Zero paid social sessions are being recorded

Data collection and tags
1

Hello.

Please can somebody offer some advice?

We’re running paid social campaigns on Facebook and LinkedIn, however, despite the ads driving hundreds of link clicks (clicks to the landing pages), none of the traffic is being tracked.

All other channels seem to be recording data fine, including paid search and display.

The sessions from paid social don’t appear to be recorded as another channel, they’re just not there at all.

Here are a couple of examples of the parameters used on the ads:
/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=paid-social&utm_campaign=Traffic
/?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=paidsocial&utm_campaign=Static

Thanks in advance,
Martin

2

Hi @Wrapped,

There are couple steps to take in that case:

  1. Could you please check page report to see if there are any page URL with those metrics?
    If this is the case then either:
    1. the list of campaign parameters should be looked into (menu->Administration-> Account → Global site & app settings → Campaigns)
    2. the URL itself is written in a manner that is not according to guidelines https://url.spec.whatwg.org/
  2. If they are not there try to follow the visitor’s path and look for your session in tracker debugger, it should tell you what is happening. You can use your IP address (if you’re consenting visitor) to find yourself easily in tracker debugger (remember to account for the masking level you have for IP e.g. if your ip is 192.168.24.12 and you have level 2 masking then you should look for 192.168.0.0 address).
    1. if you are unable to find yourself in tracker debugger, then next step is checking if the page opened after clicking on such link on facebook/linkedin does have Piwik PRO tracking on it working correctly. Easiest way for me is to check if there are ppms.php requests in the network as those are the requests being sent to Piwik PRO with the events data
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Best,
Oliwer

3

Hi Oliwer,

Thanks for your help.

The page URL with the parameter is not showing in the pages report.

I visited the page by using the ad URL and it does show in the debugger with the information in the parameter:

Session
Engagement: Returning visitor
Channel: Campaign
Campaign name: Traffic
Campaign source: facebook
Campaign medium: paid-social

The parameters were created using Google’s parameter builder, I’ve looked at the link you shared but it’s a bit advanced for me. Can you please tell me why it’s not written correctly?

Many thanks,
Martin

4

I visited the page by using the ad URL and it does show in the debugger with the information in the parameter:

Session
Engagement: Returning visitor
Channel: Campaign
Campaign name: Traffic
Campaign source: facebook
Campaign medium: paid-social

It looks like the parameters were correctly recognized, so it’s not URL issue. Try to enter the page using actual ad and look for your session and for Piwik PRO on the page that the link opens.

If the Ad links to the Page with this exact URL and there is Piwik PRO on that page that sends correct event to tracker debugger, then there is no issue with Piwik PRO tracking and analytics.

5

Thank you for your help, I’ll give this a go