Traffic of marketing channel detail (under visit segment) is smaller than sum of each traffic under marketing channel detail

[SunghunYo]

Hi, someone who consider this question.

I've noticed that the total traffic reported for a marketing channel detail is less than the sum of each individual campaign ID (cid)'s traffic within that marketing channel detail. I suspect that this might be due to the way the marketing channel detail segments traffic, possibly by removing duplicate visitors. Could someone provide a more technical explanation for this discrepancy? 

Many thanks

[Krishna_Musku]

There might be few reasons for this discrepancy:

Last-touch attribution: By default, AA uses last-touch attribution. This means that the last marketing channel a user interacts with before converting will be applied to marketing channel.

Channel overrides: Some channels, like direct traffic, can override other channels. For example, if a user clicks on a paid search ad and then directly types the URL into their browser, the direct channel overrides the paid search channel.

Processing rules: Some custom processing rules can alter channel assignments. For example, you might have rules that reassign certain traffic to specific channels.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Hello @SunghunYo 

From your post:

I've noticed that the total traffic reported for a marketing channel detail is less than the sum of each individual campaign ID (cid)'s traffic within that marketing channel detail

---

You don't specify the metric you are using to compare, but I guess it will be similar whether you are using Visits or Page Views.... And I am going to assume you are using "Tracking Code" (s.campaign / eVar0) for checking your Campaign IDs.

The biggest thing you have to remember on this is the attribution in use.

Marketing Channels have 30 Day Attribution by default, whereas Tracking Code had a 7 Day Attribution by default.

So let's look at a sample:

Visit 1 - Campaign X (Search)

• Page A - cid=X
  • Marketing Channel set to "Search"
  • Marketing Channel Detail set to "X"'
  • metric: Instance of Marketing Channel incremented
  • Tracking Code set to "X"
  • metric: Instance of Tracking Code incremented
• Page B
  • Marketing Channel and Marketing Channel Detail maintains value "X" due to 30 Day Attribution
  • metric: Instance of Marketing Channel is not incremented, since the values are not explicitly set
  • Tracking Code maintains value "X" due to 7 Day Attribution
  • metric: Instance of Tracking Code is not incremented, since the values are not explicitly set
• Page C
  • Same as Page B

Visit 2 - 3 Days Later (no cid)

• Page D
  • Marketing Channel and Marketing Channel Detail maintains value "X" due to 30 Day Attribution
  • metric: Instance of Marketing Channel is not incremented, since the values are not explicitly set
  • Tracking Code maintains value "X" due to 7 Day Attribution
  • metric: Instance of Tracking Code is not incremented, since the values are not explicitly set
• Page E
  • Same as Page D

Visit 3 - 12 Days Later (no cid)

• Page F
  • Marketing Channel and Marketing Channel Detail maintains value "X" due to 30 Day Attribution
  • metric: Instance of Marketing Channel is not incremented, since the values are not explicitly set
  • Tracking Code is ""  due to 7 Day Attribution has expired
  • metric: Instance of Tracking Code is not incremented, since the values are not explicitly set
• Page G
  • Same as Page F

Visit 4 - Campaign Y (Email)

• Page H - cid=Y
  • Marketing Channel set to "Email"
  • Marketing Channel Detail set to "Y"'
  • metric: Instance of Marketing Channel incremented
  • Tracking Code set to "Y"
  • metric: Instance of Tracking Code incremented

Marketing Channel:

		Page Views	Visits	Instance of Marketing Channel
Marketing Channel		8	3	2
	Search	7	2	1
	Email	1	1	1

Tracking Code:

		Page Views	Visits	Instance of Tracking Code
Tracking Code		6	4	2
	X	5	3	1
	Y	1	1	1

Basically, Visit #3 was still within the 30 Day Attribution for the Marketing Channel, but was outside the 7 Day Attribution for Tracking Code... therefore, that visit, and those 2 page views inside the visit are not counted in your Tracking Code Report. Hence the difference.

Now, if you are setting your Marketing Channel Detail to the value of your CID, then you can use that when correlating your Channels to your CIDs... since Marketing Channel and Marketing Channel Detail are explicitly connected under the same Instance and Attribution.

[SunghunYo]

Thank your for reply, @Jennifer_Dungan.

What I wanted to say is that the sum of the Marketing Channel Detail sub CID is not the same as the traffic value of the Marketing Channel Detail.

In common sense, shouldn't the marketing channel detail traffic, which is the upper segmentation, be equal to the sum of the traffic by each CID, which is the lower segment?

There is a question.

I have noticed the case when the sum of traffic for each CID is larger than Total Marketing Channel Detail Traffic.

Many thanks

[Jennifer_Dungan]

What metric are you using there?

If it's something like Visit or Unique Visitor, then that is expected, since you can have multiple Channels per visit or per User, and the total will de-duplicate.

