Spot broken digital campaigns tracking with Google and Adobe Analytics

Introduction

Google and Adobe Analytics are powerful tools for tracking the success of your Digital Marketing campaigns. However, despite your best efforts, inaccurate campaign tracking can occur. These inaccuracies can negatively impact attribution, operational efficiency, and return on ad spend (ROAS). 

Moreover, the marketing team is in a race against time to spot and fix the issue as the impact of the low data quality on marketing activities grows with each passing day.

In this blog post, we will explain how to spot tracking issues using Google or Adobe Analytics.

Let's get started! 

What is a mistracked campaign?

To explain, let's consider a marketing campaign-called "Ship4Free" which aims to attract customers by promoting free shipping.

It will run on Google Search through paid ads, an Email Newsletter, and organic posts on Social Media.

After a couple of days, the marketing team wants to view the results. However, when they log into Google or Adobe Analytics, they may encounter one of two issues:

• the Ship4Free is missing entirely from the Campaigns report 
• the Ship4Free campaign report shows data but it’s missing the Email channel

So, what happened?

Consider the following three possibilities:

1. Ship4Free may have landed users on a page without analytics tags.
2. The user traffic may have been classified under the wrong Channel despite proper analytics tagging.
3. The campaign name may be missing, even though tagging and channel classification worked correctly.

For the rest of the article, let's assume that all pages, events, apps, and websites, have the necessary analytics tags for counting page views. It's essential to note that identifying data quality problems caused by misfiring or missing tags is a separate use case itself.

Here are some examples of missing Campaign or wrong Channel data from Adobe and Google Analytics reports.

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Missing Campaign in Google Analytics

Wrong Channel in Google Analytics

Missing Campaign in Adobe Analytics

Wrong Channel in Adobe Analytics

‍Data quality matters

Data-driven practices are only as good as the data they're based on. That's why bad data quality can break business leaders' trust in Digital Analytics. After all, if the data is wrong, the insights derived from it will also be wrong.

The theme of data quality problems came up during the recent market research we conducted with over 40 digital marketing and analytics professionals.

Below is a quick take on the importance of data quality as of today.

Impact on Marketing

1. Attribution

Attribution is the process of assigning credit for a conversion to a particular campaign, ad, keyword, or other touchpoints. Attribution analysis involves analyzing this data to improve marketing effectiveness. 

‍Despite its importance, attribution data is often inaccurate or incomplete, which can lead to false conclusions and suboptimal decisions.

‍Wrong raw data for marketing activities is the bane of every performance marketer's existence. If a campaign is not tracked correctly, its attribution credit will be assigned inaccurately. This can lead to unreliable attribution analysis that does not reflect reality and can result in incorrect decisions based on that analysis.

➡️Cleaning up any campaign tracking problems as fast as possible is crucial to ensuring reliable insights. Failing to do so can lead to untrustworthy analysis results, rendering them useless for decision-making purposes.

2. Operational debt

Operational debt refers to the additional effort marketing teams will be forced to make in the future due to inaccuracies in marketing attribution and performance data. 

When marketing teams try to measure the success of future marketing activities, they may encounter faulty benchmarking data or be forced to spend significant time adjusting the comparison window at a very granular level. 

In a highly competitive industry such as retail, there is little time to pause activities and correct past performance data. As a result, the operational debt is not resolved and poses a risk to future operations. 

➡️Marketing teams should prioritize accuracy in data collection. Failure to do so can result in additional expenses and complications down the line.

3. Audience data models

The use of lookalike audiences is a standard tool among advertisers. They enable advertisers to reach new potential customers who share similar attributes with their existing customer base. 

Lookalike audiences are generated using data from an advertiser's customer list, for example, a CDP. Then, a predictive model identifies individuals that are likely to be interested in the advertiser's products or services based on this data.

However, these data models can only be as accurate as the data used to create them.  If marketing campaigns are not tracked accurately, the resulting data models used to create lookalike audiences will be less accurate, negatively impacting their performance, and marketers risk wasting their ad spend.

➡️A lower ROAS

Inaccurate attribution analysis leads to the misallocation of resources. Lower operational efficiency of the marketing team means more time spent on day-to-day tasks rather than long-term strategic initiatives that drive return. Finally, audience models with a lower conversion rate have, by definition, a direct impact on the return on ad spend.

