Step-by-step Deployment of Adobe Analytics With Adobe Launch（2024）

Update time: August 16, 2023

This article will show you how to deploy Adobe Analytics through Adobe Launch, If you want to learn about server-side deployment, read more: Implement Adobe Analytics Via Web SDK （Server-side）.

Before that, you must have Adobe Launch and Adobe Analytics permissions.

Let’s start do it together.

Create A Property

After logging in Adobe Launch,  let’s create a new Property，Click「New Property」, you can see a property setting interface:

• Name is a required parameter, and the name or domain name of the site is generally filled in, fill in http://www.bbccss.com here.
• Platform type is required. Select the type according to the actual situation. The website selects Web and the APP selects Mobile.
• Domains is a required parameter. You can fill in the top-level domain name directly, no subdomains, paths, protocols, etc. You can fill in multiple primary domains here, provided that your website structure is the same.
• ADVANCED OPTIONS check the first  and second . The third one only needs to be checked when you need to develop your own extensions. Most are not needed.
  • Run rule components in sequence: The execution sequence of Rules is executed in accordance with Order, the smaller the faster the trigger.
  • Return an empty string for missing data elements: Data elements with no value return an empty character, which is convenient for debugging.
  • Configure for extension development (cannot be modified later): Users develop Extensions.

Save as shown in the above figure. The property you just created can be seen in the property management interface.

Our new property are created.

Library Code Implementation on Website

Adobe Launch Library Code is deployed on the website and then verified.

Implementation on Website

Click on the property name to go to the corresponding Launch management interface. The library we are going to deploy is below the Environments.

Click to enter the Environments：

You can see that there are three types of environments:

• Development is an environment for program development.
• Production is a formal environment for online.
• Staging is the environment for testing.

A Property can only have one Production environment and one Staging environment. But you can create multiple Development environments.

We need to be officially deployed and choose the second one——Production，Click the icon on the right side，As shown in FIG. After clicking, a page will pop up, as shown below:

This is the library that Adobe Launch needs to deploy. You need to deploy this library to the headers of all the pages.

We copy this library，Then log in to the server and find the location of the page you need to deploy.

If you do not have server permissions, please send Library to your development colleagues for deployment.

After saving and exiting, Adobe Launch’s Library was deployed.

Verification Code

For the Adobe Launch library code to take effect, a version needs to be released on Adobe Launch.

Then check the Adobe Launch library Code in the network in the developer tools of the browser to see if it can load normally.

If the status is 200, it means the loading is normal.

If the status is 404, it means that the loading on the server is unsuccessful. Adobe is using Akamai’s CDN, which may be that the CDN has not been updated. You can click on the code, open it in the browser, and then refresh until you can see the code, which means it has taken effect. Then refresh to see the status, it should be 200.

Install and Configure  the Adobe Analytics Extension

Go back to adobe Launch and click「Extensions」——「Catalog」 to search for “Adobe Analytics“：

Click to install, then go to the Adobe Analytics Extensions:

There are a lot of places to set up here, we configure them one by one.

LIBRARY MANAGEMENT

Here is where the management library loads and where the data is sent. Mainly the first configuration Manage the library for me. Here is a report suites that indicates that data is sent to this report suites.The place to create reports suites is in Adobe analytics, we need to return to Adobe Analytics to create Report suites.

In Adobe  Analytics ,  Click 「Admin」——「Report Suite Manager」——「Create New」——「Report Suite」, then there will be a setting interface for Report Suite:

Fill in the actual situation, and then click Create Report Suites at the bottom. It should be noted that the Report Suites ID BBCCSS filled above is needed later.

We are getting the report suites id is BBCCSS, go back to Adobe Analytics Extension in Launch, just fill this out to Production Reports Suites:

Here we only fill out a Production environment Reports Suites, if you are developing and staging separate, then fill in the corresponding Reports Suites.

