Referrer type - TYPED/BOOKMARKED both showing reporting data under "NONE" & "DIRECT" Marketing Channels
Hi everyone,
Can you please help me with the below scenario
I'm looking at my orders with Marketing channels with attribution (First, last & Linear) look back window of 30 days
I'm seeing Typed/Bookmarked referrer data under both channels - "DIRECT" & "NONE" for both app & website
& Please have a look at the image of marketing channel processing rule for "DIRECT" (attached)
for mobile app - when you launch the app, you literally land on the home page and obviously, there will be no referrer in this case (there will be no typed/bookmarked) as well
In this case, there is no referrer that exist - the traffic should be "DIRECT", but we are getting traffic to "NONE" as well
Coming to the website, we are able to see typed/bookmarked as a referrer under both "DIRECT" & "NONE", how it is possible ?
as per the processing rule - "DIRECT", the condition is that, "REFERRER does not exist" on the 1st hit of the user's visit. it means that subsequent hits will be attributed to NONE?
Please share your thoughts
Thanks,
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I appreciate your time and efforts in responding to my issue. Thank You very much.
Can you please also help me to understand one thing - in the below "DIRECT" marketing channel processing rule, you can see the condition (2nd) as 1st hit of the visit (the first page of the visit, as detected by adobe reporting)
& what about the subsequent hits (which might or might not have the page name)?
Can you please help to understand
Thanks & Regards,
Hi @Naveen_KumarPr When subsequent hits which don't have the page name then you will get NONE because you are trying to set channel value as page name but page name is not set for that server call.
@Naveen_KumarPryou will get the NONE in case the page name is not captured in the server call.
you just add one more condition as below so that you will not get the NONE.
We have also faced this issue and resolved by adding page exist condition.
Hi @Amruthesh_AG , I appreciate your time and efforts in responding to my issue. Thank You very much.
However, I still need to be answerable to my client (Please refer to below screenshot) providing him a justification, ours is an ecommerce client and like for any client, adobe created all marketing channel processing rules in a standard way when initially setting up the account
my client asking me, in which cases data to "NONE" marketing channel is being attributed and we all unable to understand that any purchase order, when we are looking at any attribution it should have an marketing Channel, right ? Even though None will appear only if any criteria of any processing rule doesn't met
when we breakdown the "NONE" with platform, you could also see that most of the orders from "ANDROID" and less amount are from "website", again "Webiste" traffic should be direct as it has no referrer but for app, we are not able to see any referrer value
Can you please help to respond, thank you very much again !
@Amruthesh_AG, one more thing Amruthesh
Can you please also help me to understand one thing - in the below "DIRECT" marketing channel processing rule, you can see the condition (2nd) as 1st hit of the visit (the first page of the visit, as detected by adobe reporting)
& what about the subsequent hits (which might or might not have the page name)?
Thanks & Regards,
When subsequent hits which don't have the page name then you will get NONE because you are trying to set channel value as page name but page name is not set for that server call.
Marketing Channels have by default a 30 Day Attribution, Referring Domain on the other hand has a Visit level attribution...
Mixing these different attributions is going to cause you a lot of grief...
The advice about needing to add "Page" exists to the rule makes no sense... Page always exists, if you don't set the page, the URL is used... That has nothing to do with the rule... Also, the Marketing Channel Detail is a dimension that neither of you have used in in any of your examples... so again, the advice that "it's not being set" doesn't make any sense.
Marketing Channel Detail (i.e. "Set the Channel's Value To") shares the Marketing Channel Attribution... this is the best dimension to use in your breakdowns to ensure you are looking at the same attribution model.
The issue you have is pure attribution mismatch...
Also, for mobile apps, referrer and referrer instance (and all the mapped referrer type data) don't exist at all! Mobile Apps aren't considered at all in the "Referrer" dimensions. If you try to breakdown any mobile app traffic by any referrer dimension it won't have anything. If you look at the specific referrer metric Referrer Instance you will see that there is nothing in the context of a mobile app. So, breaking down you mobile app traffic by referrer as you have, this is completely expected behaviour.
as per the processing rule - "DIRECT", the condition is that, "REFERRER does not exist" on the 1st hit of the user's visit. it means that subsequent hits will be attributed to NONE?
No, Marketing Channels should maintain their value for 30 days (unless you changed the default attribution)... adding the "Is first Hit of Visit" makes sure that this doesn't potentially overwrite ALL pages beyond the initial page view for all your rules.
None should only appear when a marketing channel fails to process...
It shouldn't be superseding "Direct" which should stay for your retention period... However, if something failed to set (and got set to None), and that use continue to come Direct... there is a default setting that "Direct should not overwrite other Marketing Channels" (again, this makes sure your 30 Day attribution holds... that someone coming in from a Marketing Email today isn't switched to "Direct" if they come back tomorrow... but if for some reason the user didn't get properly bucketed, then None will stay active for the retention period unless overwritten by a specific channel.
