When reviewing ad campaign activity in third-party site analytics tools such as Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and Adobe Analytics, you might notice the following trends:
- Data discrepancies between the third-party tools and Demandbase Advertising
- High bounce rates
Data Discrepancies
Discrepancies between the reported numbers for pageviews from the third-party tools and Demandbase result from them being different systems. They are both asynchronous Javascript tools that fire in the browser at different times. This difference in timing can result in the following discrepancies in reported ad engagement results:
- Demandbase filters out known bots, creative validators, and creative testing activity from clicks and CTR data reported in ad campaign results. GA4 and Adobe Analytics don’t automatically filter out such invalid traffic (IVT).
- Users sometimes click on an ad by accident and quickly navigate away before the landing page finishes loading. In some scenarios, the activity causes GA4 and Adobe Analytics to load enough of the page to count it as a session, but Demandbase doesn’t. The firing order of each solution can differ, causing discrepancies in what activity is tracked.
- Cookie consent managers might also treat the third-party tools and Demandbase differently, depending on your company’s cookie policies.
Click-to-land ratio benchmarks can vary greatly, as discussed on the What is the standard Click to Visit ratios? Quora page.
Bounce Rates
The factors listed above can also inflate the reported bounce rate. See the Google Analytics documentation of bounce rates for tips to get a clearer picture of bounce rate if you suspect it’s too high.
Recommended Solutions
You can use the following recommended filters to help exclude IVT activity when you analyze ad and landing page performance in GA4 and Adobe Analytics. These filters are specifically for traffic with Demandbase listed as the source.
- Filter out all traffic from the Linux operating system
-
Filter out the following page referrers:
- https://aax.amazon-adsystem.com/
- https://aax-us-east.amazon-adsystem.com/
- https://storage.googleapis.com/
- https://www.google.com/
- https://www.example.com
To improve bounce rates, consider structuring your landing page to encourage visitors to navigate to a second page. For more information, see Best Practices for Landing Page Setup.