Get ONLY the marketing channel detail that was the last touch in a visit (deduped)

[BenjaminHawk]

Very simple sounding request here, but unorthodox. 

How does one collect ONLY the data that shows the last touch in a visit for marketing channel details. (or for marketing channel for that matter)

Example: 
If a client has a date range of A-B, and there are during that period 1000 visits, and they have marketing channels with distrubtions like this: 

Channel-1: 700 hits
Channel 2: 250 hits
Channel 3: 200 hits
Channel 4: 150 hits

We would see the "Visits" column header reading: 1000
If a client were to add up all the channel hits however, they would see 1,300 hits in those visits.

Understanding that marketing channels are designed to lead analytics down attribution paths specifically, how would a user simply ONLY pull out the last touch values on specific visits so that the 1000 visits only had 1000 hits for marketing channels so they can see which last touch value can be credit for bringing them to their site?

In other words, how best to create a 1:1 ratio of last touch marketing channel detail, to it's visit?


@derek-tangren  
@Jennifer_Dungan 

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Marketing Channels are by default "last touch", however, I think the issue may be coming from the fact that some users have two different channels within the same visit...

Think of it this way, I do a Google Search, and I see a bunch of results... I might click on the first result which is a paid ad, therefore I get dropped into a "paid search" channel, I back out to the Google results, I click on another link, this time it's a normal search result, so this time I get added to the "organic search" channel. They are part of the same visit (within 20-30 minutes, I haven't timed out)... I have 2 entries, 2 channels, but only one visit... 

Perhaps instead of using the Visit metric, you could try applying it to Marketing Channel Instance (the last touch where a marketing channel was set), or Entries. In my case, I get very different numbers between these two metrics (likely cause people who "entered" multiple times within the same channel don't get a new channel set - so this explains the differences). However, in both cases, when I add the rows together, they match the total, so there's no need to explain how the same visit can incur multiple channels due to user behaviour of backing out and re-entering the site within the same visit.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

I get that this really doesn't "de-dup" the data, but I really can't think of a way to do that... since once you segment it into buckets, the values fall out that way.... Maybe someone else has a brilliant way to figure that out... but it's late here and I may not be thinking all that well  

[BenjaminHawk]

You are on the right track here. I was going down and am down similar paths.
Part of the issue with using marketing channel instances as a solution, is that it doesn't provide a 1:1 ratio for marketing channels to visits.

I know this is a tricky question, like @yuhuisg is mentioning below, the actual purpose of marketing channels is to prove attribution to conversions, especially ROI for marketing dollars and efforts. It is further defined by the simple act of using an Attribution Panel in workspace. It does not accept 'visits' of course.

So the question remains, despite it's unorthodoxical bent, on how to properly segment a visit, into not just channels, but into the channel details because that's the level of detail requested.

Image 2: Last touch channel details.

If last touch channel detail is 12,000 'hits' short of a 1:1 ratio with total visits. Logically we can assume then that there is some occurence in which marketing channel is not being set, right?

My brain is mush trying to compare a hit to a visit like this. 

But... it must have a solution. 
Perhaps I am overcomplicating it? (I do that)

[Jennifer_Dungan]

I will try and think on this.. but I wasn't able to come up with anything last night... 

[yuhuisg]

What if you use the Exits metric instead?

Exits is synonymous with Visits in that it too counts visits. But it is counted by the last hit in the visit.

So if you want the last touch channel of a visit, then using the Exits metric might help. I haven't tried it myself, though.

[BenjaminHawk]

I like where your head is going. Unfortunately, it seems it doesn't matter if you use exits, entries, etc... it will dedupe, and put us back in the same situation.

@Jennifer_Dungan @derek-tangren 

Tell me if this idea is crazy, I tried it this morning but ran into a couple roadblocks. 

Make a data warehouse dump to excel for just a brief period of time (60 minutes) of traffic just so I have a quick export, and easy data to work with.

Data Warehouse Settings: 

The question is... without a time stamp available, how can I choose the absolute last marketing channel of a visit?
The follow up question is... is there a sneaky way to add a time stamp to data warehouse reporting without having a custom variable set up specifically for this? 
I don't see an option.
Breaking down to granularity of 1hr is not helpful for visits. 
Being able to break down in some fashion by minutes... that'd be excellent.

This would be a very manual process, but even at the end of it... like Derek mentioned below ... there are still fringe cases which would have to be further manually trimmed.

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

That's strange, exits seems to work for me... I compared mine side by side, and the Visits total to more than the "total shown" (i.e. contains the duplications), and Exits the totals match....

I should have thought of Exits.. actually I did, but I was tired and was thinking those only registered on exit events (i.e. click an exit link) - which isn't the case.

I don't know of a way to get the timestamp into a Data Warehouse export... they are included in raw data exports... but that comes with a whole lot more challenges, including needing to manually process the data to exclude the server calls that are excluded by default in your Workspace reports, and needing to do a lot of work to get the data where it needs to be... it likely isn't worth the squeeze....

[BenjaminHawk]

That's interesting, I HAD tried that, and did NOT get 1:1 results. However, when I did it again this morning, it worked fine. 
I tried several date ranges, and time ranges last week and did not get consistent results. This morning however, it's all peachy keen!

Thanks for responding again, I don't know at what point I would have tried this again had you not mentioned again!

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Lol, like most things that don't work then work, I'm going to go with "reasons"  

But I'm glad it's working for you now.

[BenjaminHawk]

The part of this that still needs a question answered is for data warehouse...you can not use exits / entries as metrics, only visits. Pathing metrics are not available in data warehouse. So how does one do a final dedupe like this IN data warehouse, not just workspace

It would seem that this is an elusive solution in adobe analytics data warehouse.

[yuhuisg]

What business value do you get out of knowing just the last-touch channels of Hits?

I'd use a conversion metric like Orders/Transactions or Revenue or one of your success events. Using Hits/Visits is kinda meaningless and serves only to boast that your channel is sending traffic, whatever value that brings to the business.

Even if you're a publisher, you probably would want to measure your channels by conversions like advertising revenue or amount of content read, rather than just Hits.

[BenjaminHawk]

Is there a business value? To the client there is. 
You are 100% right that conversion metrics are the optimal use of marketing channels. No disputing that my friend. This is a fringe use-case, but it does create an intersting puzzle to solve. Is it solvable?

Not sure. 
I've tried segementing in multiple ways, and reporting in multiple ways and have still not found a way to get that magical 1:1 ratio if it's even possible.

[derek-tangren]

I am not aware of a clean way to easily do this, for the reason that @Jennifer_Dungan initially pointed out. There are fringe situations where users are going to have two (or more) marketing channels that will be associated with their visit. Visit, by definition, will include any Marketing Channel (or detail) seen during that visit and so your total will never match since the total is deduped. The way to get the number you are looking for would be to have an event that occurs on the last page of a user's visit, which isn't likely or easy to anticipate.

The better option IMHO is similar to what @yuhuisg is saying in tying it back to a success metric.

[BenjaminHawk]

Thanks Derek, always appreciate your feedback!