Dive into the world of Events, Event Types, and Data Structures. This guide will serve as your comprehensive resource for understanding how user interactions are tracked, categorized, and used for data analysis on our platform. You'll gain insights into the diverse range of event types and the underlying data structures that form the foundation of our analytics system. This knowledge will empower you to make the most of the data generated by your publication, whether you're a novice or an expert in data analytics.

User identity

As a user, when you log into our system, a unique identifier known as a 'userId' becomes part of your profile. This ID's structure, consistency, and accessibility hinge on the specifics of your Identity and Access Management (IAM) setup.

For those utilizing Freave One's OpenID Connect integration, we create a link between the 'sub' property of your identity token and the user ID within our platform. This linked ID then becomes our means of tracking interactions.

If your implementation is customized, the ID assigned may vary. In case of uncertainty, don't hesitate to reach out to us for clarification. We're here to help!

Anonymous users

Anonymous visitors will be assigned a unique cookie with an anonymousId that’ll be used to track their events.

Logged-in users

Events generated by logged-in users will always have a userId property that you may use to uniquely identify a user.

Note: logged-in users will also have an anonymousId, so you can also associate the events from before they logged in with their user profile.

Event types

• page - A pageview
• identify - Identifies (new) users
• group - Identifies (new) groups
• track - Specific events

Events

Events are actions or occurrences detected by Freave One that are relevant to your digital environment. They represent real-time user activity and interactions, from generic actions like a pageview to more specific events related to unique services, such as interactions with your paywall.

Whether it's a user landing on a homepage, clicking a link, or interacting with a paywall prompt, each event is captured and logged, providing a wealth of data about user behavior. This granular insight is crucial in understanding your audience's needs, preferences, and behaviors, empowering you to make informed decisions to optimize user experience and drive engagement.

Canvas (both Web and Apps)

Pageview

The pageview event is a fundamental part of the tracking capabilities offered by Freave. Generated each time a visitor lands on a page within your publication, the pageview event is an invaluable tool to measure engagement and analyze user behavior patterns.

When a pageview event is triggered, it carries crucial information such as the URL of the visited page, the time of the visit, and other pertinent details about the user's session.

Identify

The "identify" event is a crucial part of generating useful tracking data, generated whenever a user signs up or signs in to your publication. This event contains information about the user's traits, providing valuable insights into your user base.

Every Identify event comes with a set of characteristics, known as 'traits'. These traits represent essential data about the user, such as their name, email address, subscription status, or any other relevant information, as defined during the setup. The event and its traits collectively provide an in-depth understanding of the user, enhancing your capacity to understand your audience and tailor your content strategy.

The payload typically includes:

• userId: A unique identifier for the user

• traits: An object that holds all the traits we know about the user

Since Canvas for Apps doesn’t fully support authentication yet—no identify event will be sent from mobile apps at this point.

Group

The "group" event in Unified DP is designed to be triggered whenever a new group is formed within a publication. This mechanism enables you to better understand and track the formation and activities of your groups, be they companies, teams, or any other kind of grouping depending on your specific setup.

Once initiated, the "group" event collects specific group information from your integrated authentication tooling, such as group name, group type, creation date, and potentially more, based on your particular implementation. This data, while varying in specifics from customer to customer, is then formatted into a structured event that's compatible with your configured data warehouse or product analytic tools.

After formatting, Freave delivers this event data directly to your external data store. The collected group information then allows for detailed tracking and analytics, providing a more granular understanding of group activities within your publication. This can serve as a foundation for a multitude of different analyses, from behavioral tracking to pattern detection, and much more.

It is essential to bear in mind that due to the uniqueness of each customer's configuration and use-cases, the interpretation and usage of this "group" event data may differ substantially. The collected data can be more or less granular and may track different facets of group activity. We advise that customers consider their specific needs, group structures, and analytic goals when making use of the "group" event data.

Article Shared

The "article shared" event is generated when a user shares an article via either Canvas for Web or Canvas for Apps. This event carries important details about the shared article, as well as the platform it is shared on.

