Persisted Properties

Property persistence helps teams create consistent, reliable reporting across Amplitude by controlling how long event property values like page path or search term remain attached to events. It ensures that context, such as which campaign, channel, or merchandising asset drove engagement, remains available across the entire user journey.

For example:

• Marketing teams can persist page path values across multiple sessions to understand campaign effectiveness over time.
• Merchandising teams can persist search term with item-level data for enhanced purchase attribution.

What persisted properties are and are not

Persisted properties aren't user properties and don't represent long-lived user state. Amplitude evaluates them at query time and applies allocation and expiration rules to event-level data for analysis. Persisted properties don't update the user profile, don't mutate user state, and aren't intended to replace core event or user properties. Their purpose is to control how Amplitude applies context such as marketing or merchandising data during analysis.

What it does

Property persistence defines which property values "stick" beyond the event where they were first experienced and how long they remain valid.

Instead of requiring every event to include its own source or merchandising data, Amplitude can remember the property value and apply it automatically to later events until it expires or Amplitude replaces it.

This is especially useful in marketing and merchandising analysis, where you want to connect early engagement with later outcomes.

For example:

• Marketing teams can persist page path values across multiple sessions to understand campaign effectiveness over time.
• Merchandising teams can persist search term with item-level data for enhanced purchase attribution.

User properties compared to persisted properties

Key concepts

Allocation types

Allocation decides which property value should "stick" across a series of events for the same user. Amplitude provides the following allocation types:

• Original: The value of a property captured as the entiy is created. Typically, this occurs at the point of account creation or initial identification. This persists and never changes.
• Most recent: Always the latest value of a property within a defined or active tracking window. Typically, this is the most recent event or session. Most recent data values are dynamic and shift as Amplitude collects new data.
• First known (Not incl. in beta): The earliest value recorded for that value, regardless of the entity's creation date. If data collection starts after the creation date, the first known value can come from a later point in time than the Origial value. Applies to all events before and after.
• Last known (Not incl. in beta): The most recent value of a property at any given point in time. Last known values are dynamic and shift as Amplitude collects new data. However, if Amplitude can't collect data, the Last known value may differ from the true state of the property. Applies to all events before and after.

The table below displays an example of a user's activity, from sign-up through page views to purchase. The first column shows the events and property values as they exist in the dataset. The remaining four columns show different allocation methods and how property values change under each method.

● = Property value present on the event ◌ = Property value filled by allocation

Expiration

Expiration defines when a persisted property value stops applying.

Setting up persisted properties

The following section contains examples for using the Persistence and Advanced settings. Review each one as they apply to different ways you can implement persisted properties.

Step 1: Define persistence in data settings

Go to Data Settings > Properties > Persisted and click Create persisted property, select the type of persisted property you want to create:

• Persistence settings: Create a persisted property and attaching it to an event.
• Advanced: Merchandising use case: Create an item-level attribution and define which products are tied to the persisted property and then identify items within a single cart to each merchandising source.

Example 1: Product source

Persistence settings:

1. Navigate to the Properties section of Data Settings and then click to create a new persisted property. Give this persisted property a name, such as Entry Page. In the description, provide some additional information such as the allocation method and expiration. This helps ensure that anyone using this property in a chart or data table understands the configuration.
2. Select the event property you want to persist. For this example, use Page Path.
3. Choose an Allocation method. In the example, because you want to identify the Entry Page, select Original. This ensures you include the first touchpoint.
4. Set the Expiration. By default, the persisted property expires at the end of the session.

Before going into how you can use persisted properties in your analysis, review the more advanced example that requires both the persisted setting and the Advanced: Merchandising toggle.

Example 2 (Advanced): Merchandising finding method

Persistence settings:

1. Create a new persisted property called Most recent Finding Method.
2. Select the event property you want to persist. For this Most recent Finding Method example, use Finding Method.
3. Choose an Allocation method. Because you want to identify the Most recent Finding Method, select Most recent. This ensures you include the last touchpoint.
4. Set the Expiration. By default, the persisted property expires at the end of the session.

Advanced: Merchandising use case:

The advanced merchandising setup lets Amplitude define which products can be tied to the persisted property. It then attributes items within a single cart to each merchandising source. This called item-level attribution. With item-level attribution, you can attribute metrics such as add to cart, discovery_method, or Revenue to an item's correct persisted property.

