# How a visit's channel is decided

Channel is not a stored column in AdPix. It is computed the moment you open a report, from source, medium, campaign and click-id type. Eighteen default rules are checked in order, the first match wins, and anything that matches nothing stays Unassigned.

## Where a channel comes from

Every visit reaches AdPix carrying four things: **source**, **medium**, **campaign** and **click-id type**. They are extracted at collection time from the landing URL and the referrer, and then stored.

The order of extraction is fixed: click id first, then the `utm_*` parameters, then the referrer, and if none of those exist the visit is direct.

| If the URL or referrer carries | Source and medium become |
| --- | --- |
| one of the recognised click ids | the ad network as source, `cpc` as medium |
| `utm_source` and `utm_medium` | exactly those values, lower-cased and whitespace-collapsed |
| a referral from a search engine | the host, medium `organic` |
| a referral from a social network | the host, medium `social` |
| any other referral | the host, medium `referral` |
| none of the above | `(direct)` and `(none)` |

The click-id parameters AdPix recognises in a landing URL are `gclid`, `wbraid`, `gbraid`, `fbclid`, `msclkid`, `ttclid` and `li_fat_id`.

**Channel**, though, is settled at none of those steps. It is computed from those four values at the moment you open the report.

## The rules are ordered and the first match wins

The ruleset is an ordered list. For each visit the rules are evaluated from lowest priority number upward, and **the first rule that matches decides the channel**; the rest are never tested. If nothing matches, the channel stays `Unassigned`.

These are the eighteen platform defaults:

| Priority | Channel | Group | Matches when |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | Direct | Direct | source is `(direct)` or empty, **and** medium is `(none)`, `(not set)` or empty |
| 2 | Cross-network | Paid | campaign contains `cross-network`, or click id is `wbraid` or `gbraid` |
| 3 | Paid Shopping | Paid | source is in the shopping category or the campaign matches `shop`, **and** a paid signal |
| 4 | Paid Search | Paid | source is in the search category, **and** a paid signal or click id `gclid` / `msclkid` / `yclid` |
| 5 | Paid Social | Paid | source is in the social category, **and** a paid signal or one of the social click ids |
| 6 | Paid Video | Paid | source is in the video category, **and** a paid signal |
| 7 | Display | Paid | medium is `display` / `banner` / `expandable` / `interstitial` / `cpm`, or click id `dclid` |
| 8 | Paid Other | Paid | a paid signal alone |
| 9 | Organic Shopping | Organic | source is in the shopping category, or the campaign matches `shop` |
| 10 | Organic Social | Organic | source is in the social category, or medium is `social` / `social-network` / `social-media` / `sm` |
| 11 | Organic Video | Organic | source is in the video category, or medium contains `video` |
| 12 | Organic Search | Organic | source is in the search category, or medium is `organic` |
| 13 | Referral | Earned | medium is `referral` / `app` / `link` |
| 14 | Email | Owned | source is `email`, or medium is `email` / `e-mail` / `e_mail` / `newsletter` |
| 15 | Affiliate | Earned | medium is `affiliate` |
| 16 | Audio | Earned | medium is `audio` |
| 17 | SMS | Owned | source or medium is `sms` |
| 18 | Push | Owned | medium ends with `push`, or contains `mobile` or `notification` |

> The conditions above are exactly as the rules are written, but several click ids they mention — `dclid` and `yclid` among them — are not extracted anywhere in the collection path. The real recognised set is the seven listed above; for every other network, rely on `utm_medium` rather than a click id.

Order is what produces the behaviour. That is why all the paid rules come before all the organic ones: a click from Google with medium `cpc` matches Paid Search and never reaches Organic Search, because rule 4 is tested before rule 12.

### The paid signal

Several rules lean on a "paid signal", and it is exactly one thing: **the medium value**. A medium is paid if any of these hold:

- **It contains `cp` anywhere** — which catches `cpc`, `cpm`, `cpv` and `cpa`, and because it is a *contains* test rather than a prefix, `social-cpc` and `display-cpm` are paid too.
- **It starts with `paid`** — `paid-social`, `paid-video`, `paidsearch`.
- **It is exactly `ppc` or exactly `retargeting`** — those two are full matches, not prefixes, so `ppc-brand` produces no paid signal.

The practical consequence is that a paid ad on a social network, without a paid medium, reads as organic in your reports. If your paid campaigns keep landing under Organic Social, look at the ad's destination URL; almost always `utm_medium` is either missing or set to something like `social`, which is not a paid value.

### Source categories

Rules 3 to 6 and 9 to 12 look at the source's **category** rather than its name. The categories are a registered list:

| Category | Default sources |
| --- | --- |
| search | `google`, `bing`, `yahoo`, `duckduckgo`, `baidu`, `yandex`, `ecosia`, `brave` |
| social | `facebook`, `instagram`, `x`, `twitter`, `linkedin`, `tiktok`, `pinterest`, `reddit`, `telegram`, `threads` |
| shopping | `amazon`, `ebay`, `etsy`, `walmart`, `digikala` |
| video | `youtube`, `vimeo`, `twitch`, `aparat` |
| ad network | `taboola`, `outbrain`, `criteo`, `yektanet`, `tapsell` |

The match is exact, not a substring. `utm_source=google` falls in the search category; `utm_source=google-ads` does not. If your ad platform sends a different name, normalise it in your campaign tagging.

