Processing rules for Marketing Channels
Marketing Channel processing rules determine if a visitor hit meets the criteria assigned to a channel by processing every hit a visitor makes on your site. The rules are processed in the order that you specify, and when a rule is met, the system stops processing the remaining rules.
Analytics > Admin > Report Suites > Edit Settings > Marketing Channels > Marketing Channel Processing Rules.
Additional notes about processing :
- Data collected with these rules are permanent. Rules altered after data collection are not retroactive. Adobe strongly recommends that you review and consider all circumstances before saving Marketing Channel Processing Rules to mitigate data being collected in incorrect channels.
- You can configure up to 25 separate marketing channels.
- Rules can access variables that VISTA has set, but cannot access data that VISTA has deleted.
- Two marketing channels never receive credit for the same event (such as purchases or clicks). In this way, marketing channels differ from eVars (where two eVars might receive credit for the same event).
- If there is a gap coverage of your rules, you may see No Channel Identified.
Prerequisites
- Review the conceptual information in Getting Started with Marketing Channels.
- Create one or more channels so that you can assign rules to them. See Add marketing channels.
- Review the best practices for using Marketing Channels with Attribution.
Create Marketing Channel processing rules
Create Marketing Channel processing rules, which determine if a visitor hit meets the criteria assigned to a channel.
-
Click Analytics > Admin > Report Suites.
-
Select a report suite.
If your report suite does not have channels defined, the Marketing Channels: Auto Setup page displays.
-
Click Edit Settings > Marketing Channels > Marketing Channel Processing Rules. If you ran the automatic setup, a set of channel and rules were automatically defined for you.
-
If you want to add a rule, select from the Add New Rule Set menu. If you select a channel, you are given a rule template and if you select Custom, you start from a blank slate. Both options allow you to modify the rule set as needed.
-
To continue creating rules, click Add New Rule SetRule.
-
To prioritize rules, drag-and-drop them to the desired position.
-
Click Save.
Set the marketing channel value
Set the channel’s value defines the marketing channel detail dimension that is available for that channel.
Rule criteria
This reference table defines the fields, options, and hit attributes you can use to define Marketing Channel Processing Rules.
cmp = abc123, all uppercase and lowercase variations of both cmp and abc123 match.:d for Display ClickThroughs or “AMO EF ID” ends with :i for Display ViewThroughs. If you do not desire to split Display into two channels, then use the AMO ID dimension instead.Several selections are available, including:
- Does Not Exist: Specifies that the hit attribute does not exist on the request. For example, in a referring domain, if the user types a URL or clicks a bookmark, the referring domain attribute does not exist.
- Is Empty: Specifies that a hit attribute exists, usually an eVar or query string parameter, but there is no value associated with the hit attribute.
- Does Not Contain: Lets you specify, for example, that a referring domain does not contain a specific value (as opposed to using the selection “Contains”.)
products.example.com.products.example.com/mens/pants/overview.html .ANY as your operator, then add query string parameters to the rule.www.example.com/products/id/12345 or ad.example.com/fooexample.com/?page=12345&cat=1, then page and cat are the referring parameters.Search Tracking Code = "<search_type>:<search engine>:<search keyword>" where search_type = "n" or "p", search_engine = "Google", and search_keyword = "computer"Note: n = natural; p = paidMarketing Channel rule order and definitions channel-rules
Channel rules are processed in the order that you specify. Adobe recommends that you place paid or managed channels first (such as paid search, natural search, display, or email) so that they receive credit over organic channels (such as direct, internal, referring domains).
Below is the recommended order for channel rules and example definitions:
Paid Search paid-search
Paid search is a word or phrase that you pay a search engine for placement in search results. This channel is typically defined based on query string parameter (see Display channel example) or paid search detection rules.
Paid search detection
To match paid search detection rules, the marketing channel uses settings configured on the Paid Search Detection page. ( Admin > Report Suites > Edit Settings > General > Paid Search Detection). The destination URL matches the existing paid search detection rule for that search engine.
For the marketing channel rule, the Paid Search settings are as follows:
See Paid Search Detection for more information.
Natural Search natural-search
Natural search is when visitors find your website through a search engine, and the search engine ranked your site without you paying for the listing.
Adobe determines search traffic based on an internal lookup of search engines. If a referrer matches criteria for a search engine, it then determines if it is paid or natural using Paid Search Detection rules that you have configured. A hit is considered natural search when it does not match any paid search detection rules.
For the marketing channel rule, the Natural Search settings are as follows:
Display display
This rule identifies visitors originating from banner advertisements. It is identified by a query string parameter in the destination URL, in this case Ad_01. Query string parameter and the values it looks for are evaluated as case-insensitive values.
Email email
This rule identifies visitors originating from email campaigns. It is identified by a query string parameter in the destination URL, in this case eml:
Affiliates afilliates
This rule identifies visitors that originate from a specified set of referring domains. In the rule, you list the domains of affiliates you would like to track, as follows:
Other Campaigns other-campaigns
A best practice is to include an “Other campaigns” channel following all paid channel rules. This channel acts as a catch-all for uncategorized paid traffic.
Social Networks social-networks
This rule identifies visitors that originate from a social network, such as Facebook. The channel is often renamed to Organic Social. The settings can be as follows:
Internal (Session Refresh) channel internal
This rule visitors where their referring URL matches the Internal URL Filters setup in the Admin Console, meaning the visitor came from within the site to start their visit. This channel is often renamed to Session Refresh.
See Reasons for Internal (Session Refresh) for more information on why this channel occurs.
Direct direct
This rule identifies visitors that have no referring domain, which includes visitors that come to your site directly, such as from a Favorites link or by pasting a link in their browser. This channel is often renamed to Direct Typed/Bookmarked.
Referring Domains channel referring-domains
The Referring Domains channel identifies visitors that have a referring domain. Together, the Internal, Direct, and Referring domains channels act as a catch-all for all remaining hits that have not yet been categorized into a channel.
