throws me off.  If I set values A, B, and C on page 1 with event1 (impressions), and then C again on page 2 with event2 (click through), it will give a count of event2 to A, B, and C instead of just event2.  It would be great to have a "most recent" allocation to only give credit to last value(s) passed.  So in the example above, C would be the only one to get a count for event1.  Of course there are some other implications to doing this, such as overwriting this with a new impression, and that is fine and can be dealt with separately, but it would be really great to have "most recent" allocation instead of treating it as an array and appending the values to a big list during the expiration period.

[#2]

Agreed,   I really can't imagine that how I would use this full allocation tracking.   

[#3]

I can even see this becoming a bit more advnaced or complex in the configuration.  Similar to merchandising eVars, it can have trigger to tell it what to persist.  So in the example of the internal campaigns, we can set any value(s) we want in the list var, and those would be set for that page view, which would be the impressions.  Once the visitor clicks on a banner, we can pass an event with the ID for the one campaign, and that event can trigger SiteCatalyst to only persist that value.  So if a user views other campaign impressions, those will send just fine, but the persisted value will take credit for all down stream conversions.  Just a thought.

[#4]

Agreed, list evars really become unusable e.g. for teaser tracking: e.g. on page1 there are teaser A,B,C viewed (event1) and on page2 only teaser C (click-through, event2)  which leads to conversion (event3). Full allocation would now give A,B,C not only the conversion (event3) but also the click-through (event2)!

Best,

Michael

Originally the list evar had the first, recent allocation, but obviously this caused problems, so without any pre-notification by Adobe this has been replaced by linear, full.I am really angry about that ...

[#5]

Great comments, everyone. Thank you for sharing your input. Improving list variables is definitely on our list of things we want to get done. Please continue to share your needs regarding expiration and allocation and we'll revisit and reach out as we move toward solutions. 

[#6]

I've ran into this problem with "full" attribution this week. We're going to have to explicitally set the list var on all page views and link clicks and expire on the page view to make use of the variable. Woudl be nice if it would just be last touch and override the previous value.

[#7]

We were building segments based on list var and were wondering why items outside the segment were included in evar reports.  It took a while to chase it down and learn about "full attribution."  (very frustrating and expensive)

In the mean time we are implementing a code change to our click events to set the list var just for the page on which the on which the event fired.  At the same time, we'll have to change the config the list var to expire with the page view, as Jason stated in the previous comment.

[#8]

Agreed with all the comments above. We ran into the same allocation issue trying to track the internal campaigns and their click-throughs. And were very frustrated to findout about the full allocation of s.lists variables. Even more frustrating - none of the Customer Care reps pointed that out when we wondered why all list values are getting click-event allocations. We ended up using s.products instead - which is not the proper way of tracking internal campaigns and won't a good fit for everyone.