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Tracking code (CID Codes) reporting with Analytics Metrics

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Community Advisor

How correct is it to report on tracking IDs against unique visitors, page views, and Visit metrics in Adobe Analytics? And, I know tracking codes built using classifications rule builder are eVars, so they persist beyond the initial hit where they're set.

 

When I try to pull Tracking IDs against the above-mentioned metrics and break down Tracking Codes by Page dimension then I see many pages that are not even enabled with CID codes. (must be because of persistent things). Then how to correctly report on all Tracking Codes regarding visitors, visits, and page views to understand traffic?

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1 Accepted Solution

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Correct answer by
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion

Hi @JyotiSharmaV,

 

It really depends on what you are trying to see...

 

Unique Visitors, Visits and Page Views against your Tracking Code are all important, as are Orders... but understanding what that represents helps create a clear picture.  It sounds like you are trying to isolate the "entry page", which also a very valid metric... none of these is what you want to use however... you actually want to use "Tracking Code Instance".

 

So, let's look at an example:

 

Visit 1:

  • Page A (?cid=X)
    • Tracking Code set to "X"
    • Tracking Code instance triggered
  • Page B
    • Tracking Code persists value "X" (due to default 1 week attribution)
    • Tracking Code instance is not triggered (because the value has no been explicitly set)
  • Page C
    • See Page B 

 

Visit 2 (week)

  • Page D (no cid)
    • Tracking Code persists value "X" (due to default 1 week attribution)
    • Tracking Code instance is not triggered (because the value has no been explicitly set)
  • Page E
    • See Page D

 

Visit 3

  • Page F (?cid=Y)
    • Tracking Code set to "Y"
    • Tracking Code instance triggered
  • Purchase Made
    • Order Triggered
  • (Marketing email is received while on the site, user clicks on a link)
  • Page G (?cid=Z)
    • Tracking Code set to "Z"
    • Tracking Code instance triggered

 

    Unique Visitors Visits Page Views Tracking Code Instance Order
Tracking Code   1 3 7 3 1
  X 1 2 5 1 0
  Y 1 1 1 1 1
  Z 1 1 1 1 0

 

 

So here you have 1 unique visitor, across 3 visits, hitting 7 pages (only 3 of which were the pages that set the campaign - i.e. Tracking Code Instance), and 1 order that was driven by Campaign Y.

 

Unique Visitors will tell you how many people interacted with your campaigns, Visits will tell you how many visits were driven by the campaign (now, Visit 2 is a bit interesting, because it had no direct campaign, but was still within your attribution period... we'll come back to that), 7 pages were driven by your campaigns (directly and indirectly), and one order was made and associated to the last driving campaign.

 

If you are interested only in the direct pages that people had campaigns, use the Tracking Code Instance.

 

If you need to know Visits that were directly driven by a campaign... (i.e. don't include visit 2), you can create a segment...

 

You can either use:

 

HIT [

    Tracking Code Instance exists

]

(which will return only the hits where the campaign was set, and you can pair this with the Visit Metric)

 

 

OR

 

VISIT [

    Tracking Code Instance exists

]

(this will return ALL the hits in the visits that had at least one direct campaign)

 

 

Like most things, there are a lot of ways to slice and dice the information... and the information is still valid, but if you are trying to answer a specific question like what were the exact pages that were driven by campaigns, you will need to use a more specific metric, as opposed to the metrics which apply to persisted data.

View solution in original post

5 Replies

Avatar

Correct answer by
Community Advisor and Adobe Champion

Hi @JyotiSharmaV,

 

It really depends on what you are trying to see...

 

Unique Visitors, Visits and Page Views against your Tracking Code are all important, as are Orders... but understanding what that represents helps create a clear picture.  It sounds like you are trying to isolate the "entry page", which also a very valid metric... none of these is what you want to use however... you actually want to use "Tracking Code Instance".

 

So, let's look at an example:

 

Visit 1:

  • Page A (?cid=X)
    • Tracking Code set to "X"
    • Tracking Code instance triggered
  • Page B
    • Tracking Code persists value "X" (due to default 1 week attribution)
    • Tracking Code instance is not triggered (because the value has no been explicitly set)
  • Page C
    • See Page B 

 

Visit 2 (week)

  • Page D (no cid)
    • Tracking Code persists value "X" (due to default 1 week attribution)
    • Tracking Code instance is not triggered (because the value has no been explicitly set)
  • Page E
    • See Page D

 

Visit 3

  • Page F (?cid=Y)
    • Tracking Code set to "Y"
    • Tracking Code instance triggered
  • Purchase Made
    • Order Triggered
  • (Marketing email is received while on the site, user clicks on a link)
  • Page G (?cid=Z)
    • Tracking Code set to "Z"
    • Tracking Code instance triggered

 

    Unique Visitors Visits Page Views Tracking Code Instance Order
Tracking Code   1 3 7 3 1
  X 1 2 5 1 0
  Y 1 1 1 1 1
  Z 1 1 1 1 0

 

 

So here you have 1 unique visitor, across 3 visits, hitting 7 pages (only 3 of which were the pages that set the campaign - i.e. Tracking Code Instance), and 1 order that was driven by Campaign Y.

 

Unique Visitors will tell you how many people interacted with your campaigns, Visits will tell you how many visits were driven by the campaign (now, Visit 2 is a bit interesting, because it had no direct campaign, but was still within your attribution period... we'll come back to that), 7 pages were driven by your campaigns (directly and indirectly), and one order was made and associated to the last driving campaign.

 

If you are interested only in the direct pages that people had campaigns, use the Tracking Code Instance.

 

If you need to know Visits that were directly driven by a campaign... (i.e. don't include visit 2), you can create a segment...

 

You can either use:

 

HIT [

    Tracking Code Instance exists

]

(which will return only the hits where the campaign was set, and you can pair this with the Visit Metric)

 

 

OR

 

VISIT [

    Tracking Code Instance exists

]

(this will return ALL the hits in the visits that had at least one direct campaign)

 

 

Like most things, there are a lot of ways to slice and dice the information... and the information is still valid, but if you are trying to answer a specific question like what were the exact pages that were driven by campaigns, you will need to use a more specific metric, as opposed to the metrics which apply to persisted data.

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Community Advisor

@Jennifer_Dungan beautiful insights on this topic. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

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Community Advisor and Adobe Champion

You're very welcome

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Community Advisor

Hi @Jennifer_Dungan 

correct me if I'm wrong, but has the Tracking Code Instance in newer AA instances not renamed to "Campaign Click-throughs".

bjoern__koth_0-1739419871246.png

There was quite some confusion on my end a while back, because Adobe still has not yet added an explanation what it is and does.

bjoern__koth_1-1739419938917.png

 

Cheers from Switzerland!


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Community Advisor and Adobe Champion

That is true.. it might be renamed and cause confusion... All my suites are older so I sometimes forget about that.