Marketing Channel Rules not processing properly

[LGalliers]

Hi all,

I think I've got an issue where someone is being attributed to two channels within one session, users are landing on our site with the relevant tracking parameters to categorise them into Paid Search and then when they navigate to another page they are being attributed to Organic Search.

I know mixing tracking codes and marketing channels is ill advised due to differing expiration settings but this seems to be happening within a users session which shouldn't be happening. Is there any explanation as to why this might be?

I've attached some screenshots of Adobe to show my thinking for this issue. Below shows that someone lands on a URL that contains ppc yet is being attributed to Organic Search.

After isolating that single user, I looked at the channel they've been attributed to and they're attributed to both Paid and Organic Search 

They came into the site at 12:57 as Paid Search:

Then from 12:58 onwards to their order they've been categorised as Organic Search

My Paid Search detection rules are as follows so I'm really struggling to see how, unless someone genuinely comes in from Paid Search and then via Organic within a 30 minute window, a user can be recategorised mid session.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, I've already reached out to customer care but have had nothing back from them in days and I'm struggling to find an answer

[PratheepArunRaj · Accepted solution]

Dear LGalliers,

Have you tried to simulate the scenario once to validate? Because a visit can have two Marketing Channels in exceptional cases.

Consider a visitor searched for your website in Google (Tab 1) and your website link appeared in Google both as Paid Ad with Tracking Code and Organic Listing without tracking code.

If the visitor right-click the Paid Ad to land your website in another tab (Tab 2) at 12:57, the Marketing Channel is Paid Search. If the same visitor goes back to Tab 1 where google was opened and right-click the Organic Listing to land your website in another tab (Tab 3) at 12:58, the Marketing Channel is Organic Search. However, the Visit is just one. If you have Tracking Code with an expiration, Tracking Code will persist to both pages.

So, sometimes it is tricky. If you see this for all the cases, it is a problem; for exceptional cases, it is fine.

Check and let me know to discuss this more.

Thank You, Pratheep Arun Raj B | Xerago | Terryn Winter Analytics

[LGalliers]

Hi Pratheep,
Thanks for getting back to me!
I understand your point and get that someone can visit from two channels in one visit however this problem has become more widespread from 16th March for us:

We released some work that pulled in a referral value and allocated this in the Adobe Analytics extension in Launch. We've since removed this change and the problem is still persisting. From what I can see this is leading to Organic Search cannibalising Paid Search orders which is giving us a bit of a headache in terms of attribution.

Any idea on whether any changes to our pageview tag or the Adobe Analytics extension with relation to the referral value could cause this issue?

Again, appreciate you getting back to me on this, thank you!

[PratheepArunRaj]

Dear LGalliers, Can you share the public URL for me to validate?