The event payload is constructed using a standard data structure for articles. This includes the article's unique identifier, title, author, publication date, URL, and the publication it is part of.

Additionally, information about the platform that the article is shared to is also included in the payload. This might be the name of a social media network, email, or any other platform where the article is shared.

Please note, due to the differences in how mobile operating systems report platform names, there may be slight inconsistencies in the naming of the share platforms. For example, the same platform might be reported with slightly different names from Canvas for Web and Canvas for Apps.

Dynamic Paywall

If your publication uses Dynamic Paywall to manage its paywall, the following events will be automatically generated.

Paywalled Resource Passthrough

The Paywalled Resource Passthrough event is a special type of tracking event that is dispatched when a user visits a resource—like a page or article—that is under an active strategy from Dynamic Paywall. This event is activated when the user has sufficient entitlements, hence the paywall does not obstruct their access.

A typical use-case for this event is when a subscriber accesses premium content they're entitled to, without facing a paywall blockade. This event can be instrumental in observing and analyzing user content consumption patterns, especially concerning their entitled subscriptions. Additionally, specific properties within the paywall context can provide further insight into the specific content consumed by the users.

It's important to understand that this event may slightly overlap with a 'pageview' event that is also activated for the same pageview. The differentiation lies in the detail that the Paywalled Resource Passthrough event provides additional paywall related information, which is absent in a generic 'pageview' event.

This event provides additional context as its properties:

{
  "paywall": {
    "strategy_id": "string",
    "strategy_name": "string"
  }
}

Paywalled Resource Gated

The Paywalled Resource Gated event is triggered when a user navigates to a page or article subject to an active strategy from Dynamic Paywall. This typically happens when a user encounters a premium piece of content that necessitates subscription or when a strategy requires the user to log in first (also known as soft registration).

This event acts as a critical indicator of user interaction with gated content, aiding in the evaluation of the effectiveness of different paywall strategies.

The structure of the Paywalled Resource Gated event encapsulates the vital parameters needed to differentiate between various paywall implementations. One such important attribute is the Paywall ID. Please note that these properties are automatically included in the event, ensuring seamless tracking of the user journey.

This event provides additional context as its properties:

{
  "paywall": {
    "strategy_id": "string",
    "strategy_name": "string",
    "template_id": "string",
    // Optional
    "template_type": "string"
    // Either "template" or "redirect".
  }
}

Paywall CTA Clicked

The "Paywall CTA Clicked" event is a unique, custom event that is triggered when a user interacts with the call-to-action (CTA) on a paywall template within your publication. This event is an important indicator of a user's intent to subscribe to your product.

It's essential to note that this event is only applicable for "template" type paywalls. For other types of paywalls, the user would have been redirected before reaching this point, and thus, a "Paywall CTA Clicked" event would not be generated.

When a "Paywall CTA Clicked" event is triggered, it signals that a user has shown a significant level of interest in your content and may intend to subscribe. While this does not guarantee a conversion, it provides valuable insight into the user's behavior and their engagement with your paywall.

To confirm if a user who clicked the CTA actually moves forward to subscribe, you can monitor subsequent events from your subscription provider. These events will provide data about whether a user completes the subscription process after clicking the CTA.

This event provides additional context as its properties:

{
  "paywall": {
    "strategy_id": "string",
    "strategy_name": "string"
  }
}

Default data types

In the realm of data tracking, understanding the nature and context of the data is essential. This is where default data types come into play in Freave's data stack. These are predefined categories of data that we use to classify various elements within tracking events. They provide crucial context, allowing for deeper insights and more precise analysis.

Platform

Note that platform applies to the Freave One platform you’re using, not the end user’s platform.

{
  "platform": {
    "type": "string",
    // "canvas_for_web_fusion" | "canvas_for_apps"
    "version": "string"
    // e.g. "1.0.0"
  }
}

Platform types

• canvas_for_web_fusion for publications using the Freave Fusion WordPress integration.
• canvas_for_apps for native mobile apps.

Paywall

{
  "paywall": {
    "strategy_id": "string",
    "strategy_name": "string"
  }
}