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Issue with Marketing channel

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
January 17, 2025
4 replies
1208 views

Hi everyone,

I have a query regarding our Marketing Channel rules. We have configured a rule where if the query string parameter utm_source equals "youtube," the traffic is categorized under the "YouTube Channel." However, during data analysis, we noticed that the same URL sometimes appears under the "Social Network" channel as well.

Can anyone explain why this is happening? Also, does Adobe evaluate Marketing Channel rules for every hit, regardless of whether it's a page view or a link tracking call?

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Best answer by MandyGeorge

The order of your marketing channel processing rules is just as important as the criteria within them.

Think of the marketing channel rules like one of those old time coin sorters - you put in a coin, and if it fits into the first slot, it falls, if not it keeps rolling to the second, and so on. The marketing channels are the same way, a hit comes in, and it's compared to the first rule. If it matches, it's assigned that marketing channel. If it doesn't match, it's compared to the next, and so on.

This means that if you have a rule for social network, that includes youtube, and a rule specifically for youtube, it's only going to be applied to one of those marketing channel rules. And if it matches both, it will get applied to the one that is higher up on the list.

Once you've made all of your marketing channel rules, consider what is most important and order them accordingly. For example, you probably want your paid channels first, like paid search, paid social, etc. If you're spending money on a channel, you want to know how it's performing.

When it comes to this youtube example, you will want to put your "youtube" rule above your "social media" rule. Since you specifically care about youtube, if the utm_source is youtube it will match that rule and get assigned. Anything that doesn't match that rule will keep going and could get assigned social media if it meets the criteria.

Below is the graphic that is on the marketing channel processing rule page. The image on the right is a visual representation of what I tried to explain. Stuff that meets the conditions for the first rule get bucketed into it, stuff that doesn't moves onto the next, and so on.

MandyGeorge

Accepted solution

Community Advisor and Adobe Champion

The order of your marketing channel processing rules is just as important as the criteria within them.

Think of the marketing channel rules like one of those old time coin sorters - you put in a coin, and if it fits into the first slot, it falls, if not it keeps rolling to the second, and so on. The marketing channels are the same way, a hit comes in, and it's compared to the first rule. If it matches, it's assigned that marketing channel. If it doesn't match, it's compared to the next, and so on.

This means that if you have a rule for social network, that includes youtube, and a rule specifically for youtube, it's only going to be applied to one of those marketing channel rules. And if it matches both, it will get applied to the one that is higher up on the list.

Once you've made all of your marketing channel rules, consider what is most important and order them accordingly. For example, you probably want your paid channels first, like paid search, paid social, etc. If you're spending money on a channel, you want to know how it's performing.

When it comes to this youtube example, you will want to put your "youtube" rule above your "social media" rule. Since you specifically care about youtube, if the utm_source is youtube it will match that rule and get assigned. Anything that doesn't match that rule will keep going and could get assigned social media if it meets the criteria.

Below is the graphic that is on the marketing channel processing rule page. The image on the right is a visual representation of what I tried to explain. Stuff that meets the conditions for the first rule get bucketed into it, stuff that doesn't moves onto the next, and so on.

Josh__Stephens

Community Advisor

Hi @bhuwaneshpandey - in addition to what Mandy mentioned, be sure that you're breaking out by marketing channel detail. If you use other dimensions such as tracking code or url, those have differing logic that can impact the results.

Jennifer_Dungan

Community Advisor and Adobe Champion

One more thing, yes, technically every hit is evaluated for Marketing Channels.. however, link tracking usually doesn't contain set referrer data (as this is usually persisted from the page view) and also shouldn't be setting campaign data (also should be persisted from the page view). PageURL is also removed from link clicks, so rules that rely on the URL and URL Parameters shouldn't actually match anything... but depending on your rules and implementation, in theory these could be processed.

However, if you first hit of the session happens to be a click (it triggered before the page view) then yes, this could result in some interesting channel data.

