How does Adobe decide which value in an eVar will get the revenue credit?

[JayGr]

New to Adobe and still trying to understand how eVars persist and what that means for your metrics. Suppose I have the following scenario:

Search for "cats"

Add a cat item to my cart

Search for "dogs"

Purchase the cat item

Would my search term revenue be attributed to cats since I purchased an item as a result of the "cats" search or attributed to "dogs" as my final search before purchase?

[Krishna_Musku]

I am not familiar with e-commerce. But, I think it would be good to attribute the revenue to the product purchased.

For the Revenue, you can breakdown by the internal search term, So you will get the cat and dog values in your scenario.

You can find more about purchase event below:

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/analytics/implementation/vars/page-vars/events/event-purc...

[abhinavpuri]

Hi @JayGr ,

The Adobe Analytics Standard eVars are very flexible in terms of attribution and can support as per your business requirements.

In above scenario assuming standard eVar is implemented: The attribution/credit assignment would depend upon "allocation" setting for an eVar -

For Most Recent Allocation: Last value before success event gets all credit ("dogs")

For Original Value Allocation: First values gets credit for success event ("cats").

For Linear Allocation: Both search terms cats and dogs get equal credit distributed.

There is also an concept of Merchandising eVars that has capability of binding the eVar value to product which can help better attribution/credit allocation.

More details here:

Standard eVar: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/analytics/admin/admin-tools/manage-report-suites/edit-rep...

Merchanding eVar: 

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/analytics/admin/admin-tools/manage-report-suites/edit-rep...

[JayGr]

Thanks, this is helpful information but I still don't know if I have complete confirmation of my question.

We are using a Most Recent Allocation, but that's what I wanted to clarify -- most recent before purchase (dogs) or most recent before the add to cart (cats) of the item that was eventually purchased? I think it's the former, but I just wanted to be sure before telling others.

[Damonwhall]

@JayGr , this is based first on how the related product dimensions are set to persist.  If you have the dimension "item added to cart" set to "pageview/hit" then your "Most recent Allocation" will give the cookie to the "dog" selection.  So you will see in that case that adding dog to the cart led to purchasing a cat.  

If you have the dimension "item added to cart" set to "visit/session" persistence, then both the cat and dog "item added to cart" will get the credit in a "participation" attribution.  

What @abhinavpuri said is right in that in a table, you can select what attribution model you are using.  

You need to be sure, that you are setting the "item added to cart" event and the "item purchased" event so that you can apply these dimensions to them.  Then, you will be able to see last, participation, and first touch for all the dimensions.  

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

I believe it also makes a difference how the eVar is set....

If the eVar is set as a merchandising eVar on the product during the Add to Cart action, and the retention is set appropriately... then during the purchase of that product, the eVar should retain the value to that specific product to which it was set...   believe this also should work if you are using a Conversion Syntax Merchandising eVar (set on the search results and bound to the Add to Cart), I believe that this should still retain "cats" in conjunction with the purchase (I have not tried this in practice, but I have done normal merchandising eVars and they map based on the unique product identifier, so I would expect this would too... but I would test it thoroughly before relying on it)

However, if you are just setting an eVar during a search, then the last value searched will be used, regardless of the product that was ultimately purchased.

[bjoern__koth]

Fully agree with @Jennifer_Dungan 

it depends on the use case. Typically, it gets complicated when you have searched multiple times and purchase items from different categories.

More documentation with good examples here

• https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/analytics/components/dimensions/evar-merchandising
• https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/analytics/admin/admin-tools/manage-report-suites/edit-rep... 

Cheers

Björn