Overview: Source & Attributes Mapping
Context
To pull the attribution reports, the sources are essential to be mapped. With multiple platforms recording the source data, it is crucial to understand the source of truth.
In this article, you will learn about the types of sources and how to map attributes for clients.
Types of Sources
The Source is the digital location where the user came from. It could be a specific site name, the advertiser that placed the ad for you, or the name of a YouTube channel you run. You want to put something in this parameter to tell you where the person was before coming to your site.
Online Sources: All web sources fall under the category of online sources. These sources can be tracked easily through online tracking methods. The online sources are all the ILSes, property websites, emails, etc.
Offline Sources: Offline promotion channels such as billboards, flyers, walk-ins, building banners, etc., are considered offline sources. These sources are hard to track and are mostly tracked manually.
Different systems have different ways of tracking and recording the sources. The systems that are considered by the Hyly.AI systems to feed in the source data are the following:
UTM Source: The sources can be fed into the Hyly.AI system by picking up the UTM sources/parameters tracked from the URL. To learn more about the UTM parameters, refer to the Performance AI: Lead Tracking Parameters article.
Yardi Source: The Yardi system tracks the sources in its system, and Hyly.AI pulls in the source information from Yardi.
Referral Domain: The sources can be tracked by tracking the referral domains. Hyly.AI records the referral domains as the sources and captures the data.
Hyly.AI Source: Hyly.AI derives the source from all three systems mentioned above. We pick the source list from the PMS systems, the UTM links, and the Referral Domains and merge it into a long list. Hyly.AI then maps these sources with the list of sources pulled from all the properties of the organization and shows one source of truth for the reports.
Mapping The Sources
The property teams create their list of sources in their PMS system. The information of these sources is tracked using their UTM parameters or referral domains. Hyly.AI pulls the list of all the sources for every property under an org and creates a master list on the Hyly.AI system. The sources tracked by the PMS systems of each property are then mapped with Hyly.AI's source list. The property teams can choose from the source list whichever source they want to track the data for and deprecate the ones not needed.
However, with the help of the Hyly.AI GTM containers installed in the property websites, Hyly.AI also tracks the sources' information to ensure the source information is correct.
Note - If the property teams use the Hyly.AI forms, the source information is first recorded in the Hyly.AI systems and then passed to the PMS systems. Apart from the Hyly.AI forms, all the other source information is recorded in the PMS systems and then passed on to Hyly.AI systems.
Priority of Source Mapping
The source mapping works based on priority. The Performance.AI system gives UTM sources the first priority to derive the sources. The second priority is given to the referral domains, the third priority goes to the Property Source default, and the last on the priority list is the Org default.
This means that for any source data coming in, the Hyly.AI systems will check whether it has a UTM source or Referral Domain mapped to it or not. If the URL has both mapped, the Performance.AI system will consider the source mapping of UTM over the Referral domain. If neither the UTM source nor the Referral Domain is mapped, then the property teams can decide on the default attributes for the different sources and map the attributes as per the set default attributes. These default attributes can be set on the property level or the Org level, and the first priority is given to the property level default setup.
Now you know how the source mapping and data flow works for Performance AI.
