Questions on Marketing Channels results/configuration | Community
Skip to main content
M
María1234
Level 2
June 16, 2025
Question

Questions on Marketing Channels results/configuration

  • June 16, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 802 views

Hi! In my company we have set up the marketing channels in the best way, but the results I see from workspace do not convince me and I think there are errors in the processing rules, but I do not know how to solve them.

 

The main anomalies I see in the data are:

 

The main anomalies I see in the data are:
- 55% of the audience of the marketing channel "direct" is from Referrer Type "Search Engines", specifically the majority comes from Google.

In the Processing Rules "direct" is my last rule, and above it are the rules for the "search" channels. I share the configuration of the rules:

 

Here you can see the order of the rules:

 

 

Here the configuration of both "Search" channels:

 

 

"Direct" Marketing Channel:

 


Why if we have specified in the "Search" rules to collect the data "Matches Natural Search Detection Rules" not all "Search" traffic is collected in the corresponding channels and falls into "Direct"?

 

 

Thank you!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    1 reply

    Jennifer_Dungan
    Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
    Jennifer_DunganCommunity Advisor and Adobe Champion
    Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
    June 16, 2025

    Hi, 

     

    I see a few questionable rules in your screenshots...

     

    First off, I don't understand why you have the "First Hit of Visit" applied to any of your search rules...  Many times users will prefer to use search engines to find content on your site mid-visit... so restricting your rules to "only the first hit" is likely going to cause some abnormal tracking results.

     

    I am guessing you have a reason to split your Organic Search into Brand and Keyword... I can see that you are classifying your Marketing Channel by the type of content where the user landed... but I am not sure the benefit of that (however, that is a call only you can make - but I since you can breakdown Marketing Channels by your content type, using Marketing Channel Instance to see where the user actually landed when they came to the site... this seems slightly over complicated... but again, this is your call)

     

    "First Hit of Visit" is really usually just reserved for Direct and Internal rules, to ensure that internal pages don't accidentally trigger Marketing Channel logic.

     

    I am also not sure you need two "Direct" rules, at least based on what you are showing. Referrer Type, when coming from any non-internal URL, will always show "Typed Bookmarked" (unless it's traffic in your mobile app, which may not be setting referrer at all - at least this was the behaviour of the old ACP SDK... the newer AEP SDK, since it shares logic with WebSDK it should natively trigger a type/bookmarked referrer type...

     

    I don't think your second Direct traffic rule would ever trigger to be honest...

     

    Normally, you would just have a general rule like:

     

     

    Now, in my case, I also added:

     

    Since I noticed some strange traffic coming from people's computers (where they had saved a copy of the page to their hard drive and were opening it locally... so this just forced that to also be treated as Direct; but this may not be an issue for you.... 

      Jennifer_Dungan
      Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
      Jennifer_DunganCommunity Advisor and Adobe Champion
      Community Advisor and Adobe Champion
      June 16, 2025

      I should also ask, you have ensured that Internal and Direct traffic don't override other "specific" channels correct?

       

       

      If you have changed these default settings, I can understand why you have "First Hit of Visit" on all your rules.. but that is definitely going to cause issues with your data...  these two items should remain unchecked to ensure that your 30 day (default) or custom Marketing Channel attribution is maintained.

        M
        María1234Author
        Level 2
        June 24, 2025

        Good afternoon Jennifer,

        Thank you for your quick and detailed reply.
        First of all I would like to tell you that my business is an online newspaper, hence some of the characteristics of the marketing channels. Within the company our main web KPIs are: page views and unique browsers. We are interested in where browsers are coming from when they land on the site.

        I will respond to the issues you mention:


        1. I have used ‘first hit of visit’ because for me it is important to collect the channels from where they access at visit level and not at URL level. In this way I wanted to make sure that the external reference of the traffic is collected. I have always had doubts about whether it was necessary or not, but the results fit me better when I put it in. So can you confirm that I don't need it, and that it is automatically collected at the visit level?

         

        2. About the division between organic brand or keyword search, it is important for us because we want to know who is searching for us by name or by pure SEO. The only way we have always found to differentiate between them is by "content type", as it is very difficult to differentiate by keyword.

         

         

        3. About "Direct". For us this channel is very important, in fact the most important. As a media company, we are very interested in knowing who accesses our website because they know us and want to consume our news because of who we are, because they like our brand. I know the "override last touch channel" option, but if I understand it correctly, leaving it empty assigns the traffic to the previous channel in that period of time, making the "direct" traffic minimal, and we are not interested in that. I understand that in an e-commerce business the "direct" channel is not so important and it makes sense in this case, to know the efficiency of the campaigns.

         

         

        Thank you very much for your help, I would like to know if with this information I have given you I have clarified and you can tell me if you also recommend me the same. Above all I am interested in knowing when I have to include or not "fist hit of visit" because I think it is what is altering my data the most. Knowing that I want to measure the traffic per visit.

         

         

         

         

         

         

         

          Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement

          Loading footer...