Google Analytics orchestrating the media ecossystem

Smiles is the loyalty program of Gol, offering a complete travel experience to customers. In 2018, Smiles intensified its marketing investment and turned to affiliate networks to compose its strategy. However, there was an unexpected 155% increase in total conversions within 48 hours, raising suspicions about the legitimacy of the attributions. To analyze the user’s complete navigation and identify possible source manipulation, Cadastra’s Data Science team developed the TORUS classification methodology. TORUS stands for Time, Origin, Referral, User, and Session – five attributes studied to point out manipulation. The team implemented a script via GTM to feed a personalized dimension of GA at the hit level containing almost all necessary information for analysis. The only missing information was session ID since it is processed after the end of the session. The entire process was completed on December 10th and covered until February 31st with 137 million hits extracted using BigQuery. Smiles is committed to ensuring attribution legitimacy in its marketing campaigns through rigorous analysis and methodology development.