GSI — Display is the conversion engine
On governancesolutions.ca, Display generates 5,754 sessions and 497 key events from 6.5% of total sessions — 42.5% of measured conversions. One landing page and a mobile-heavy creative mix carry the result.
Acquisition
Display delivers more measured key events than Direct, from a fraction of the sessions. Its conversion rate (8.64%) is the highest in the channel mix by a wide margin.
| Channel | Sessions | Users | Key events | CR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Direct | 65,989 | 53,729 | 434 | 0.66% |
| Organic Search | 9,202 | 5,005 | 148 | 1.61% |
Display (google / cpc) | 5,754 | 4,596 | 497 | 8.64% |
| Referral | 2,825 | 1,517 | 78 | 2.76% |
Paid Social (fb / paid + linkedin / cpa) | 2,073 | 2,018 | 1 | 0.05% |
| Organic Social | 1,456 | 712 | 9 | 0.62% |
| Unassigned | 476 | 645 | 1 | 0.21% |
| Paid Other | 388 | 328 | 0 | 0.00% |
| Organic Shopping | 135 | 135 | 0 | 0.00% |
| Paid Search | 96 | 88 | 0 | 0.00% |
| Organic Video | 52 | 35 | 0 | 0.00% |
| Cross-network | 30 | 30 | 0 | 0.00% |
| Paid Video | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0.00% |
| Total | 88,477 | — | 1,168 | 1.32% |
Three reads. Display alone produces 42.5% of GSI's measured key events from 6.5% of GSI's sessions. Direct's CR (0.66%) is structurally lower than Organic Search (1.61%) and Referral (2.76%) — Direct is a brand-awareness channel here, not a converting channel. Paid Social at 0.05% cannot be read literally; the bucket is dominated by fb / paid at 1,626 sessions (Meta, not LinkedIn), and LinkedIn paid mostly arrives mislabelled as linkedin.com / referral or as linkedin / cpa at very low volume. The LinkedIn-side reconciliation lives in §06.
Top source / medium
| Source / medium | Sessions | Key events | Read |
|---|---|---|---|
(direct) / (none) | 65,989 | 434 | Brand traffic plus UTM-less owned campaigns |
google / organic | 6,899 | 125 | SEO |
google / cpc | 5,713 | 497 | Google Display — the conversion engine |
bing / organic | 2,071 | 23 | SEO long-tail |
fb / paid | 1,626 | 0 | Meta paid (CR = 0%) |
linkedin.com / referral | 737 | 5 | LinkedIn organic clicks |
statics.teams.cdn.office.net / referral | 653 | 13 | MS Teams previews — internal stakeholders |
professionaldirector.com / referral | 452 | 10 | Cross-property: ProDir → GSI |
chatgpt.com / referral | 179 | 2 | LLM referral — small but measurable |
The single Display campaign carrying the volume is named 2026/01 - The Governance Professionals Certificate Program at 5,321 sessions and 497 key events. It is the largest measured conversion driver on the entire property.
Channel-mix shift year-over-year
Paid budget appears to have moved out of Paid Search, Paid Video, and Paid Other into Display, while Direct grew alongside (consistent with a brand-awareness halo from the Display activity). The shift accounts for both the 412% Display jump and the 96% Paid Search collapse.
| Channel | Prior 12m | Current 12m | Δ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct | 46,552 | 65,989 | +42% |
| Organic Search | 11,696 | 9,202 | -21% |
| Paid Social | 5,802 | 2,073 | -64% |
| Paid Other | 4,659 | 388 | -92% |
| Paid Search | 2,369 | 96 | -96% |
| Referral | 2,247 | 2,825 | +26% |
| Organic Social | 1,689 | 1,456 | -14% |
| Display | 1,124 | 5,754 | +412% |
| Paid Video | 367 | 1 | -99.7% |
| Total | 76,604 | 88,477 | +15.5% |
One question for the marketing team
Was the Paid Search → Display reallocation deliberate? If yes, the data validates the call: the 8.64% Display CR is the best in the GSI mix and concentrates 90.4% of its sessions in Canada (5,203 of 5,754), where the brand actually converts. If the shift was incidental, the read changes — confirmation closes the loop.
Attribution
Display is functionally identical between first-touch and last-touch — google / cpc opens and closes those journeys at the same rate (5,693 first-user sessions vs. 5,713 session sessions; 497 key events on both). Display generates self-contained conversions, not assists. Organic Search has more last-touch volume than first-touch (6,899 vs. 6,059), behaving in part as an assist channel.
| Source / medium | First-user sessions | Session sessions | First-user keyEv | Session keyEv |
|---|---|---|---|---|
(direct) / (none) | 69,411 | 65,989 | 475 | 434 |
google / cpc (Display) | 5,693 | 5,713 | 497 | 497 |
google / organic | 6,059 | 6,899 | 103 | 125 |
fb / paid | 1,625 | 1,626 | 0 | 0 |
bing / organic | 1,529 | 2,071 | 23 | 23 |
Funnel and form-page decomposition
The 69.0% start-to-submit rate is healthier than ProDir's 58%. Visitors who begin a form on GSI are more likely to finish.
| Step | Events | % of sessions | % of step above |
|---|---|---|---|
session_start | 88,526 | 100% | — |
form_start | 7,806 | 8.8% | 8.8% |
form_submit | 5,389 | 6.1% | 69.0% |
cart_view (sum) | 3,373 | 3.8% | 62.6% |
Where form_submit actually fires
The 5,389 submits decompose into login, checkout, real lead intent, and a long tail.
| Page | form_submit |
Users | Read |
|---|---|---|---|
/authentication/login.jsp | 2,643 (49%) | 654 | Account login. Not a conversion. |
/modules/products/cart.jsp | 1,293 (24%) | 372 | Checkout — covered by cart_view in parallel. |
/governance-solutions/events-and-education | 402 (7.5%) | 167 | Real lead intent. Course / program registration. |
| Other (long tail) | 1,051 (19.5%) | — | Mixed: contact, consultation, newsletter. |
The 402 submits on /governance-solutions/events-and-education correspond to 167 distinct users registering interest in a course — the top conversion signal that GA4 currently does not flag. The page-scoped key-event recommendation lives in §10.
