Introduction

The Affiliate Conversion Journey (ACJ) of the Insights and Analytics Portal provides insights on your contributions to conversions during all purchase phases, from awareness to consideration to conversion. It allows you to see which part of the purchase process you are in. It also shows you the most common conversion paths.

ACJ consists of two tabs: Contributions and Touchpoints.

Access

ACJ is available to managed publishers in the Insights and Analytics Portal (IAP). To access IAP, log in with your Publisher Dashboard credentials to the dedicated IAP website. You are taken to the ACJ section by default.

To access ACJ from another section in IAP, go to Insights in the navigation header and click Affiliate Conversion Journey.

Benefits

With ACJ, you benefit from:

• Transparency into full-funnel influence across the customer journey.
• On-demand access to actionable insights.
• Data you can use to make decisions, develop strategies for growth, and benchmark progress against your goals.
• A quantifiable understanding of your unique contribution footprint for brands and the interplay of other publisher models.

Data Collection

Data is collected based on click information. It is available as of the previous day’s close of day in the UTC zone and is updated daily. Advertisers must send conversion data to us in UTC+0 for us to properly map a conversion click into a journey.

The maximum historical data amount is 365 with a 30-day lookback window.

Filters

To view data, make selections for the following filters:

Click on the image for a larger version.

• SID: If there is more than one SID associated with your account, use the drop-down menu on the left to select the SID you want to view data for.
• Order Period: You can set a date range of up to one year.
• Lookback Window: This filter defines how many days the system should go back to before setting the first click in the user journey. You can select 1, 7, 14, or 30 days. The default setting is month-to-date.

Phases of ACJ

ACJ divides the customer journey into three phases:

1. Awareness: the first click.
2. Consideration: all clicks that take place between the first and last clicks.
3. Conversion: the last click.

Activity Summary

Your activity is summarized according to the filters you selected. The data includes:

• The total number of affiliate clicks that occurred.
• The number of clicks that occurred during the awareness, consideration, and conversion phases.
• The average number of clicks that occurred before a conversion took place.

Analyze Your Data

Whether you are looking to build a more robust upper funnel footprint or move more shoppers from consideration to conversion, use the statistics in your activity summary to capture your baseline and set goals around each stage of the funnel:

• Get a directional understanding of your contribution across the awareness, consideration, and conversion phases of the customer journey.
• Understand your average clicks to conversion and the implications.

When making selections for the filters detailed above:

• Use the order period to see how your contributions have changed across pre-defined or custom periods based on important calendar dates for your business.
• Adjust the lookback window to understand how attribution timings impact contribution captures.

Export Data

You can export your ACJ reports in PDF format by clicking the download icon:

Click on the image for a larger version.

Counting and Mapping Clicks

A single click count, or touchpoint, can be attributed to multiple orders, and a single order can be attributed to multiple unique clicks. For example:

• A customer bought Shoe A on an advertiser’s website. Three clicks led to that conversion.
• Thirty minutes later, the same customer bought Shoe B on the same advertiser’s website. Two clicks led to that conversion.

The journey that led to the Shoe B order occurred in the same order period and lookback window as the journey for the Shoe A order. Because of this, the ACJ report would include the three clicks from the Shoe A order journey in the click count of the Shoe B order journey. As a result, the report would show three clicks for the Shoe A order and five clicks for the Shoe B order.

Reporting Interface Click Data Differences

Clicks shown in ACJ are calculated differently from the data available in the Reporting Interface. The clicks displayed in ACJ are the total number of clicks leading to the conversion based on the order period and the lookback window for the clicks that led to the conversions, or orders, that occurred in that period selected.

Restrictions and Assistance

Due to limitations on cookies, we are not able to track all journeys. Additionally, certain specific tracking setups will not map into a journey. Contact your account manager or Customer Support if you are experiencing difficulties.

Next Steps

View detailed information about the data shown in the Contributions and Touchpoints tabs.