There is an icon to the right of the filled location, which indicates that some data elements can be selected.

For example, you can save Reports Suites with a constant in a data element and then select that data element with that icon.

There are two optional options below:

•  Use Activity Map：After it is turned on, some clicks of the user will be tracked, only clicks with links will be tracked. It’s actually a heat map.
• Make tracker globally accessible：You can opt to “make tracker globally accessible” in your extension configuration. This will create the ‘s’ object at the window scope so you can have other scripts potentially reference the object directly. With this you get the added benefit of future library updates being easier. Having scripts that directly reference the ‘s’ object isn’t something you should plan on leveraging heavily,  For example, when using s.doPlugins

If you want to see the heat map, check the first one; if you want to add JavaScript, check the second one.

GENERAL

• Enable EU compliance for Adobe Analytics：When you check the EU Compliance check box, the Tracking Cookie Name field appears. The Tracking Cookie overrides the default tracking cookie name. You can customize the name that Launch uses to track your opt-out status for receiving other cookies. The simple understanding is that you can choose whether to accept cookie tracking for the user, and then write the selected result into the cookie. Adobe Analytics will get it. If it is allowed, continue to load and set the cookie. If it is not allowed, the Adobe Analytics cookie is not. Will be set. 
  • We don’t set it here, because my blog does not yet have a cookie reminder for this. If your website is for a business site in the European Union, then this place must be set.
• Character Set：Determines how the image request is encoded. If your implementation or site uses non-ASCII characters, it is important to define character set here. You can select a preset character set or specify a custom character set. Adobe recommends using the same character coding as your site. Typically this value is UTF-8.
• Currency Code：Determines the conversion rate to be applied to revenue and currency events. If your site allows visitors to purchase in multiple currencies, setting the currency code ensures the monetary amount is converted and stored correctly.
• Tracking Server & SSL Tracking Server：Used for SSL first-party cookie implementations to dictate where the first-party cookie is stored. If you use the Experience Cloud ID Service, Adobe advises against populating this field. The effect of this is that the cookie is placed under the domain name.  If you are using third-party cookies, you won’t need to set the tracking server secure variable, you can leave it blank here.

One more thing: Because of the large amounts of data and clients the Adobe Experience Cloud has, there are several data centers to accommodate each organization. The following are locations where data is sent to and stored: Pacific Northwest, United States，London, UK  and Singapore, it will be sent to the subdomains of sc.omtrdc.net or 2o7.net by default.

GLOBAL VARIABLES

There are a lot of settings here, but not all of them need to be set in this Extensions.

eVars and Props, these two are custom variables, configured as needed, we do not make special configuration here.

If your site has an obvious hierarchy, you can configure Hierarchy. If the page is such a structure: bbccssc.com/adobe/adobe-analytics/a.html, you need to use Hierarchy. You can use a custom code to judge the URL and return it to the classification. It is stored in a data element and can be directly referenced here.

Create a Custom Code in the data element and name it Hierarchy:

Then the code is as follows:

Extensions can then be set up like this:

Other levels can be handled similarly.

ADDITIONAL SETTINGS

Page Name, this requires the use of data elements. We first need to create a data element to store the Page Name, and then directly reference the data element here.

We are going to create a data element now, Click on Data Elements and click on Add Data Element：

See the following interface:

• Name：Here is the name of the set data element.
• Extensions：Which extensions does this data element depend on?
• Data Element Type：There are many types in it，For example, Constant, Cookie, Page info…We can get a lot of information from here.
• Enable Default Value：Setting a default value ， it is easy to understand.
• Force lowercase value：All letters are lowercase
• Clean text：Remove the space bar.
• Storage Duration：How long is the life cycle of this data element?

Then the Page Name settings are as follows:

Then save it.

Similarly, set other data elements.

These are the data elements that must be set and are now returned to the Adobe Analytics Extensions:

Click on the small icon to select the corresponding data element：

The final effect is as follows:

You can also input two% directly, and then input the name of the data element between the two %, the effect is the same.

