Direct and Session Refresh (Internal) traffic question

[aedelnevo77]

We are closely looking at our traffic. Both Direct and Session Refresh (Internal) are unticked in terms of Marketing Channel Attribution.

If a visitor comes to the site and Direct is their first touch, within the same visit, what is the expectation of the internal link clicks in terms of how Adobe would see the channels?

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

If your settings are as "default" meaning that Direct and Internal don't overwrite other Marketing Channels, then you should see the first option:

Direct > Direct > Direct

As "Direct" was the first touch, and the subsequent internal shouldn't be treated as Marketing Channels in this scenario.

If Internal was set to overwrite, then all Marketing Channels (including paid campaigns) would lose the attribution to internal (and that would make a real mess of your data).

Let's look at an example:

• Visit 1
  • User comes directly to the site
    • Marketing Channel - Direct
  • User Navigates within the site (internal)
    • Marketing Channel - Direct (no overwritten)
• Visit 2
  • User Comes Via Search Engine
    • Marketing Channel - Organic Search
• Visit 3
  • User comes directly to the site
    • Marketing Channel - Organic Search (retains previous channel, direct doesn't overwrite)
• Visit 4
  • User comes via Marketing Email
    • Marketing Channel - Email

etc....

Organic Search and Marketing Emails are both specific drivers, so they will overwrite... but Direct and Internal don't overwrite so that you can attribute your conversions and traffic to your specific drivers.

However, if you need to see Visit level values, you can always look at your Referrers report for the visit (note that internal referrers are excluded here).