Creating a combined traffic sources variable

[brentrad]

I'm interested in finding a straightforward way to isolate a visitor's traffic source in one location in Adobe Analytics. The idea being that I can export this data and have it be as close as I can get to a "single source of truth" for what drove a visitor to the site. I am trying to avoid having to export multiple files (featuring multiple segments) and then marrying this data up in a database.

To this end, I've considered creating a "combined traffic sources" s.eVar, but am not sure if this is the best approach and am hoping that the community will weigh in. Part of the draw of using an s.eVar rather than a data warehouse request is that I can easily use the entries metric, which will take care of potential issues with internal URLs.

The general approach is the following:

1. If a campaign tracking code exists in the URL, the campaign tracking code is set as the eVar value OTHERWISE
2. If a campaign tracking code does not exist in the URL, then the referring domain is set as the eVar value

Does this seem like a good approach, or is there a better way? Would this be something that you'd recommend creating custom code in a tag manager, or would a processing rule suffice? Note that I am familiar with Marketing Channels, but am concerned about all the processing rules.

[Asheesh_Pandey · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Here is what I feel, In case you go for custom tracks you will probably track all the user coming from a campaign (email/paid/social, etc.) by query param (which will need to classify later) and I think you will try to capture referrer by using "document.referrer" (organic and affiliate/other sites) and then everything else you will consider as direct. correct? To achieve that you will still need to define some rules in DTM/Launch. Even after doing all this there may be some cases missed, also you will also need to look for first touch/last touch expiration etc.

To address all those challenges better, Adobe came up with Marketing Channel Reports. Marketing channel rules are relatively easy to manage if you already know all the logic which you will anyway need to define a rule in DTM/launch/proc rules.

In case If you are dealing with issues to export multiple files due to multi-segment, there are other ways to address that in Adobe. e.g. can consider setting segments name in a prop/eVar, which will allow you to export segments name in another column in one report.

Thanks,

Asheesh