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Channel Setup Scenario Examples

Recommended

Familiarize yourself with the following resources before moving on to this article:

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.

Marketing tactics

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

  • Mentions

  • Shares

  • Reposts

  • Reviews

Advertising

  • Search

  • Display

  • Retargeting

  • Paid Influencers

  • Paid Content

  • Social Media Ads

Media Properties

  • Website

  • Mobile Site

  • Blog Site

  • Social Media Channels

Common channels

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

Setup scenarios

Scenario 1: Paid Search

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=google

  • https://www.landingpage.com?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=bing

  • https://www.landingpage.com?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=yahoo

  • https://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

utm_medium

Exactly Matches

cpc

This Rule will correctly identify traffic from all 4 search engines and associate it to your Paid Search Optimize Channel.

Scenario 2: Organic Search & Organic Social

Note

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.

Note

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

.google.,.bing.,.search.yahoo.

Landing Page Query String

--

Does Not Match Regex

utm|gclid|mscklid

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

facebook,twitter/X,instagram,youtube,linkedin,pinterest

Landing Page Query String

--

Does Not Match Regex

utm|fbclid|epik

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

https:// www.facebook.com

https://www.landingpage.com/product-category?campaign=product&fbclid=IwAR1kt1ttQhErJZfveSsHv-eFmTEZ6SK_nG3e_dO0gfNd4nM4wM7Rt6UhA6U_aem_AXQf6vc-IiMqtXq-zVwOiXj8RCyDTEN2yk&click_id=904509823

No Match

http:// m.facebook.com

https://www.landingpage.com/product-category?click_id=474641068&utm=fb&utm=paid_social

No Match

http:// www.pinterest.com

https://www.landingpage.com/product-category/recently-purchased-product-category

Organic Social

https:// l.facebook.com/

https://www.landingpage.com/?click_id=216899102

Organic Social

http:// www.google.com/

https://www.landingpage.com/ca/build-your-own-ring/review?offerId=81169&gclid=Cj0KCQjw9_mDBhCGARIsAN3PaFMckApB33NY8yvhU831_YUDpovgezw8VwwXU_cSgEO27CKMrOa_jugaAisQEALw_wcB

No Match

http:// cn.bing.com/search?q=product+name

https://www.landingpage.com

Organic Search

https:// r.search.yahoo.com

https://www.landingpage.com/category/build-your-own?offerId=81939&msclkid=bddae6b02dd01b9b137286cfeca0cd87

No Match

https:// us.search.yahoo.com/

https://www.landingpage.com/category/product

Organic Search

Scenario 3: Multiple Variations

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=criteo

  • https://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

retargeting,display

AND

Landing Page Parameter

utm_source

Matches Any

criteo,adroll

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