Using the Channels Extension to De-Duplicate Sales across Vendors

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Overview

You have set up your channels extension as per the Channels Extension document and you want to start using your channels to fire different vendor tags (e.g. Criteo, Affiliate Window, LinkShare) for different channels for attribution purposes on the confirmation page once someone has converted.

Solution

Step 1 : Create the channels as cookie Data Sources

When you use the Channels extension we store many things about the channels you hit but there are three main ways you can attribute towards your channels:

1. First Touch (channeloriginator) : The first channel a visitor hit prior to conversion
2. Last Touch (channelcloser) : The last channel a visitor hit prior to conversion
3. All Channels (channelflow) : A list of all channels a visitor has hit prior to conversion

You want to be able to assign load rules to your tags based on one of these three pieces of information available (or maybe more!). In order to do that you need to create these as Data Sources you can use.

Instructions

1. Go to the 'Data Layer' tab
2. Click on the down-arrow next to the green '+ Add Data Source' and hit 'Import data sources...'
3. Copy and paste the following data sources into the box and 'Apply'

                    channelflow, Cookie Value,Channels >> channelflow
                    channelcloser, Cookie Value,LinkShare >> channelcloser
                    channeloriginator, Cookie Value,LinkShare >> channeloriginator

               4. You will now have the following Data Sources which you can use in your load rules:

                    

Step 2 : Create Load Rules based on your channel data

Now your load rules can access the channel data help in the cookies you can start creating them and assigning them to tags. First, let's check the kind of values held in your cookies:

Cookie Name : channelcloser

Stores : Channel Name for last channel a visitor hit

Example Value : 'Yahoo'

Cookie Name : channeloriginator

Stores : Channel Name for first channel a visitor hit

Example Value : 'Yahoo'

Cookie Name : channelflow

Stores: Channel Name|Category|epochtimestamp (for every channel the visitor has hit delimited ',')

Example Value : 'Yahoo|paidsearch|1393338124410,Google|paidsearch|1393338129410'

Instructions

Now we understand what's stored in each cookie, we can set up a load rule to start using them. Let's assume we want to fire a tag when someone converts from a channel called 'Yahoo':

1. Create Load Rule using channelcloser(cp) Data Source ('cp' means it is a cookie)
2. Set it to 'contains' whatever your channel name is
3. Add another condition that it must fire on the confirmation page
4. You're done!

Step 3 : Assign your Load Rule

Now you have your Load Rule, all you need to do is assign it to the tag of your choice (e.g. Affiliate Window) and your tags will now start firing based on the channels you want!

You're done!