This part ends here.

LINK TRACKING

• Enable ClickMap：enable Activity map data collection. Click the checkbox to enable Activity map tracking. It is turned on by default.
• Track download links：enable automatic download link tracking. It is turned on by default.
• Track outbound links：Follow the jump link.
• Keep URL Parameters：Preserves query strings.

The default is fine.

COOKIES

• Visitor ID :The s.visitorID variable is a string that contains a custom unique identifier for the visitor. Adobe advises against using this variable. Use the Adobe Experience Cloud Identity Service instead.
• Visitor Namespace: This variable is retired. Use trackingServer instead.  If you apply to Adobe to collect data with a specific second-level domain name and trackingServer is not set, cookies are stored under bcs112.2o7.net s.visitorNameSpace = “bcs”.
• Domain Periods: The domain on which the Analytics cookie s_cc and s_sq are set by determining the number of periods in the domain of the page URL. This variable is also used by some plug-ins in determining the correct domain to set the plug-in’s cookie.
• First-party Domain Periods: The fpCookieDomainPeriods variable helps AppMeasurement determine where Analytics cookies are set by calling out that the domain suffix has an extra period in it. This variable allows AppMeasurement to accommodate the extra period in the domain suffix and set cookies in the right location.  Generally do not need to be set, the default is 2.
  • For domains like example.com or http://www.example.com , this variable does not need to be set. If needed, you can set this variable to “2” .
  • For domains like example.co.uk or http://www.example.co.jp , set this variable to “3” .
• cookieLifetime: The validity period of the cookie, This variable impacts unique visitor counts and attribution. Use caution when setting this variable. There are four options:
  • Default : Cookie expires after 2 years.
  • None : AppMeasurement does not set cookies.
  • Session : Cookie expires at the end of the visitor’s session.
  • Seconds : Cookie expires after the specified number of seconds have elapsed. For example, setting this dropdown to Seconds and placing 86400 into the custom field forces cookies to expire after exactly 24 hours.
• Write secure cookies: https is used for content transmission, which is more secure. This setting applies to both visitor ID cookies set by AppMeasurement, and cookies you set using the Util.CookieWrite() method. It requires AppMeasurement 2.18.0 or higher. If all resources on your website are enabled using https, do not enable them if they are not.

Here we only set cookieLifetime to default. Effect after setting:

CONFIGURE TRACKER USING CUSTOM CODE

If you want to use custom JavaScript, you can put it here.

Before using this, you need to check Make tracker globally accessible in LIBRARY MANAGEMENT.

No settings are currently required.

Customize the naming, then select the development environment, and finally click Add All Changed Resources

Once you’re done, click Save &Build for Development in the top right corner.You will see a library under Development:

The next step is to submit to the test，Click the down corner in the upper right corner of the library and click Submit For Approval.

Click on Build for Staging：

Click on Approve for Publishing：

The final step is to confirm the publish：

We tested it with Ghostery and saw that there is a label for Adobe Analytics.

Next open the Adobe Experience Cloud Debugger to test:

Looks like no problem, finally look at the Adobe Analytics Real-Time reports：

We are done.

Configuration on Adobe Analytics

After deployment, we still need to do some configuration on Adobe Analytics to ensure that the data inside is accurate, these settings are in the Report Suites Settings.

Real-Time

I am used to the real-time report of Google Analytics, and Adobe Analytics does not have Real-Time report by default, so when configuring Adobe Analytics, my first step is to configure Real-Time.

Click Edit Settings >Real-Time：

Check Enable Real-Time to enable Real-Time report.

Real-Time reports can be configured with up to 3 real-time reports, and each report contains one Primary Dimension and two Secondary Dimension.

After changes are made below, it may take up to 15 minutes for data to be displayed in the real-time reports.

This is a Real-Time report with a configured package. Its report is called Content Real-Time Report.