Let's look at an example, using Web:
Visit 1:
- Enters with campaign = "google_paid"
- Marketing Channel set to "Paid Search"
- Marketing Channel detail set to "google_paid" (assuming your are setting your campaign here)
- Referrer set to "google.com"
- Page 2-whatever maintain the above
Visit 2:
- User comes from a bookmark
- Marketing Channel remains "Paid Search" (as this is within 30 days)
- Marketing Channel detail remains "google_paid" (as this is within 30 days)
- Referrer set to "none" (since this is direct)
- User makes a purchase
The Order's Last Touch Channel = "Paid Search"
The Order's Frist Touch Channel = "Paid Search"
The Order's Referrer = "Typed/Bookmarked"
As mentioned above, Referrer is a Visit level attribution, but Marketing Channel is 30 days...
Thank You very much @Jennifer_Dungan, thanks a lot
To add further, When i broke down "NONE" with marketing channel detail, it is showing "NONE" as well
also, based on your response
If a marketing channel processing is getting failed, we need to raise a ticket with Adobe Client care to get it resolved ? and can we understand, it which touch point/what reason the processing is getting failed?
also, if you don't mind, I couldn't understand the below 2 lines, can you please help me to understand in a better way (sorry for the inconvenience)
retention period means 30 days ?
& as per my understanding, DIRECT can not overwrite other marketing channels in the subsequent visits before or after the default retention period (30 days)
however, any other marketing channel can over-ride the 'DIRECT' marketing channel after the default retention period (30 days), is it correct understanding?
Please confirm !
Thanks & Regards,
You're welcome.
Just for reference, I checked my data, I have about 15 instances of "None" being set to my Marketing Channels (in October) too (I checked my Marketing Channel against the Marketing Channel Instance (where the marketing channel is being set).
Technically, I am not overly concerned about such a small number.. but when I look against visits, the number looks significantly more. At some point, I will look into this to see if I can find any details as to why these are making it through all my processing rules and ending up unattributed...
Adobe support may be able to help track this down, or not... this can be a pretty time consuming investigation... If you have access to Raw Data feeds, this could help you and your team do a deeper investigation on your own... but basically, "None" means that no rule caught the entry into the site, and so it got to the end of all your rules, didn't match any of them, and ended up in a catch all bucket...
I would first try and see what number of Channel instances are not matching... see if you can find a pattern to what is failing... you could try to adjust your rules to catch more scenarios...
also, if you don't mind, I couldn't understand the below 2 lines, can you please help me to understand in a better way (sorry for the inconvenience)
retention period means 30 days ?
Yes, since you can actually set a different expiry to your Marketing Channels rules (default is 30 days, we use 7 days in our setup), I don't like to specify exactly 30 days as that may not meet your implementation...
So basically, if a user comes to your site, and is identified as "Direct"... they should keep being treated as Direct until the retention period (i.e 30 days or 7 days, etc) has passed, or they come back to the site with a more specific marketing channel (paid search/social, organic search/social, marketing emails, etc), They should not switch from "Direct" to "None" as they move through your site... unless there is something strange happening with your setup that is causing an issue... but let's assume for the moment there is nothing like that - odds are you just have a gap in your rules that lets certain traffic not get identified)
& as per my understanding, DIRECT can not overwrite other marketing channels in the subsequent visits before or after the default retention period (30 days)
however, any other marketing channel can over-ride the 'DIRECT' marketing channel after the default retention period (30 days), is it correct understanding?
Not unless you changed the default setting:
Direct and Internal do not overwrite intentionally so as to not break or supersede your specific channels. You can do this, but then it will break the 30 Day attribution model, as every visit will set a channel (i.e. Marketing Email then next visit Direct), and if you aren't careful, you might break the Visit, if you don't always check for the first page in the visit on every rule... but that also can cause issues if the same visit actually has two different specific campaigns (I go to the site via social media [organic], then get an marketing email and follow it... same visit.. two entries... two very different channels... if you only look at the first page for everything, your marketers would miss the attribution to their promotion).
This is why those other channels do overwrite, as they can be very specific and very real use cases. Which is why you may also want to look at Linear, Participation or Time Decay models, to see cross channel attribution.
Attribution can be a very tricky topic... as you can see...
@Jennifer_Dungan Thanks a ton,
I followed your foot steps and used "Marketing Channel Instances" as a metric & I don't see any data being reported to "NONE", how should we look and understand this ?
End of the day, my client explicitly told me that, he should not see these many "ORDERS" attributed to NONE
What is the possible way to solve this ?
Thanks & Regards,
Hi @Jennifer_Dungan, can we also look at the data like this ?
a table with Dimension as Marketing channels & Metrics as "ORDERS" filtering with First Touch
& Last touch attribution models
?
Please let me know
Thanks & Regards,
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