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5 behaviors that indicate campaign mistracking

1. A sudden spike in "Direct" or "Referral" Channels

It's highly unlikely that all of the visitors who directly land on your website typed in the exact URL Ronaldo mentioned in his latest Instagram story. Therefore, if you notice a spike in direct traffic, it's a sign that one or more of your campaigns may have a tracking issue. The direct traffic channel usually follows a steady and predictable trendline, with visitors landing on the homepage in most cases.

But, don't dismiss the chance of the Referral traffic increase trend to be the result of a legit and popular website referring to yours!

Actions to take‍

• Set up an alert to notify you of sudden increases in Direct traffic and the Referral channel.
• A spike in Direct, especially to a page other than the homepage, is a strong signal of a campaign tracking issue.
• If there is a spike in Referral traffic, investigate the full referral URL for any patterns. If there is a high concentration of traffic from one or a few URLs, perform a forensic analysis by visiting the referral URL and looking for a link to your domain.

How to set up alerts in Google Analytics (Direct)

Option A (Universal Analytics)

To set up an alert for sudden increases in Direct traffic, start by building a segment with the criteria "Default Channel Grouping exactly matches 'Direct'." This segment will be used for your alert configuration.

Step 1: Open Reports > Customization > Custom Alerts

Step 2: Click Manage Custom Alerts > New Alert

Step 3: Set the granularity to daily

Step 4: Define the alert conditions

Step 5: Specify the alert trigger by choosing a metric and threshold. Since Entrances is not an available option for GA alerts, Sessions can be used instead.

Note: Google Universal Analytics does not have the feature of anomaly detection. Instead of creating an alert by identifying trends in recent days, you can compare your current value to the following:

1. the previous day's value
2. the same day of the previous week
3. the same day of the previous year.

To avoid confusion caused by fluctuations in traffic due to weekly seasonality, you may prefer to choose option b) and compare today's Direct entries to those of the same day last week. Alternatively, you can choose the option that suits your needs best.

Once you've decided, set a reasonable threshold, such as a 50% increase in Sessions compared to the same day the previous week. You’ll get something like this:

This will alert you in the case that a spike from Direct happened the previous day, but no additional information / breakdowns will be provided.

To gain more insights into what caused the spike in Direct traffic, you can create a custom report in Google Analytics. Here are the steps to follow:

• Set up the same filters and date range of the last 2 days/weeks as your alert.
• Add the "Day" or "Week" dimension to calculate day-over-day (DoD) or week-over-week (WoW) figures. You will need to work on this outside GA, as it does not support creating a custom metric like this on the fly.
• Add the "Full Referrer" dimension to see where the traffic is coming from, add the "Sessions" metric to see the number of sessions for each referrer, and sort the report by DoD or WoW sessions in descending order.
• Now you can see the contributors. See any referrers that should be attributed to Paid Campaigns?

Option B (GA4)

Google has launched a new feature called Anomaly detection for GA4. This feature provides anomaly detection for multiple metrics and dimensions simultaneously. It uses a Bayesian state-space time series model to predict the value of the most recent data point based on historical data.

The training period for hourly anomalies is 2 weeks, for daily anomalies 90 days, and for weekly anomalies 32 weeks.

The generated insights can be viewed by scrolling down to the homepage.

Unfortunately, you cannot create custom alerts by Default Channel Grouping. This means that you cannot monitor sessions for the Direct channel only.

How to set up alerts in Adobe Analytics (Direct)

Adobe Analytics alert

Step 1: Navigate to the top toolbar > Components > Alerts and click ‘Add’

Step 2: Set the granularity to daily

Step 3: Define the metric for which you want the alert to be sent. That would be Entries

Step 4: Define the threshold Options: 90%, 95%, 99%, 99.75%, and 99.9% thresholds; % change; above/below)

Step 5: Select the value of the dimension you are interested in. You want to segment your data with Last Touch Channel = Direct.

You’ll get something like this:

This will alert you in case a spike from Direct happened the previous day, but no additional information / breakdowns will be provided.

If you want to know what contributed to this analysis, you will have to recreate it in Adobe workspace.

