Direct traffic show entries when filtering paid campaigns only

[beluks]

Hi!

I was creating a table using a segment from a Flow to select the Home page.

Home entry total is the segment created from the first node in the flow:

I wanted to know which channels those entries were from. But I'm seeing entries from direct traffic under the Paid Campaign which excludes its.

To compare it, I used the visits metric and I'm getting the expected result.

Why is that?

Thanks

[yuhuisg · Accepted solution]

Marketing Channels are not set per visit, but applied at every hit that AA receives. On the other hand, a visit can persist across multiple hits, until there is a 30-minute break or after some other threshold.

I think you're referring to the 6,893 Entries from the "Direct" Marketing Channel for the segment "Marketing Channel = Campaign Source". How is this "Marketing Channel = Campaign Source" segment defined?

[beluks]

Hi, yes, I'm referring to those

The Campaign Source segment is defined like this:

HIT include (Marketing channel = CPC OR TV OR Display OR Email OR Vanity OR Newspaper OR Social: Campaign OR Video OR DIrect Mail OR SMS OR Public Relations OR Affiliate OR Influencer OR Content OR Magazine OR Phone)

[yuhuisg]

Here's what I think is going on: There's a visit like this:

Visit x:

1. Hit 1 --> Channel = Direct, Page = Homepage
2. Hit 2
3. Hit 3
4. Hit 4 --> Channel = Display
5. Hit 5
6. ...

This visit gets included in the segment because of Hit 4. But Entries looks at Hit 1. So since Hit 4 is in this visit where Hit 1's Channel was Direct, then AA reports this visit under Direct channel's Entries.

[beluks]

Hmm I thought Marketing Channel was also based on the first Hit as per Adobe's definition: "Marketing Channels are commonly used to provide insight on how (through which channel) visitors arrive on your site."

[yuhuisg]

@beluks Yes, that's normally the case. But more accurately, Marketing Channels are processed with every hit, not just the first hit of a visit.

[jantzen_b]

Do any of the answers below answer your initial question? If so, can you select one of them as the correct answer? If none of the answers already provided answer your question, can you provide additional information to better help the community solve your question?