For example, you have three items in a cart. Each item was added to the cart through a different discovery method:

• Item 1 was discovered through Search.
• Item 2 was discovered from the Popular Products display.
• Item 3 was discovered from Recommendations.

Item-level attribution lets you bind the discovery context to each item in the cart. This, in turn, credits the correct discovery method to each item in the cart.

To set up item-level attribution

1. Select which product identifier you use in the cart-related metrics you want. Using the previous example, you'd select the product.item_id property.
2. Select one or more events that link the persisted property with the product identifier you've selected. For example, you'd select the events where both your persisted property value such as discovery_method and the item property product.item_id are captured. This event could be something like View Item Details or Add to Cart. This ensures Amplitude can run a cross-analysis properly.

In this example, the events you generate that contain both the discovery_method and the product.item_id properties are Home Hero Clicked, Promotion Clicked, and Recommendation Clicked.

Step 2: Use persisted properties across analyses

After you define a persisted property (such as Entry Page or Most Recent Finding Method), Amplitude automatically applies it to upstream/downstream events based on the allocation and expiration rules you've configured. You don't need to manually re-attribute or ensure the original property exists on every event.

You can find persisted properties directly in Data Tables:

1. Open a Data Table.
2. In the Group-by selector, find your persisted properties alongside standard event properties. They appear under the name you gave them in Data Settings (for example, Entry Page).

This means the context you captured earlier is available wherever you analyze outcomes.

For example:

• Entry Page (Original, Session)
  A user lands on /mens-shoes, browses several pages, then completes a purchase. Even though the Purchase event doesn't include Page Path, your persisted Entry Page still displays /mens-shoes, letting you group purchases by where sessions originally started.

• Most recent Finding Method (Most recent, Session)
  A user first discovers a product through Search, later clicks a Recommendation, and finally adds the item to cart. Because you set the allocation to Most recent, the persisted value on Add to Cart and Purchase is Recommendation, reflecting the last touchpoint before conversion.

For merchandising teams using the advanced setup:

• Amplitude carries product-level context (such as Finding Method or homepage module) forward to cart and purchase events using the product identifier you configured.
• If a cart contains multiple items, each item keeps its own persisted value. Amplitude attributes revenue, AOV, and add-to-cart metrics to the correct source for each product.

This allows you to:

• Group or filter outcome events (Add to Cart, Purchase, or Revenue) by persisted properties in data tables.
• Measure which entry pages, homepage modules, or recommendation zones drive conversions.
• Analyze results consistently across charts without rebuilding attribution logic each time.

Multiple groupbys

You can group by more than one property in the same data table to combine persisted context with regular event data.

For example, you can group purchases by Entry Page and Most Recent Finding Method to understand how session entry points and discovery behavior work together.

Add additional groupbys by clicking Add top-level group-by at the top of a data table column.

When you include multiple properties in the same analysis, Amplitude evaluates each property independently.

If both properties are persisted:

• Amplitude populates each property using its own allocation and expiration rules.
• For example, Entry Page reflects where the session started (Original, Session), while Most recent Finding Method reflects the last discovery action before conversion (Most recent, Session).
• Both values appear on outcome events such as Add to Cart or Purchase, even if those events didn't originally contain them.

If only some properties are persisted:

• Persisted properties retain their computed values based on their configuration.
• Amplitude takes non-persisted properties directly from the outcome event being analyzed. For example, Entry Page comes from persistence, while Device Type comes from the Purchase event itself.

If none are persisted:

• All property values come as-is from the outcome events, with no carryover from earlier interactions.

This means you can combine journey context and event-level attributes in a single table, knowing that persisted properties keep their defined behavior while regular properties reflect what happened at the moment of conversion.

Current availability and limitations

• You can use persisted properties in Data Tables and analyses.
• Persisted properties don't appear on the user profile.
• Raw data exports such as BigQuery don't include persisted properties.
• Amplitude computes values at query time, they aren't materialized.
• Cart and array properties aren't supported.
• 30-day time range in data tables.

Understanding the difference: attribution or persistence

Persistence controls how long property context remains available, while attribution controls how Amplitude assigns conversion credit. They solve related, but distinct, problems; you configure them independently.

If, after reading this article, the difference between attribution and persistence in Amplitude still isn't clear, review the following summary: