Marketing Channels Classification

What are marketing channels?

Your website or app traffic can originate from various sources. Our Marketing Overview report can help you understand your website traffic sources. To better understand this, it is common to categorize these sources into eight marketing channels:

Direct Traffic

Traffic that comes from users entering a website’s URL directly into their browser, accessing it via saved bookmarks, or clicking a direct link from outside the browser (e.g. Microsoft Word or an app). Direct traffic often indicates awareness or affinity for the website, making these visitors among the most loyal and engaged. Note: This metric helps assess a website’s brand strength in terms of awareness and demand.

Referrals

Traffic sent from one website to another via a direct link. This includes visits from affiliates, content partners, direct media buying, or news coverage. Websites receiving significant referral traffic often have strong affiliate strategies or substantial media exposure. Note: Use the referral drill-down in our product to identify which affiliates are driving traffic to your website.

Organic Search

Traffic from unpaid (organic) search engine results, such as Google. Websites generating substantial organic search traffic are likely optimizing for high search rankings (SEO). These visits often come from high-intent users, with engagement rates significantly above average.

Paid Search

Traffic from search ads on platforms like Google or Bing. Websites with significant paid search traffic are investing in advertising to enhance brand awareness and reach relevant audiences. Paid search campaigns target high-intent users, often resulting in higher conversion rates. Note: Use the paid search drill-down in our product to see which keywords drive the most traffic to your website.

Email Marketing

Traffic originating from email clients (e.g., Gmail, Yahoo) when users click on links in emails. For instance, traffic from the referring domain "gmail.com" is categorized as email traffic. Websites with substantial email traffic likely maintain a loyal customer base engaged via mailing lists.

Display Advertising

Traffic generated from display or video ads served through known ad platforms like DoubleClick or AdForm. Websites with high display ad traffic are leveraging ad budgets to increase brand visibility and attract relevant users. Note: Use the display channel drill-down in our product to identify campaigns driving high-quality traffic to your site.

Organic Social

Traffic from non-paid social media interactions, such as clicks on shared links or content posted on platforms like X or Reddit. Websites with consistent organic social traffic likely have a loyal and engaged community. This traffic is often driven by viral content, such as articles, memes, or images. Note: Use our Marketing Overview report to analyze which social networks drive the most traffic and what type of users engage with your organic social posts.

Paid Social

Traffic from paid ads on social media platforms like X or Reddit. Note: Use our paid social drill-down to identify campaigns that drove relevant users to your site. Analyze audience performance and optimize campaigns for better results.

How does Addressable classify channels?

Addressable classify marketing channels using the following technical attributes:

Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) Parameters

UTM parameters are five types of URL parameters used by marketers to track the performance of online marketing campaigns across various traffic sources and publishing platforms.

The parameters are:

Parameter	Purpose	Example
utm_source	Identifies the source of the traffic (e.g., the site or platform) and is a required parameter.	utm_source=google
utm_medium	Indicates the type of link used, such as cost-per-click (CPC) or email.	utm_medium=cpc
utm_campaign	Specifies a product promotion or strategic campaign.	utm_campaign=spring_sale
utm_term	Tracks search terms associated with the campaign.	utm_term=running+shoes
utm_content	Identifies what was clicked to navigate to the site, such as a banner ad or text link.	utm_content=logolink or utm_content=textlink

Referrer

A referrer is the URL of the web page a user visited immediately before navigating to the current page. In simpler terms, it indicates the source or origin of the traffic that brought a visitor to a specific page.

While UTM parameters must be defined manually by the user, the referrer is automatically populated by the browser and provides information about the originating website.

For example, if you search for something on Google and click on one of the organic results, the referrer will be "Google," but there will be no UTM parameters included.