Why 6sense Campaign Reporting Doesn't Match Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics

Tony

It's common to see differences between campaign reporting in 6sense and website statistics in GA (or Adobe). While these platforms provide valuable insights, they measure different parts of the digital journey using different methodologies. 

In simple terms: 

• 6sense measures advertising delivery and engagement and removes any activity that's been disqualified
• Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics measures visitor behavior once someone reaches your website. 

Because the platforms track different events using different technologies and logic, their metrics are not expected to match exactly. 

Key Differences in Measurement 

Website analytics focuses on web sessions and on-site behavior. It records activity when a visitor loads a webpage containing the Google Analytics tracking pixel, which stores session information through browser cookies. As a result, its core metrics include KPIs such as sessions, bounce rate, page views, and session duration. 

6sense campaign reporting focuses on advertising delivery and engagement. Metrics are based on impressions and clicks recorded by our ad servers when an ad is served or clicked. This enables reporting on metrics such as impressions, clicks, click-through rate (CTR), accounts reached, accounts engaged, or video completion. 

The platforms also apply different filtering approaches to automated traffic. For instance, Google filters known bots and spiders using Google research and the IAB Spiders and Bots List. 6sense reporting filters out these known bots and spiders but also excludes invalid or unqualified traffic from campaign reporting based on additional fraud detection and detection of click validation vendors. 

Because these systems measure different stages of the advertising and website lifecycle, differences in reported metrics should be expected. 

Why Clicks and Sessions May Not Match 

A click and a session represent different types of events, so the relationship between them is not always one-to-one. 

• A click is recorded when a user interacts with an ad. 
• A session is recorded when a visitor begins browsing activity on a website. 

A click may initiate a session, but not all sessions originate from clicks, and not every click results in a measurable session. 

—> More Clicks Than Sessions 

There are several cases where 6sense may report more clicks than Google Analytics reports sessions. 

Multiple clicks within a single visit 

If a user clicks an ad multiple times during the same browsing visit, Google Analytics may attribute those interactions to a single session, while 6sense records each click event individually. 

Landing page does not fully load 

If a user clicks an ad but stops the page from loading before the analytics tag fires, Google Analytics may not record a session. However, because the ad interaction already occurred, 6sense still records the click. 

—> More Sessions Than Clicks 

There are also scenarios where Google Analytics may report more sessions than 6sense reports clicks. 

Session timeouts 

Google Analytics sessions expire after 30 minutes of inactivity. If a visitor returns to the page after that period, Google Analytics may record a new session, even though the visit originated from a single ad click. In this case, 6sense continues to report one click, while Google Analytics may show multiple sessions. Note that this is technically possible, but usually rare. 

Traffic filtered from 6sense reporting 

When we see more significant discrepancies, it often boils down to this: 6sense filters certain types of unqualified or validation traffic from its reporting and billing systems, but those requests may still appear as sessions tracked by campaign UTM parameters in Google Analytics. 

In the programmatic advertising ecosystem, many Supply-Side Platforms (SSPs), publishers, and verification vendors run automated checks to confirm that advertisements and landing pages meet (and continue to meet) technical and professional content guidelines. These checks may generate sessions to verify that creatives and landing page URLs resolve correctly and comply with policies. 

6sense excludes these validation clicks from campaign reporting and billing. However, because these requests still reach the landing page with campaign UTM parameters attached, they may appear as short-duration sessions in Google Analytics. 

The volume of this activity is typically driven by the number of active campaigns and ad creatives, rather than the volume of real user clicks. So in the case of campaigns with relatively low daily clicks, numbers can get skewed. For example, if you run five B2B campaigns with ten creatives each, and an SSP validates each creative once per day, you might see 50 validation sessions per day, or about 1,500 sessions per month, incorrectly associated with your UTM campaign in Google Analytics. Because these sessions typically end almost immediately, they can dilute rate-based metrics such as pages per visit, average engagement time, or bounce rate. 

Key Takeaway 

6sense and Google Analytics provide complementary views of activity: 

• 6sense measures advertising delivery and engagement. 
• Google Analytics measures behavior on your website. 

Each platform measures distinct events using its own technology, so differences in metrics are expected. The clearest view of audience engagement comes from using each platform for the insights it was built to deliver.