- Session attribution: assigning a session to a channel, campaign, adset or ad.
- Event attribution: assigning credit for an event to the different sessions a user had.
Session attribution
Session attribution is how Converge determines where a visit on your site comes from based on the landing page URL, referrer and certain click IDs or tracking parameters.What is a session?
A session is a single visit to your website from a specific source within a set time frame. Sessions start and end based on these rules:- Sessions time out after 60 minutes of inactivity — If you visit our website, leave the window open, and continue more than 60 minutes later, a new session starts.
- Different sources start new sessions — If you land from a Facebook ad, leave, and return through a Google Ads ad 30 minutes later, that starts a new session.
Example
Let’s say two users search for your company on Google. One clicks on a paid ad from Google Ads, the other clicks an organic search result. They land on:- Paid Click: https://www.example.com/?gclid=123456789
- Organic Click: https://www.example.com/
www.google.com
, but the gclid
parameter that Google Ads attaches to the URL tells us the first came from a Google Ads campaign. The second visit has no gclid
, so we attribute it to Google’s organic search.
So we can attribute to the following Channels:
- Paid click: Google
- Organic click: Google (Organic Search)
Tracking parameters
Tracking parameters provide context about session sources through extra URL fields. For example, someone clicks your search ad from Google Ads. The URL might look like:https://www.example.com/?gclid=123456789?cvg_source=google&cvg_cid=98765&cvg_adid=12345
Here’s what we can extract:
gclid
: 123456789cvg_source
: googlecvg_cid
: 98765cvg_adid
: 12345
- Channel: Google
- Campaign: Campaign A
- Ad set: Ad set 1
- Ad: Ad variant D
Converge relies on correct tracking parameters to correctly attribute your sessions.
Learn more about setting up the tracking parameters here.
Event attribution
Event attribution assigns credit for a specific event, like a Placed Order or Started Subscription, to the different sessions within a customer journey. Here’s an example journey:- The user sees a Facebook ad but doesn’t click.
- The user clicks a Google Search ad and lands on your site, browses products but doesn’t purchase.
- The user returns via organic search, adds a product to the cart, but doesn’t complete the checkout.
- The user gets a cart abandonment email, clicks it, and completes a purchase with a value of $ 1000.
Converge doesn’t mark events as Conversions. Apply attribution to any event you track in Converge.
Converge vs In-Platform attribution
Converge attributes events to all observable touchpoints, with some limits. Converge tracks website interactions only, so we can’t see ad views or emails without clicks. Converge only knows if someone viewed an ad or received an email if the user clicked a link and landed on your website. For the example above, Converge can only observe the following three sessions the user had on your website, since we can’t track that a user viewed a Facebook ad without clicking a link in the ad. In many cases, your ad platforms will also try to attribute your events. We call this In-Platform Attribution and it can show discrepancies when compared to Converge. Neither Converge nor the ad platform is wrong. They all just have limited perspective on the truth. In our earlier example:- Converge attributes the purchase to any of the three sessions it observed according to the attribution model.
- Facebook attributes the purchase to the ad view (even without a click). It will ignore all other touchpoints.
- Google Ads attributes the purchase to the search ad click. It will also ignore all other touchpoints.