A consumer journey refers to the set of the advertiser’s marketing touchpoints that a particular user is exposed to or engages with over a period of time. It’s easy to confuse the consumer journey with the conversion paths — but they are not the same because many consumer journeys don’t end up with conversions.
Users who end up converting (i.e. in retail, a conversion is often a successful order. In auto, a conversion is often when a user chooses to ‘schedule a test drive’. Consumers who convert are typically exposed to a number of touchpoints beforehand. When customer journeys lead to a conversion, the customer journey is called a conversion path.
Not all conversions are driven by advertising. Some people just go directly to the advertiser’s website and make a purchase – even without receiving any exposure to any paid media. Such a conversion would essentially be organic and have a zero-length conversion path
