- TLC Home Home
- Discussions & Ideas Discussions & Ideas
- Product Guides Product Guides
- Knowledge Base Knowledge Base
- Developer Docs Developer Docs
- Education Education
- Blog TLC Blog
- Support Desk Support Desk
The Channels extension is used to get a view of your customer's journey across multiple channels. For example, you may be running across many ad channels, and want to know what the channel life cycle is for customers. Are people looking at one or many ads? Which ads are they looking at first or last? For those that do buy, what is the flow before they purchased?
This extension also provides you with the ability to set the Channel Conversion Credit for your Originator, Influencer, and Closer affiliates.
See the full list of available extensions.
In this article:
Once the extension is added, the following configuration options are available:
Click the Add Channel button to add and configure an additional channel, as needed.
Choose on which pages you want to populate the Output data sources. We recommend you only populate these data sources on a conversion-type page, such as a cart page or order confirmation page.
Navigate to the Attribution Period/Population tab. From this tab you set how long you wish to attribute conversions to certain channels and on what pages you wish this to happen.
To determine the commission amount to give to a channel depending on how it contributed to a conversion:
Data from this extension is saved in a cookie called "channelflow". The cookie data provides the full channel flow from beginning to end. Each channel has three values: the channel name, the category, and the attribution period. Each value is saved as a string delimited by a bar '|
'. Each individual channel is separated by a comma. The following is an example:
Channel1 Name|Category|Attribution Period, Channel2 Name|Category|Attribution Period
If the attribution period is set to "Same Session", then its value in the cookie is '0'. If the attribution period is set to either Visitor or Days, then the attribution period value is a number greater than zero.
So, if we had three channels (channel1, channel2, and channel3) with categories set to affiliate, display ads, and sponsorship, respectively and the attribution period for all of them set to "Same Session", the data appears as the following:
channel1|affiliate|0,channel2|displayads|0,channel3|sponsorship|0
The same channels and categories with their attribution period set to "Visitor" or "Days" appears as the following:
channel1|affiliate|1358975968083,channel2|displayads|1358975970419,channel3|sponsorship|1358975973256
Cookie data provides the full channel flow from beginning to end. The cookie is read from left (beginning) to right (end).
channel|category|expiration
When you use the Channels extension, the data persisted by the extension are saved in new data layer variables that are readily available for use in load rules, extensions, and data mappings. These variables provide more detailed information by splitting out channels from categories, and by providing the first, last, and all visited channels and categories.
The following variables are created:
channel_category_originator |
The first Category visited. |
channel_originator |
The first channel visited. |
channel_category_influencer |
The list of categories visited, not including the closer. |
channel_influencer |
The list of channels visited, not including the closer. |
channel_category_closer |
The last category visited. |
channel_closer |
The last channel visited. |
channel_category_path |
All categories visited |
channel_path |
All channels visited. |
channel_originator_credit |
Displays the amount credited to the originator based on the percentage of the conversion value. |
channel_influencer_credit |
The amount credited to "each" influencer based on the percentage of the conversion value. This is calculated by taking the Influencer Credit percentage multiplied by the Conversion Variable value and divided by the number of Channels listed in the |
channel_closer_credit |
The amount credited to the closer based on the percentage of the conversion value. |
If you only want to pass channel information to a vendor tag on certain pages, follow these steps:
channel_closer
, to the appropriate tag destination.To see how the variables change with each page visit, imagine the scenario above where the customer views the PJ, then EM, then SF Channels. Notice how the variables change as follows:
channel_category_originator: affiliate
channel_originator: PJ
channel_category_path: affiliate
channel_path: PJ
channel_category_closer: affiliate
channel_closer: PJ
channel_category_originator: affiliate
channel_originator: PJ
channel_category_path: affiliate,displayads
channel_path: PJ,EM
channel_category_closer: displayads
channel_closer: EM
channel_category_originator: affiliate
channel_originator: PJ
channel_category_path: affiliate,displayads,sponsorships
channel_path: PJ,EM,SF
channel_category_closer: sponsorships
channel_closer: SF
The custom handling code is run at the end of the extension, so any calculations and assignments are completed when this code is invoked.
The container object is named obj
and it contains the following attributes for any custom handling:
channel_originator
channel_influencer
channel_closer
channel_category_originator
channel_category_influencer
channel_category_closer
channel_path
channel_category_path
channel_originator_credit
channel_influencer_credit
channel_closer_credit
The following is a custom handler example:
// Custom Handler Example
// if commisionjunction is the originator
// it is also the closer
if(obj.channel_originator=='commisionjunction'){
obj.channel_closer='commission junction';
}
Complete testing after the Channels extension is published to your environment.
Make note of the page URLs where the different Channels reside, and navigate to each of the URLs so that the data is captured.
Using Chrome debugging tools, or Firefox tools such as HTTPFox and Firebug allow you to see page variables and cookie states. These tools help you to debug any issues and validate that the Channel Flow tracking is working, as needed.
Copyright All Rights Reserved © 2008-2021