For instance:

Visit 1

• Google Search
• Enter Site Page A
  • Marketing Channel = "search"
  • Marketing Channel Detail = "google"
  • Instance of Marketing Channel metric is incremented
• Page B
  • Marketing Channel remains "search" due to attribution
  • Marketing Channel Detail remains "google" due to attribution
  • Instance of Marketing Channel metric is not incremented, since the value is not explicitly set 

Visit 2 - Direct

• Page C
  • Marketing Channel remains "search" due to attribution
  • Marketing Channel Detail remains "google" due to attribution
  • Instance of Marketing Channel metric is not incremented, since the value is not explicitly set 
• User gets an Email, and opens it
• Page D - from email
  • Marketing Channel = "email"
  • Marketing Channel Detail = "campaign X"
  • Instance of Marketing Channel metric is incremented
• Page E
  • Marketing Channel remains "email" due to attribution
  • Marketing Channel Detail remains "campaign X" due to attribution
  • Instance of Marketing Channel metric is not incremented, since the value is not explicitly set 
• User then looks at a social media post, and clicks on link
• Page F
  • Marketing Channel = "social"
  • Marketing Channel Detail = "campaign Y"
  • Instance of Marketing Channel metric is incremented

		Page Views	Visits	Unique Visitors	Marketing Channel Instance
Marketing Channel		6	2	1	3
	search	3	2	1	1
	email	2	1	1	1
	social	1	1	1	1

As you can see, "Search" spans 2 visits, so it will count in its row as "2". In the second visit, the user interacted with 3 different Marketing Channels: search (through attribution), then email and social... each row will show a Visit count, but those don't get added into the total, there was still only 2 visits in total.

If you came from the GA world, GA treated every campaign as a new Visit (despite being within the same "timeout" for a session)... Adobe doesn't do that, Adobe will show all the Channels that are interacted with within the same visit, so if you are using custom attribution, you can look at a participation for a visit, or for a a longer view like 30 days, etc.

Based on your behaviour, I am guessing you are looking at Visits, and summing the values is expected to be higher than the total, due to the totals properly de-duplicating.

[SunghunYo]

Many thanks, @Jennifer_Dungan 

This is the case of summing visits, and your guess is correct.

To clarify your statement,

User A

Visit 1 through AD 1

Page A with CID X

visit 2 through AD 2

Page B with CID X

Those ads contain different landing page URLs but the same CID.

Result 

- CID X Visit : +2

- Marketing Channel Detail Visit : + 1

Is it correct?

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Hi @SunghunYo,

You're welcome.

In your scenario, two different ads with the same CID X, you would have 2 Visits and 2 Marketing Channel Instances with CID X.

I know this can be hard to conceptualized because attribution can be complicated.

Think of it this way:

The "Page Views" of your Marketing Channels will count on every page view until a new value is set, or the expiry is reached.

The "Instance of Marketing Channel" will count every time a value is explicitly set (i.e. your CID is actually in the URL, and processed by your Marketing Channel rules).

So to re-iterate your scenarios:

Visit 1 through AD 1

• Page A with CID X
  • Page View incremented
  • Visit incremented
  • Marketing Channel Detail set to X
  • Marketing Channel instance incremented (since X is explicitly set)

Visit 2 through AD 2

• Page B with CID X
  • Page View incremented
  • Visit incremented
  • Marketing Channel Detail set to X
  • Marketing Channel instance incremented (since X is explicitly set)

		Page Views	Visits	Marketing Channel Instance
X		2	2	2
	Page A	1	1	1
	Page B	1	1	1

I hope this is clear?

[SunghunYo]

Thank you for reply, @Jennifer_Dungan 

Now, it is clear about above example. Back to the root case, I understood that the total visit traffic for the Marketing Channel Detail (represented in dark red) should be equal to the sum of the visit traffic for each CID (shown in light red). However, the total traffic for the Marketing Channel Detail is less than the combined traffic from the 2,329 CID rows.

Are there any additional logical steps needed to resolve this issue?

Thanks a lot.

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

No, the total in dark red should be less than the sum of each of the CID the rows in red.

Because as I showed in my first example, a Marketing channel that spans across multiple visits will count in both the row (value x set in Visit 1 and carried forward to visit 2 - will count as 2) and the total visits (2 actual visits have value x, will also count for 2, since there were 2 actual visits involved)...

But a visit may have multiple marketing channels in the same visit... that will count in each row below, but only count once in the total (visit 3 comes from search, then marketing email, then the user does a search - each of these will count once per row all within the same visit, but since there is only a single visit, so the total will count only 1 due to de-duplicated visits).

The last thing you want is your report to inflate the total visits.

If you have only 3 visits, and 5 marketing channels in play, you wouldn't show the total of "5"... this would inflate the actual number of visits.... the marketing channels that affect the same visit will still have to show the individual marketing channel contribution, but the total will de-duplicate to make sure the total lines up with your actual visits.