Form completion by channel
| Channel | Sessions | form_start |
form_submit |
start → submit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Direct | 65,989 | 4,878 | 2,851 | 58.4% |
| Organic Search | 9,202 | 1,250 | 880 | 70.4% |
Display (google / cpc) | 5,754 | 155 | 92 | 59.4% |
| Referral | 2,825 | 421 | 295 | 70.1% |
Paid Social (fb / paid) | 2,073 | 0 | 0 | — |
Display has very few form_start events (155) but high cart_view volume (856) — Display visitors skip the lead-form path and go directly into the purchase flow. That is consistent with creative pointing to course-registration pages with embedded purchase buttons rather than lead-qualification forms. Paid Social shows zero form_start and zero form_submit — the channel is not converting on-site, either because creative is brand-only or because tracking misses the conversion event. Organic Search has the highest start-to-submit rate (70.4%), classic high-intent traffic.
The same event name carries two flag states
GA4 records cart_view twice in the event inventory: 2,240 events at (not set) for 509 users, and 1,133 events flagged as a key event for 891 users. The split persists across the prior 12 months and indicates two streams or two GTM containers sending the same event under different configurations. The GA4 "purchase intent" key-event count therefore reflects roughly 33% of the actual cart_view volume on GSI — an under-count of about 67%. Stream-level review is routed to §10.
Geography
Canada is 49.3% of sessions and 87.0% of key events (1,016 of 1,168) — an extreme concentration that matches the brand's Canadian positioning. The US "second-largest market" picture is misleading: over half of US session count comes from Virginia (15,410, mostly Ashburn) and California (2,875), both heavy with cloud-region IPs.
| Country | Sessions | Key events | CR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Canada | 43,606 | 1,016 | 2.33% |
| United States | 29,641 | 57 | 0.19% |
| Ireland | 3,324 | 2 | 0.06% |
| United Kingdom | 2,898 | 44 | 1.52% |
All other countries combined contribute 9,008 sessions and 49 key events; small-volume markets are dropped from the table.
Canada vs. United States
| Canada | United States | |
|---|---|---|
| Sessions | 43,606 | 29,641 |
| Key events | 1,016 | 57 |
| CR | 2.33% | 0.19% |
| Top region | Ontario (25,200 sess / 466 keyEv) | Virginia (15,410 sess / 3 keyEv) |
Display geo-targeting is correct
In Canada, Display is the third-largest channel and the largest converter: 5,203 sessions and 467 key events. The Canadian share of Display sessions is 90.4% (5,203 of 5,754). In the United States, Display is only 259 sessions but still produces 29 key events — small but visible.
Top landing pages
One landing page does most of the work.
| Landing page | Sessions | Key events | CR |
|---|---|---|---|
/governance-solutions/events-and-education | 18,638 | 33 | 0.18% |
/ | 17,405 | 71 | 0.41% |
/governance-solutions/events-and-education/26w-the-governance-professional-certificate-program | 8,325 | 543 | 6.52% |
/governance-solutions/the-governance-solutions-podcast | 2,693 | 0 | 0.00% |
/governance-solutions/events-and-education/26s-the-board-and-ceo-succession-certificate-program | 2,444 | 17 | 0.70% |
/governance-solutions/events-and-education/26w-the-art-science-of-being-a-chair | 1,815 | 15 | 0.83% |
/governance-solutions/events-and-education/25-financial-governance-for-non-financial-leaders-certificate-program | 1,738 | 10 | 0.58% |
/governance-solutions/events-and-education/-25-not-for-profit-governance-certificate-program | 1,659 | 20 | 1.21% |
/governance-solutions/events-and-education/25-the-boardroom-boot-camp | 1,453 | 14 | 0.96% |
/governance-solutions/events-and-education/25f-everything-you-will-ever-need-to-know-about-minute-taking | 1,201 | 70 | 5.83% |
/governance-solutions/events-and-education/25-basics-in-financial-literacy-program | 1,064 | 17 | 1.60% |
/26w-the-governance-professional-certificate-program alone produces 543 of the 1,168 GSI key events (46.5%). That is the page the Display campaign drives to and where the cart_view conversion mechanism is being captured. The /podcast page is the 5th most-viewed page in 12 months but has zero key events — there is no listen or play tracking configured. Routed to §10.
Device split
Mobile converts almost 4× better than desktop on GSI.
| Device | Sessions | Key events | CR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Desktop | 71,280 | 608 | 0.85% |
| Mobile | 16,789 | 555 | 3.31% |
| Tablet | 656 | 5 | 0.76% |
| Smart TV | 3 | 0 | — |
Mobile produces 555 of 1,168 key events (47.5%) from 19.0% of sessions. Display traffic is likely heavily mobile and concentrated on the certificate-program landing page — the two findings reinforce each other.
The Governance Community
The brief asked specifically about analytics for The Governance Community. No path-specific data exists in the GSI GA4 property: there is no /community or /the-governance-community URL in the top-pages, landing-pages, or events tables; no campaign UTM contains "community"; and no event is named for community participation (community_signup, forum_post, etc.).
The Governance Community cannot be measured from the data available today. If it lives on a separate domain or behind a member portal, the route is either GA4 measurement on that surface or a manual reporting export from the platform that hosts it. Routed to §10.