Webinar source tracking link numbers appear too high

[uw_user]

I have a recurring webinar with several source tracking links for different campaigns. For one campaign in particular, the "visitors" number seems very high, especially when compared to the LinkedIn data that shows engagement with our ads that the source tracking link was used for (e.g., Zoom saying 3000 visitors, but LinkedIn showing only 1000 impressions, with even fewer clicks, and we actually didn't generate any registrations at all). We only posted this on LinkedIn, no where else. Is it possible for this visitors number to be inflated on the Zoom end, perhaps for some unknown technical reason?  We know we need to revisit our campaign strategy and CTA in general, but I'm specifically wondering how the Zoom visitors are so much higher than what LinkedIn says. 

Thanks for any input!

[Ray_Harwood]

Welcome to the Zoom Community, @uw_user.

There’s a few reasons for this. LinkedIn only tracks direct clicks on their own link, though if someone shared the LinkedIn link, clicks to that will also be tracked by LinkedIn. But if anyone visits the link then forwards the target link (the actual Zoom registration link), there’s no way for LinkedIn to track that. 

I’ve also seen situations where clients aren’t careful about not posting a tracking-link-enabled URL to another site. Not saying you’ve done that – but has anyone else done it? (grabbed the Zoom link and posted somewhere else). It’s hard to know.

Personally, I’d trust the Zoom number over LinkedIn for “full reach” purposes — the LinkedIn number only tells you how effective LinkedIn is, and can’t track the spillover from LinkedIn. 

[smartymarketing]

This doesn't seem to line up. Our ads are showing 10x LESS than what Zoom is showing. How in the world could we have such a crazy misreporting?

[Ray_Harwood]

Welcome to the Zoom Community, @smartymarketing.

You don't say how your ad analytics are being reported.  Normally, ads and other social media links track clicks by embedding their own URL into the web page and after counting the click, redirect the visitor to the target web page, which also includes the source tracking ID, which Zoom then also counts as a click.

But if the user then copies that URL and sends it to 9 friends who also click it, or if they copy that URL and put it in their social media, YOUR ad link will not be present and won't be counted, but Zoom's source link will be counted.

If a link is really useful to people, they'll share it.  It's a good sign if your Zoom sources are clicked a lot more than your ad or social media clicks... people are sharing!!  When your ads and social media clicks are very close to your Zoom source tracking clicks, to me it means nobody liked your content enough to share it with others. 

I should build a course on this and call it "Comparative Analytics 101".  

[idrsinc]

I do not believe that that is what is happening here though.  I create multiple source tracking links for each webinar that we provide.  These are also tracked on the ad / shortlink side as well.  While it is possible that people that receive the source link  could click on it and visit the target and then share the url for the target and thus visitor numbers would be inflated compared to link clicks, the likelihood that this would happen, especially multiple times  is improbable. 

On every single one of the source tracking links that I create, the number of visitors is far outnumbered by the links clicked, almost always by at least a factor of 10.  I think others are also experiencing this same multiple of clicks to visitors.  I even have one that has a factor of 100 vistors for every click.  I suspect that there is something in the tracking of Zoom that is causing the issue, such as the clickee having a tab up and then each time the tab is visited, it is counted as a new visit.  Or, if you have a long registration form, as we do, as you go down the page, the length of time on the page increases the visit count.

Is it something that should be, if not figured out, at least disclosed as an issue.  One of my co-workers suggested us scrapping the registration form because she believed people were bouncing because it was too long.  After we dug in to the numbers, we realized that this was not the case.