• Set up the same filters and date range of the last 2 days/weeks.
• Create a DoD/WoW Entries custom metric and sort it in descending order.
• Next, you can break it down by referrer and sort it in descending order.
• Now you can see the contributors. See any referrers that should be attributed to Paid Campaigns?

You can also run a contribution analysis within Adobe Workspace, but this feature is limited and depends on your license.

How to set up alerts in Google Analytics (Referral)

Option A (Universal Analytics)

The steps for creating an alert are the same as those mentioned in the first case. The only difference is that you need to modify the segment to "Default Channel Grouping exactly matches 'Referral'".

You’ll get something like this:

How to set up alerts in Adobe Analytics (Referral)

Adobe Analytics alert

Follow the steps described in the first case above.
In this case, you want to segment your data with Last Touch Channel = Referring Domains

You’ll get something like this:

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2. A Bounce Rate spike in Organic Channels

Paid and organic traffic show different user behaviors. Typically, paid traffic comes with a higher bounce rate - or a lower Engaged visits rate in GA4. At the same time, when paid traffic lands without a campaign tracking code, the analytics platform can mistakenly classify the visit under the correct channel but as organic instead of paid. Consequently,

• Paid Social can be reported as Organic Social,
• Paid Search can be reported as Organic Search,
• Display and Affiliates might be reported as Referral,
• Additionally, under specific conditions, any channel can be reported as Direct.

However, the moment an organic channel starts reporting a total that includes paid traffic, the overall bounce rate of the channel increases, because the segment of paid traffic skews the trend and the total no longer reflects the organic user behavior accurately.

Actions to take

• Set up an alert for sudden increases of Bounce Rate in any organic channel.
• Check the top contributing landing page(s) for the given alert and confirm if the given URL(s) are currently targeted by marketing activities

How to set up alerts in Google Analytics

Option A (Universal Analytics)

To set up alerts in Google Analytics using Universal Analytics, follow the steps outlined in the first case mentioned earlier, but make sure to modify the segment used.

In this case, use a segment that includes 'Direct', '(Other)', 'Referral', 'Social', and 'Organic Search' channels. Additionally, use Bounce Rate as the metric for the alert instead of Sessions.
You may also consider setting up alerts for each channel separately.

You’ll get something like this:

If you receive an alert for a sudden increase in bounce rate, you can follow the same steps as the first case above to further analyze the issue. You may need to generate a report that includes both Entrances and Bounce Rate to properly analyze the data.

How to set up alerts in Adobe Analytics

Adobe Analytics alert

Follow the steps described in the first case above.

You only need to alter the segment used:
Last Touch Channel matches any of ‘Natural Search’, ‘Social Organic’, ‘Referring Domains’, ‘Direct’. You could also set up different alerts, by channel.

And the metric used: Bounce Rate

You’ll get something like this:

If you receive such an alert, check how to further analyze in the first case above. You might need to pull out a report including both Entries and Bounce Rate, to help you analyze properly.

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3. “Referral” Channel reports Referring URLs that signal paid traffic

Sometimes untracked campaigns retain the referrer information. A high increase in Referral traffic is an indicator of an untracked campaign, which can be verified by checking the full referrer URL. Certain referrers can be easily identified as ad networks. E.g. if the referrer contains ‘googleads’, it’s almost certainly a mistracked campaign.

Actions to take

• Set Traffic Channel to “Referral”. Also, filter for suspect “ads.”, “criteo.com”, "gdn", and “tpc.googlesyndication.com.”
  Analyze the resulting report which is likely to contain mistracked or untracked campaigns.

How to set up alerts in Google Analytics

Option A (Universal Analytics)

Follow the same steps as mentioned above in the first case.

Change the segment to:
Default Channel Grouping is ‘Referral’
AND
Source contains any of “ads.”, “criteo.com”, "gdn"

You’ll get something like this:

If you receive such alert, check how to further analyze in the first case above.

How to set up alerts in Adobe Analytics

Adobe Analytics Alerts

Follow the steps described in the first case above.

Just change the segment to:
Last Touch Channel equals ‘Referring Domains’
AND
Referrer contains any of ‘ads.’, ‘criteo.com’, gdn.’

You’ll get something like this:

If you receive such an alert, refer back to the first case above for further analysis.

