Default dimensions captured in Adobe Analytics

[vsgc]

I would request for some inputs on whether there are some dimensions in Adobe Analytics that are part of default implementation?

Like there are dimensions captured in Google Analytics by default which don't have any implementation needed apart from adding scripts to my website, is there a list of dimensions in Adobe Analytics that should be available by default without the tech team needing to perform custom implementations?

Refering to the dimensions mentioned here under the dimensions list:

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/analytics/components/dimensions/overview.html?lang=en

Thanks in advance

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

Standard Dimensions are fairly limited... technically I believe that the URL and Referrer will be captured by default. You can overwrite these (values, particularly referrer on SPAs)... but keep in mind that URL while available in the Raw Data, and Data Warehouse Exports, is not available in Workspaces (for that, you need to set up a custom eVar, generally at Hit level expiry).

Technically, Page (pageName) is also set by default as the main identifier for a page.. but when you don't set this yourself, it just sends the URL as a generic value. So it's highly recommended that you set up your Page Names specifically.

Other items which are captured by default would be location items (IP. Geo Country, Geo Region, Geo City - unless of course you are hiding the last octet of the IP, or obfuscating IPs completely, then I don't know how well the location information will be set).

Time dimensions, such as Year, Month, Day, Hour, Minute are all captured based on the timestamps.

Referrer Type, Referrer Domain are extended calculated data based on the Referrer URLs.

General usage dimensions like Browser, OS, Visit Depth, Return Frequency, etc are also all captured by default.

However, if you are going to use Adobe Analytics, it seems a shame to proceed with only the most basic of tags, given the strength of the tool is the ability to customize and create rich inter-connected dimensions that you can correlate far more deeply and easier than GA allows...

[vsgc]

Hi Jennifer,

Thank you for responding. I need one more clarification if you can help with it.

Are the UTM parameters (UTM Campaign, UTM Source & UTM Medium) captured by Adobe Analytics in out of the box implementation or there needs to be custom development to capture the same? The accuracy if their capture is a separate discussion, I just want to understand their capture in out-of-the-box implementation.

Thanks in Advance

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Since UTMs are fundamentally a "Google Analytics" thing (but also universally recognized by many systems) they are a custom implementation.

There are also multiple aspects to this.

First, Adobe has a "Campaign" variable, s.campaign in the JS code, technically sent in the tracking request as eVar0; and reported on in Workspace as "Tracking Code". This by default has a 1 week last touch attribution....  

Now, being a single variable, and UTMs being multiple you are probably starting to see a little bit of an issue

Adobe's "standard campaign tracking param" is "cid" which generally is a formatted string where you can pass all your values in one formatted version (i.e. source_medium_campaignid_region_somethingelse_whatever - this can use _ or - or any other delimiter)  this gives companies the ability to define their own structure and what that want to track without being confined to standard UTMs (though some companies will just make their own UTMs as well to cover this need utm_customvalue=). The problem with this is if you are using GA as a backup, now everything has to be done twice, and it's harder to ensure your users are building out the campaign strings properly so that they can be parsed via regex correctly... a value is missed, or the order is transposed and now the regex will pull the wrong values into the wrong classifications...

We use UTMs, and I like to processes the values into my campaign/Tracking Code param using a set format, that I can use regex on...  so I control the order that each UTM is placed in, if a UTM is missing I can control if there is a placeholder or not...  Personally, I just use a prefix for each value "us:" for utm_source, "um:" for utm_medium, etc (I got creative with utm_campaign and utm_content, both start with c, so I use up: for campaign).

Next, I set up individual eVars for each UTM, using Last Touch Visit attribution (I can always use custom attribution to take a longer look at the values if I need, but Visit will be specific to what drove this specific visit to the site)

Now, once you have that, if you are used to Google Analytics, and how they have their Channel Groups, Adobe has this too, but again, this is something that you have to set up.. though there are some default mappings that can be applied one time, if this is a new suite and never before set up.. 
https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/analytics/components/marketing-channels/c-getting-started-mc...

In the Admin panel, for each Report Suite, there are settings where you can define the channels and how they process:

• Channel Manger let's you create Channels (above and beyond the standard items)
• Channel Processing Rules is where you define how each channel will be defined, this processes from the top, once a value has been "caught" by a bucket, the value stops there... uncaught values will continue to process until the end
  
• Channel Expiration let's you choose the attribution length
• etc

I hope this helps.

[robrowe]

Hi Jennifer! The examples you mentioned are exactly what I'm looking for. Is there a documentation page that has the full detailed list of default things the Adobe Analytics SDK collects out of the box?

[Jennifer_Dungan]

I am not sure... I have never seen such a document... it may exist, or have existed at one point, but if it does/did I am not sure where to find such a thing.

To be fair, I have never seen a breakdown of all default dimensions for GA either...  while there are lists of "standard" dimensions, it doesn't mean that they will track by default without passing information to them... 

[robrowe]

Thanks so much for the reply! Any suggestions on the best way to get a comprehensive list of what Adobe Analytics tracks out-of-the-box like the already impressive list you started off the top of your head?

[Jennifer_Dungan]

You could try client care, but if no document exists, they may only be able to give you surface items... You could also post a request for documentation via the Ideas section of this forum.

In the meantime, I am reaching out to a Adobe contact, as I think this would be a good resource for anyone starting out, or for anyone who is potentially looking for efficiencies (not realizing that some information is already available and making for work for themselves.