Tracking Miscellaneous Ad Sources

To track any misc ad source that isn’t covered by a direct integration, simply ad a source link parameter with the name of the source you would like to track to the end of a URL.

For example, if you want to track “Pinterest” and my ad link “mysite.com” then just ad “?sl=pinterest” to “mysite.com”.

The final URL would look like this: “mysite.com?sl=pinterest”. Place this URL in any misc ad sources you would like to track.

HYROS will then create a source named “Pinterest” and being attributing clicks and sales to it.

Individual Source Link Tracking

To track specific traffic sources just change the text that comes after “=”

For example “sl=pinterestpost1”. This will create a source automatically named “pinterestpost1”.

For example, if you create 3 sources using this method such as “pinterestpost1”, “pinterestpost2” and “pinterestpost3” then when you load up a report you will be able to see how much traffic is coming in via each post. This can be useful for tracking the performance of individual sources/ads.

We would also recommend adding extra UTMs to organize your sources in your reports much more easily below, which is explained in the following section:

Organizing Your Sources

We also recommend using our extra UTM parameters to automatically allow you to add these new organic sources into specific traffic sources, categories, and goals inside of Hyros. This allows you to better organize and segment your data later based on this information, without having to Manually adjust any sources later.

To do this, simply add one or more of the following UTM parameters after the existing UTM string, separated by a & symbol:

htrafficsource=yourtrafficsourcename
hcategory=yourcategoryname
hgoal=yoursourcegoal

The easiest way to use this is to adjust the traffic source you want your organic source to be configure to, so in an example where we are tracking three separate Pinterest links, instead of just using ?el=pinterestpost1, then ?el=pinterestpost2 etc, we would instead use the following UTM parameters for each link:

www.mysite.com?el=pinterestpost1&htrafficsource=pinterest
www.mysite.com?el=pinterestpost2&htrafficsource=pinterest
www.mysite.com?el=pinterestpost3&htrafficsource=pinterest

As you can see, although in this case we are creating 3 different sources by changing the name slightly after el=, we are including them within the same traffic source, which will allow us to group them together by traffic source in the reports later in a more automated way.

We can do exactly the same thing using the other 2 UTMs for categories and goals should you wish. If you want to understand more about how to better utilize categories and goals first please see our guide HERE.

Watch me set this up in a video

Above is a more general guide for tacking all misc ad sources, however please see the more specific guides below to track your ads depending on which ad platform you are using:

How Will These Sources Look in Your Reports?

This section covers the default setting for organizing your ad data, this is assuming that you are not using the extra UTMs to better organize your data into traffic sources, categories or goals as described previously in THIS SECTION.

By default, all sources created with a manual parameter as described in this guide will be placed in the traffic source and category of “automatic” and the goal “all”. This means when you load a default report you will see these sources under the “Automatic” traffic source and category as shown below, no matter which ad platform they came from.

If you wish to edit these sources to different traffic sources, categories, or goals so you can better organize your data in a way that makes sense to you, you can do so following THIS GUIDE or the video above.

If you have a lot of different ads/ad groups/campaigns and do not want to spend time re-categorizing all of them for your reports, we would suggest using a manual, static parameter as described above so you can track all ads from a platform as a single source inside Hyros, which will be much easier to categorize.