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4. Paid Channels report "undefined" Campaigns

When campaign tracking is not (properly) implemented, Google and Adobe Analytics can identify the paid channel correctly if the incoming traffic matches default or user-configured rules. For example:

• Incoming traffic matches Paid Search Detection Rules
• Medium matches display, cpm, banner, cpv, cpa etc.

To detect such cases, search for 'undefined' or 'not set' values in the Campaign (Google Analytics) or Tracking Code (Adobe Analytics) dimension.

‍Actions to take

• Set Traffic Channel to “Display”, “Social Paid”, “Paid Search” or any other paid channel and filter the lines where the Campaign value is not set. Anything appearing in this report has a high likelihood of being mistracked or untracked.

How to set up alerts in Google Analytics

Option A (Universal Analytics)

Follow the same steps as mentioned above in the first case.

Change the segment to:
Default Channel Grouping is one of ‘Display’, ‘Paid Search’, ‘Social Paid’.
AND
Campaign is ‘(not set)’

You’ll get something like this:

How to set up alerts in Adobe Analytics

Adobe Analytics alert

Follow the steps described in the first case above.

Change the segment to:
Last Touch Channel matches any of ‘Paid Search’, ‘Social Paid’, ‘Display’.
AND
Tracking code does not exist.

You’ll get something like this:

In case you receive such an alert, you might want to analyze further:

• Pull a report, breaking down the traffic by referrer information.
• Use entries for the last 2 days/weeks and calculate the DoD/WoW difference
• Sort the dataset by the DoD/WoW difference.
• Investigate the referrers with the largest changes. Are any of them attributed to a Paid Campaign?

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5. Landing page URLs with a campaign tracking prefix report "undefined" Campaigns

Web analytics tools sometimes automatically remove all tracking parameters from the 'URL' dimension, and store their values in dedicated dimensions - only when implementation is done correctly. Therefore, the existence of tracking parameters in the Landing Page or Page URL reports is a clear sign of a mistracked campaign. 

Here are some examples of improper campaign tracking parameters implementations:

• The first UTM parameter is not separated with the Landing Page URL by the symbol "?"
• ~Wrong: /ship-for-free/utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ship4free
• ~Correct: /ship-for-free/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ship4free
• The UTM parameter is not separated with the previous URL parameter with the symbol "&"
• ~Wrong: /ship-for-free/?utm_source=newsletter?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ship4free
• ~Correct: /ship-for-free/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ship4free
• UTM parameters are misspelled
• ~Wrong: /ship-for-free/?utm-source=newsletter&utm-medium=email&utm-campaign=ship4free
• ~Correct: /ship-for-free/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ship4free

Actions to take

• Set the Campaign to “not set” and filter the Landing Page URL for “utm” (Google Analytics) or “cid” (Adobe Analytics).
  Anything appearing in this report has a high likelihood of being mistracked or untracked.

How to set up alerts in Google Analytics

Option A (Universal Analytics)

Follow the same steps as mentioned above in the first case.

Change the segment to:
Landing page includes UTM parameters
AND
Campaign is ‘(not set)’

You’ll get something like this:

How to set up alerts in Adobe Analytics‍

Adobe Analytics alert

Follow the steps described in the first case above.

Change the segment to:
Entry page URL contains your tracking parameter (e.g. ‘cid’)
AND
Tracking code does not exist.

You’ll get something like this:

In case you receive such an alert, you might want to analyze further:

• Pull a report, breaking down by landing page.
• Take entries for the last 2 days/weeks and calculate the DoD/WoW difference.
• Sort the dataset by the DoD/WoW difference.
• Investigate those landing pages. Is there any issue with the tracking code implementation on the URL, such as the ones mentioned above?

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Limitations of alerts

Regardless of whether you use Google or Adobe Analytics alerts, both systems have some constraints.

Limitations of Adobe Analytics Alerts

• Cannot break down the alerts by additional dimensions to view top contributors. Therefore each anomaly will require a separate analysis.
• Limited number of Contribution Analysis per month per company; depending on the product license

Limitations of Google Analytics Alerts

• UA alerts cannot break down by additional dimensions so that you can view top contributors
• GA4 alerts may or may not breakdown the Insights created by additional dimensions

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