Adobe Analytics CID

[Jessica_Ruffalo]

Hi - We have started using Adobe Analytics and CID as our URL tracker of choice.  I am new to using the CID so please excuse my inexperience.  I've been assigned to determine the channel, source, medium etc. of about 300 leads by only using their CID that we began capturing since August, via a hidden field on our forms.

We still have GA URL tracker fields hidden in all of our forms -- it was wonderful to easily determine campaigns, channels, source, etc.  and easy to report on how many leads came in through the various channels, etc.

And as I mentioned, we have since then added another hidden field to capture CID - this is hell. 

Since I am completely new to CID's are these correct statements?

- that there is no industry 'cheat sheet' to reading a CID because each company can organize them any way they want.

- every value is separated by an underscore.  

- there can be infinite values depending on the set up of a CID

With that, has anyone out there successfully been able to parse CID data from a column in a spreadsheet, (perhaps using an excel program?) and been able to break it out to channel, source and medium?

[SanfordWhiteman · Accepted solution]

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- that there is no industry 'cheat sheet' to reading a CID because each company can organize them any way they want.

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Yes.

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every value is separated by an underscore.  

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No, but you'll know what the delimiter is for your org.

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- there can be infinite values depending on the set up of a CID

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Yes.

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With that, has anyone out there successfully been able to parse CID data from a column in a spreadsheet, (perhaps using an excel program?) and been able to break it out to channel, source and medium?

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Yes, we parse incoming CIDs on the fly from a CSV, using a webhook-compatible service.

If you dump all your Activity Logs you can also do it in Excel. Probably want a regular expression plugin for Excel. I personally wouldn't work on it from that angle; if you're already doing a lot of reporting offline, then it's better to process the data using your ETL tool (which almost certainly will be better at shredding a value by regexp while importing).

[Jeff_Leong]

CID Parameters are just one example of a parameter you can use to track your marketing activities.   What is unique about Adobe Analytics, is the platform is not exclusive or doesn't just track UTM source, medium or campaign as you might be used to.   A single string value is preferred and is much more flexible than restraining to defined UTM parameters...   

Here are a few articles on how Adobe Classifications and Groupings work (aka SAINT)

https://webanalyticsfordevelopers.com/2013/05/21/saint-classifications/
https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2013/05/22/revisiting-a-sitecatalyst-classic-classification-saint-...

That said, if you're looking to break this up into hidden form fields, there are a few ways to do this with JS.  If you're looking to parse this out, you can do this as Stanford notes, via workflow or ETL process, or more simply through an Excel formula.

[SanfordWhiteman]

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A single string value preferred and is much more flexible than restraining to defined utm parameters... 

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Hard disagree there. A single opaque string value isn't preferred by people who want to work with standard encoding & escaping structures, and saying it's flexible is a bit of a gloss... it's just the way the product works, no more, no less!

After all, the very reason &- and =-delimited URL search params are standardized — this is actually a quite recent standard, before which it was merely a convention and support wasn't built into any browsers — is that having a giant query string without a standard delimiter & escaping mechanism was clearly primitive.

(And in fact GA isn't restricted only to the well-known utm_* params, you're free to use other parameter names and map them to the same purposes and also to create your own additional attached data.)

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That said, if you're looking to break this up into hidden form fields, there are a few way to do this with JS. 

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Infinite ways to encode it, so infinite ways to decode it.  Both sides need to agree on the encoding and escaping mechanism, unlike with standard URLSearchParams.

[sek_cha]

Hello all,

Our team is also in the similar boat. We recently migrated from GA to Adobe Analytics & need to use CID for building campaigns with in Marketo. 

As of now we are building campaigns with UTM's ( created Tags/separate variables in Marketo) like this 
https://www.mysite.com/?utmcampaign=test&utmMedium=test&utmsource=test&utmcountry=test&utmcode=test&utmgeo=test&utmcontinent=test&utmzip=test&utmchannel=test&utmregion=test
Capturing it in s.campaign (Tracking code) variable in Analytics & by using classification rule builder (Saint rules) Regular expression  we are splitting it in to separate UTM parameters and saving those.  On the other hand with Marketo sync to SFDC we are passing the UTM data to SFDC. 
Future state:  Builds campaigns in Marketohttps://www.mysite.com/?cid=Campaign_Medium_Source_Country_Code_geo_continent_zip_channel_region  
Is there a way parse CID data and been able to break it out to channel, source and medium etc with in Marketo and share the data to SFDC? 
Can we build campaigns using  UTM's for some regions & CID's for some regions? 
@SanfordWhiteman
Thanks

[SanfordWhiteman]

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As of now we are building campaigns with UTM's ( created Tags/separate variables in Marketo) like this 
https://www.mysite.com/?utmcampaign=test&utmMedium=test&utmsource=test&utmcountry=test&utmcode=test&utmgeo=test&utmcontinent=test&utmzip=test&utmchannel=test&utmregion=test

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I assume the typos there were accidental. (The standard UTM params are case-sensitive utm_campaign, utm_medium, etc.)

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Is there a way parse CID data and been able to break it out to channel, source and medium etc with in Marketo and share the data to SFDC? 

 If you pass it to a webhook, sure, it can be split using the same classification rules Adobe uses. Nothing fully within Marketo can do that.

[sek_cha]

Thanks for your response @SanfordWhiteman . 
Yup its a typo. 
Can you please elaborate a bit on webhook. Are you referring to https://developer.adobe.com/events/docs/guides/? 

If we can split the CID using Regex in classification rule builder, what are the advantages of using webhooks  approach overthis? 

Can we build Marketo email campaigns using UTM's &  CID at the same time?

[SanfordWhiteman]

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If we can split the CID using Regex in classification rule builder, what are the advantages of using webhooks  approach overthis? 

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You said you wanted to split the cid into Marketo fields. To do that you need to call a webhook, doesn’t matter if Adobe Analytics itself can also split it internally.