We run so many campaigns basis CPV (cost per visits) deals and face so much questions concerning the discrepancy between omniture and GA numbers. It is generally seen that omniture always reports less number then GA which raises an alarm to the publishers or networks running CPV campaigns. But the bigger concern here is why is such a difference? Why is the discrepancy of more then 50% at times? Let’s point out each and every point which will bring us to a conclusion:
- First and the foremast reason could be implementation issue, please double check on the implementation of both omniture and GA code on the page
- Cookie life time which is 30 days for GA but 15 years for Omniture which will lead to discrepancy in counting unique visitors
- Omniture has 30 minutes inactivity which expires the visit whereas there is no invalidation of visits in GA, but it’s good to check if the session expiry time is 30 minutes in GA, it helps to reduce discrepancy
- GA does sampling of data whereas Omniture does not, it only counts the actual number which makes it more credible but lastly difference in numbers
- GA starts counting a new session after 30 minutes of inactivity and in 31 minutes user gives any activity a session starts giving 2 sessions by 1 user which does not happen in Omniture
- In GA If a user is viewing your website at 11:50 PM and continues to stay till 00:20 AM, two session will be counted one before 00:00 and one after 00:00
- In GA it is recommended to do auto tagging but at the end it may lead to discrepancy again as clicking on the same ad 5 times will lead to count 5 clicks and 5 sessions as creating 5 corresponding sessions but for by manual tagging campaign parameter values remain the same for every click so the campaign isn’t updated for each click.
- A user views a page then closes his browser for ONE minute before reopening and returning to that same page. This will lead GA count 2 visits where Omniture will count only 1 visit