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Why does an order show Direct, Other source or a channel I did not expect?

Credited to follows your attribution model while First Touch and Last Touch follow the visits, so the three columns can name different channels.

Three columns, three questions

Attribution is how TrueROAS decides which ad or channel gets credit for a sale. Order Flow shows three channels for each order, and each answers a different question. What every column shows is explained in What do the columns in Order Flow mean?.

  • First Touch is the channel of the first visit TrueROAS recorded for the order, and Last Touch the channel of the last visit before the purchase. Both skip direct visits.
  • Credited to is the one channel your attribution model gives the order. It does not have to be the first or the last visit.

The E-Commerce, Last Touch and First Touch models all give much less weight to some unpaid visits: unpaid Google search, Facebook or Instagram without ad tracking, and the Shop app. Clicks on Meta, TikTok and Google ads get extra weight. A direct visit, a discount code or a payment page such as Klarna or PayPal only gets the credit when the order has nothing better. So even with Last Touch, Credited to can name an ad from earlier in the journey when the last visit was one of those unpaid visits. What each model does is explained in How do I change the attribution model and attribution window?.

The Credited to column follows the model named in the line under the filter buttons, for example Reflects your E-Commerce model. That line names the model while the Credited to button is picked. You can also hover over the Credited to column header to see the model in its tooltip.

To check the visits of an order yourself, click Show Journey. See How do I see the customer journey behind an order?.

Direct

  • In Credited to, Direct means TrueROAS found no visit it could give the credit to, or could only match the order by the discount code that was used.
  • In First Touch and Last Touch, Direct means the order has no recorded visits other than direct ones.

Many direct orders usually mean that some of your ads are missing tracking parameters. See What is Organic & Unassigned and what do its rows mean? and Why do sales from my ads show as untracked or organic?.

Other source

  • An order with a value of 0 is never credited to a channel, so it reads Other source in Credited to.
  • Google visits that TrueROAS could not recognise as a Google ad or as unpaid Google search are credited as Other source, while First Touch and Last Touch can call the same visits Google Ads.
  • A source TrueROAS cannot name, such as a bare ID in a link, reads Other source in all three columns.
  • Credited to fills in a few moments after the orders appear, and until then it can read Other source. If every order still reads Other source after a while, the credit could not be worked out. Reload the page.

Names that differ between the columns

  • Facebook and Instagram visits read Meta Ads in all three columns, with or without ad tracking, the same way the Dashboard counts them. The journey window still shows them as Facebook or Instagram, and the Ads Manager puts the ones without ad tracking under Organic & Unassigned. See Why don't my Dashboard Meta or Google sales match the Ads Manager?.
  • When a visit came from a link on another website, First Touch and Last Touch usually call it Referring Sites, while Credited to shows the website's address, for example shop.app.
  • Every TikTok visit reads TikTok Ads, also when it did not come from an ad.

Good to know