Internal URL Filters（General）

Internal URL Filters are used to determine which referrers, or referring pages, are internal to your site. If your own domain name appears in A referrer, or referring page, you need to filter it through Internal URL Filters.

Click Edit Settings >General >Internal URL Filters：

The reason why a period is the default internal URL filter is to allow data to be collected in the Pages report. If hits do not match internal URL filters, all pages come up as Other. A period is always somewhere in the URL, which guarantees the Pages report is populated.

Remove the rule listing a period (.) as a filter, and add your own site. my domain name is bbccss.com, and the final setting is:

Paid Search Detection（General）

Paid Search Detection is to identify paid traffic, the rules specified below are used to populate the following reports:

• Paid Search Engines
• Paid Search Keywords
• Natural Search Engines
• Natural Search Keywords

Once a rule is created, all search engines and keywords are designated as either paid or natural in those reports. Adobe detects paid searches by identifying whether  the visitor clicked to your site from a search engine and  the landing page URL contains a specific query string parameter.

Click Edit Settings > General > Paid Search Detection：

• Search Engine: Indicates which search engine it belongs to.
• Query string: Indicates which parameter is reported in cid.

cid Parameters are just one example of a parameter you can use to track your marketing activities.  Similar to the role of UTM. 

Suppose the landing page I promote on Google is https://www.bbccss.com?cid=google:cpc:bcs:holiday-special:bluebutton:barry:2021_12:bb:cc, then Search Engine is Google and Query string is google:cpc

The final effect:

Bot Rules（General）

Bot Rules is to filter out bot traffic.

There are a lot of bot traffic on the Internet, and we need to filter it out to ensure that the data in the report is accurate.

Click Edit Settings > General >Bot Rules：

Make sure that Enable IAB Bot Filtering Rules is turned on.

If you find that a certain IP is bot traffic in the workspace, you can filter it out here.

Timestamp Configuration（General）

Timestamps Optional lets you:

• Mix timestamped and non-timestamped data in the same global report suite.
• Send timestamped data from a mobile app to a global report suite.
• Upgrade apps to use offline tracking without having to create a new report suite.

Enabling Timestamp enables Adobe Analytics to process events without time stamps.

Because by default, the data sent to Adobe Analytics is time-stamped, but some specific situations may cause no time-stamp, such as offline data. In order to be able to process this part of the data, Timestamp must be turned on.

If you set the visitorID, you can not open Timestamp.

Click Edit Settings > General >Timestamp Configuration：

Just check it and save it.

Marketing Channel Manager (Marketing Channels)

Marketing Channel Manager is used to manage channels, such as channel creation and opening, the channels can be divided according to the needs.

Click Edit Settings > Marketing Channels>Marketing Channel Manager：

Create channels according to actual needs.

Marketing Channel Processing Rules (Marketing Channel Processing Rules)

Marketing Channel Processing Rules sets the rules of the channel, such as what kind of traffic should be divided into this channel.

Click Edit Settings > Marketing Channels>Default Metrics：

Make adjustments according to the actual situation of the multi-channel rules, The Paid Search Detection set earlier will be used here to identify Paid Search, A more general setting method is to set according to the parameters on the cid or url.

Default Metrics (Individual Report Suite Settings)

Default Metrics are the default metrics in Reports. Three can be set.

Click Edit Settings > Individual Report Suite Settings>Default Metrics：

There are some default indicators to choose from, generally pageview, unique visitor and some events are selected.

Activity Map Reporting（Activity Map）

Activity Map Reporting is to configure Activity Map, in addition to configuring in Adobe Analytics Extensions, you also need to open Activity Map Reports here so that Activity Map can be used normally.

Click Edit Settings > Activity Map >Activity Map Reporting：

Click Enable Activity Map Reports to open the interface.

The last thing is to make sure your account has the permission of Activity Map, you can use Activity Map normally.