The resources listed above introduced foundational concepts you will need to set up Optimize Rules to Identify. In this article, you can view several scenarios and will see how those foundational concepts are applied. This will illustrate the recommended ways to apply what you have learned.
You should consider the marketing tactic (i.e., how you plan on reaching an audience) when determining how you will set up a channel within your Optimize solution. see the table below for examples of each category.
Earned Media | Paid Media | Owned Media |
Audience Sharing
| Advertising
| Media Properties
|
The list below contains suggestions of the Channels you might configure in Optimize. While this list is not exhaustive, it will be a good start to begin grouping your partners and media into different Channels.
Comparison/Product Listing Ads
Display
Email
Organic Search
Organic Social
Paid Search
Paid Social
You most likely employ some type of paid search into your marketing mix, and likely are active on multiple search engines. This scenario will assume that the paid search media sources employed are Google Ads, Bing Ads, Yahoo Search, and Baidu. The tagging strategy for each media source is as follows:
https://www.landingpage.com?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=googlehttps://www.landingpage.com?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=binghttps://www.landingpage.com?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=yahoohttps://www.landingpage.com?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=baidu
Within Optimize, you should capture this set of circumstances as one Paid Search channel with the following Rule To Identify:
Rule Target | Rule Value 1 | Rule Logic | Rule Value 2 |
Landing Page Parameter |
| Exactly Matches |
|
This Rule will correctly identify traffic from all 4 search engines and associate it to your Paid Search Optimize Channel.
For the purposes of this scenario, "Organic" is the naturally occurring traffic that does not stem from any paid or owned marketing efforts. This traffic is the result of the search engine web crwlers listing a link to your site in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) or, for example, from your coworker Kate sharing a link to your website to her friend Jack on Facebook (with Jack then clicking on the shared link to visit your site).
Organic referral traffic is more challenging to track simply because brands don't control any aspect of the landing page URLs. Consequently, impact.com recommends using some aspect of the Referring URL as one of the RTI to identify this traffic.
Referring URL-based targets are less reliable because the Referring URL is not always tracked. This is due to a number of factors including the growing influence of privacy and intelligent tracking prevention policies, like Apple's iOS 14.5 update.
impact.com also recommends using disqualifiers to help limit accidental identification of paid traffic. For Organic Search, the main search engines make the job easier through their use of click IDs. For example, Google Ads utilizes the click ID GCLID, and Bing and Yahoo utilize MSCKLID. Our recommended Organic Search RTI would then be:
Rule Target | Rule Value 1 | Rule Logic | Rule Value 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
Referring Domain | -- | Contains Any |
|
Landing Page Query String | -- | Does Not Match Regex |
|
AND | |||
You can employ a similar strategy for Organic Social traffic:
Rule Target | Rule Value 1 | Rule Logic | Rule Value 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
Referring Domain | -- | Contains Any |
|
Landing Page Query String | -- | Does Not Match Regex |
|
AND | |||
In both cases, the operator AND is utilized, meaning both Rules must be met for referral traffic to be identified as part of this Channel.
Both cases also leverage the same Rule Targets (Referring Domain and Landing Page Query String) as well as the same Rule Logic options (Contains Any and Does Not Match Regex).
The only difference between these two channels is the values supplied into the Rule Value 2.
Test cases for the Organic Channels
Below are some examples of combinations of Referring URLs and Landing Page URLs. The Organic Channels created above will be applied to these example URLs, and you will see whether or not a given URL will be identified as part of that Channel. If the Evaluation is No Match, the URL matched with neither channel.
Referring URL | Landing Page URL | Evaluation |
|
| No Match |
|
| No Match |
|
| Organic Social |
|
| Organic Social |
|
| No Match |
|
| Organic Search |
|
| No Match |
|
| Organic Search |
You might find more than one set of parameter variations for a particular channel. Say, for example, you employed both Criteo and AdRoll for retargeting, but somehow the parameter strategy was not consistently employed:
https://www.landingpage.com?utm_medium=retargeting&utm_source=criteohttps://www.landingpage.com?utm_medium=display&utm_source=adroll
You will still only need one set of Rules to effectively identify this traffic:
Rule Target | Rule Value 1 | Rule Logic | Rule Value 2 |
Landing Page Parameter | utm_medium | Matches Any |
|
AND | |||
Landing Page Parameter | utm_source | Matches Any |
|