Channel Stream

The Channel Stream report shows the channels that visitors used on their final or final converting session. You can expand the tree backwards through the lookback window to understand the preceding sessions in sequence.

There are two views of the report. The Visitor Stream view starts with visitors' final sessions. The Converter Stream view starts with visitors' final converting sessions. The Converter Stream view includes only visitors who converted during the report date range.

When you open the report, it shows a node for each channel that visitors used to arrive at your site for their final qualifying session. You can expand a node to see the channels that those visitors used to arrive at your site for their previous session.

You can continue expanding until you reach the maximum depth or until none of the visitors had previous sessions.

The Channel Stream report includes final or final converting sessions that occurred during the date range for the report. The channel streams leading to those sessions include sessions that occurred during the report date range or the lookback window.

Every client ID has four default channels:

Natural Search
Referring Sites
Direct Load
All Other MMC Vendors

You can define other channels if your site tagging includes MMC tracking parameters. Common channels are Email, Paid Search, and Affiliates. You can manage the channels for your client ID on the Manage Marketing Channels page (Manage > Marketing > Marketing Channels).

The Channel Stream report can display a maximum of 25 user-defined channels. If your client ID has more than 25 channels that are defined, the Other Channels channel contains the data for the remaining channels.

The lookback window is calculated for each visitor. The start of the window is calculated by subtracting the lookback period from the visitor's first qualifying visit in the report date range. For example, given the following conditions:

The report range is April 1-30
The lookback period is 14 days
A visitor's first qualifying visit in April was on April 10 at 10:00 A.M.

The lookback window for that visitor starts on March 27 at 10:00 A.M. and ends on April 10 at 10:00 A.M.

The lookback period is set by your administrator on the Admin > Attribution Settings screen. Changes to the lookback period affect reports generated after the change. The lookback period used for the report is displayed under the date range.