Understanding Attribution Type
The Katalys Identity Graph receives data from advertisers and publishers, and associates conversions with every possible web browsing session. This is process is called “attribution”, and it’s how Katalys determines what traffic sources influenced a customer to make a purchase or perform an action. Each affiliated session is considered to have “partial attribution”, meaning that the source influenced the customer to convert.
The Katalys graph is processing every web session, but it must pick just one session as the most-important session, typically the last session before the customer ordered. If one of the sessions matches an active contract between Katalys Partners and Advertisers, then that session is eligible to become “billable”. Typically, the other non-billable sessions are irrelevant and discarded. Katalys has developed industry-first features that enable publishers to know when they influenced a customer to convert, even if they will not be paid for that conversion.
Available Attribution Types
Every web browsing session might lead to a conversion, which means every browsing session can be given an attribution type. These are the available types.
Attribution Type | Meaning |
|---|---|
| The session matched an active contract on the Katalys Network, and will result in a billable event. There can be only one billable session or click per conversion. This is how standard affiliate networks operate, notifying publishers of billable events. |
| The session partially matched an active contract on the Katalys Network, but a rule or trigger was not satisfied so it cannot result in a payout. Simply put, this was a “conversion” with $0 payout. There can be only one “Not Billable” session or click per conversion. |
| The session influenced the customer to complete a purchase or conversion event, but there was a different session selected as the “Billable” or “Not Billable” session. Typically, this means the session was not the last click in the user’s browsing path. |
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Overview of attribution types
Partner Use Cases
Katalys enables partners and advertisers to receive notifications about attribution decisions by setting up Partner Postbacks or Advertiser Postbacks. These notifications can be configured to be sent based on “partial attribution”.
This is a table of Partner use cases you can choose. In all cases, only one postback will be generated per-conversion, per-Traffic-Source. This means that you may have influenced a user five times, but that user’s conversion is only counted once. One notification will be sent per Katalys Traffic Source affiliated with that conversion.
Partner Use Case | Meaning |
|---|---|
Payable Conversions | Report only those conversions that are eligible for payout with a >$0 value. This will include only RECOMMENDED when using traditional Webhook notifications, so you can track your Katalys payout in real time. This is how standard affiliate networks operate, notifying publishers of billable events. |
Last-Click Conversions | Report conversions from customers that are attributed to your traffic via last-click or active-contract modeling. This will include |
Partial-Or-Direct Conversions | Report conversions from any customer that you touched, including those via partial attribution modeling. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for audience postbacks, such as Google or Meta, because it will attempt to find any valid Click ID and transmit that data to your advertising network (see below). |
Advertiser Use Cases
Advertiser use cases are very similar to Partner use cases. In all cases, only one postback will be generated per-conversion, per-Traffic-Source. This means that you may have influenced a user five times, but that user’s conversion is only counted once. One notification will be sent per Katalys Traffic Source affiliated with that conversion.
Advertiser Use Case | Meaning |
|---|---|
Billable Conversions | Report only those conversions that are payable to Katalys partners. |
Touched Conversions | Report conversions from customers that were influenced by Katalys partners before they purchased. This will include payable and non-payable order data. RECOMMENDED for tracking how many orders your Katalys partners are influencing. |
All Reported Data | Report any order or conversion data that is sent from your CRM system or website. This will include payable and non-payable order data. |
How Audience Postbacks Differ
As described above, only one notification will be sent per-conversion, per-Traffic-Source. When using Webhook postbacks, the Webhook values will be based on the latest-found click or session. When your media buying efforts overlap with other affiliate traffic, this can leave a gap in tracking your media buying RoAS (Return on Ad Spend). When that user converts, your webhook notification would be sent based on the affiliate data instead of a Google Ads or Meta Ads click, potentially missing value influenced by your media buying campaigns and negatively impacting RoAS reporting.
Instead of Webhook notifications, Katalys has developed audience postbacks to resolve this issue. The audience postbacks still processes just once per Katalys Traffic Source, but it looks like this:
For the found Katalys Traffic Source, find all marketing click IDs attached to any session.
Attempt to report each click ID, one at a time, from latest to earliest into your audience.
Stop processing click IDs when one is successful.
A “click ID” will be a different property based on the type of postback. For Google Ads, the property is gclid, whereas Meta Ads uses fbclid, and TikTok uses ttclid. The Katalys postback system automatically derives the appropriate value based on session URLs, clicks, affiliate sub properties, and other session variables attributed to the conversion.
Using this method, even if your Katalys Traffic Source contains traditional affiliate traffic and purchased-media traffic, your audience postback will report a conversion to your media buying platform with the appropriate payout associated with the conversion. This enables a higher degree of accuracy and valuation when tracking RoAS and building conversion audiences in your media buying platform.