Unfortunately, the "First Page of the Visit" condition is actually hit based, and not "page" based... so that doesn't prevent links or actions from being processed.

B

bhuwaneshpandeyAuthor

hi @mandygeorge

@josh__stephens @jennifer_dungan

Thank you for the detailed explanation regarding the Marketing Channel setup; it’s very helpful. On our end, we reviewed the Marketing Channel rules and ensured that YouTube is set with a higher priority while Social Media is assigned a lower priority. However, upon further analysis of a single ECID data, we observed an issue.

At the time of the page view, the Marketing Channel is correctly assigned to YouTube. But as soon as the user interacts with any custom link, the attribution shifts to Social Network. Please find the screenshot below for reference.

Let us know how we can address this issue to ensure consistent attribution to YouTube as per the rules. Your guidance will be greatly appreciated!

Jennifer_Dungan

Community Advisor and Adobe Champion

Hmmm your custom links shouldn't be causing a change in Marketing Channel.

Can you look at the metric "Marketing Channel Instance" (this is the call where a marketing channel is set... it won't show any persisted channel information.) Then if you have it, check this against the full URL (assuming you are including your query strings), maybe your tracking code which should be based on query strings, referrer, etc... try to find any other dimensions that you can think of in your system to try and see where the user is and how they got there (things that would potentially drive your Marketing Channel logic).

This user may well be coming to your site in the same visit from multiple places (multi-tab browsing, etc)

Here is how the Marketing Channel Instance would work (simple example)

User is on Social Media and clicks on an organic link
- Page A (domain.com/pagea/)
  - Referrer is a known social media platform
  - Marketing Channel set to "Organic Social"
  - Marketing Channel Instance is triggered - since the MC is explicitly set
  - Tracking Code is empty
- Page B
  - Marketing Channel persists value as "Organic Social", but is not set
  - Marketing Channel Instance is not triggered - since the MC was only persisted and not set
  - Tracking Code is empty
- Page C
  - Same as Page B
User gets a Marketing Email, while they are surfing your website
- Page D (domain.com/paged/?cid=campaignx)
  - Due to Campaign, Marketing Channel Rules process this
  - Marketing Channel set to "Marketing Email"
  - Marketing Channel Instance is triggered - since the MC is explicitly set
  - Tracking Code is set to "campaignx"
  - Tracking Code Instance is triggered - since the TC is explicitly set
- Page E
  - Marketing Channel persists value as "Marketing Email", but is not set
  - Marketing Channel Instance is not triggered - since the MC was only persisted and not set
  - Tracking Code persists value "campaignx"
  - Tracking Code Instance is not triggered - since the TC was only persisted and not set
User then does a Google Search, clicks on a paid ad
- Page F (domain.com/paged/?cid=paidsearch)
  - Due to Campaign, Marketing Channel Rules process this
  - Marketing Channel set to "Paid Search"
  - Marketing Channel Instance is triggered - since the MC is explicitly set
  - Tracking Code is set to "paidsearch"
  - Tracking Code Instance is triggered - since the TC is explicitly set

All of this is in the course of a single visit, but there are three Marketing Channels being set during that visit. Only Pages A, D and F have a Marketing Channel Instance... but all the pages have PV and V data... so when looking at those, it can be a lot harder to debug what is what.

Now, depending on your Marketing Channel Processing Rules, there may be an issue there that could cause custom links on your site to trigger a Marketing Channel rule... but it seems unlikely... it's hard to tell from that table you showed, but it almost looks to me like the user opened the site from Social Media, then again from YouTube (since you have two hits at 6:35 PM, then they hit another page after that, maintaining the last Marketing Channel (You Tube) for the last hit at 6:45 PM.

Amruthesh_AG

Community Advisor

@bhuwaneshpandey It is setting to Social Network because some of the videos Referring Root Domain could be YouTube.

Can you check your Social Network channel processing rule once and remove the youtube.com Referring Root Domain.

it could solve your problem.

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