## Attribution is computed on read

This is the most important and most surprising behaviour in this part of the product: **the channel is never written into the event to be read back later.** Acquisition reports compile your effective ruleset into query conditions and build the channel there, every time.

Three consequences follow directly:

- **Editing a rule reclassifies history instantly.** No reprocessing, no queue, no waiting. Save the rule and the next report query reads years of past traffic through it.
- **No data moves.** The events are untouched; only their interpretation changes. So trying a rule carries no risk — if it is wrong, put it back.
- **A misclassification is repaired just as fast.** In one period of the product, two internal paths blanked source and medium when demoting a referral; that pair matched no rule and roughly forty percent of sessions fell into `Unassigned`. The fix was to widen the Direct rule to also accept an empty source — and that single change read about a million already-written rows correctly, on the spot, with no data mutation at all.

> **Direct and Unassigned are not the same thing**
>
> Genuinely direct traffic carries the `(direct)` and `(none)` pair and matches rule 1. `Unassigned` means a visit for which no rule existed. If your `Unassigned` share is noticeable, the problem is campaign tagging or a gap in the rules, not direct traffic. [Everything says direct](analytics/troubleshooting/everything-says-direct) covers that case.

## The coarse group — paid versus organic

Besides a channel name, every rule carries a **group**: `Paid`, `Organic`, `Owned`, `Earned`, `Direct` or `Unassigned`. That is the rollup behind the one-click paid-versus-organic view, and like the channel itself it is computed on read.

The default split is in the Group column of the table above: the six paid channels plus Cross-network under `Paid`, the four organic ones under `Organic`, email, SMS and push under `Owned`, and referral, affiliate and audio under `Earned`.

## Scopes, and who edits them today

The data model carries four rule scopes: platform, organization, account and property. Property rules are evaluated before account rules, those before organization rules, and all of them before the platform defaults; within a scope, lower priority first.

In today's console, though, there is one editor and it is **global and super-admin only**: the **Channel management** screen, reached from **Admin** → **Global settings** → the **Global data & channels** card → **Channel definitions (platform defaults)**. The screen says so itself: order matters, and changes reclassify history instantly. A rule created there is written at platform scope, so it applies to every tenant.

A business user sees the result across every acquisition report but does not open that screen. If you need a rule the defaults do not cover, raise it through support — and, as above, the correction lands across your whole history the moment it is saved.

## Where you see this number, and where you do not

| Surface | Where the channel comes from |
| --- | --- |
| Acquisition overview, Traffic acquisition, and their exports | the ruleset, at read time |
| The paid-versus-organic view | the ruleset, at read time |
| The ROAS-by-channel table on the cost page | the channel guessed at collection time |
| The `ft_channel` dimension in Explore, the heatmap channel filter, the realtime visitor feed | the channel guessed at collection time |

Know that difference so two screens showing two numbers does not send you hunting. The acquisition reports are the reference; the others show the rough label stamped at collection, which has never seen your ruleset.

One small but frequent detail: a referral from an Android app carries a package name, not a web host. AdPix classifies those before any host matching, which is why a click out of the Gmail app counts as Email and not organic search — even though the package name looks like a Google domain.

## Frequently asked questions

### Why is some of my traffic Unassigned?

Because that traffic's source and medium pair matched no rule. The usual cause is an unconventional `utm_medium` that appears on no list. Drill into the row in an acquisition report, see what source and medium actually hold, then either fix the campaign tagging or add a rule for that value.

### If I change a rule, do I have to reprocess data?

No. Channel is computed on read, so an edit reclassifies history on the very next query. No event is rewritten and no background job runs.

### Where exactly does the paid signal come from?

From `utm_medium`, and from nothing else. A medium counts as paid if it contains `cp` anywhere (`cpc`, `cpm`, `cpv`, `cpa`, and anything else with `cp` in it), or starts with `paid`, or is exactly `ppc` or `retargeting`. The source being an ad platform is not enough on its own — without a paid medium the click reads as organic.

### Who can edit the rules?

Today the rule editor in the console is one global, super-admin-only screen, and rules created there are written at platform scope, so they apply to every tenant. A business user sees the result in every acquisition report but does not change the rules from the console.

## Related

- [Traffic acquisition](https://docs.adpix.io/en/analytics/reports/traffic-acquisition/)
- [Acquisition overview](https://docs.adpix.io/en/analytics/reports/acquisition-overview/)
- [Import ad cost](https://docs.adpix.io/en/analytics/marketing/import-ad-cost/)
- [Everything says Direct](https://docs.adpix.io/en/analytics/troubleshooting/everything-says-direct/)

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[Docs](https://docs.adpix.io/en/analytics/marketing/channel-mapping/) · AdPix