My team and I have been running digital ads through publications and social platforms. While reviewing reports from multiple sources vs Hubspot’s, we’ve noticed that the reporting we recieve in Hubspot’s campaign manager regarding tracking URLs is innacurate and inconsistent when compared to other sources. For instance, we’ve linked our LinkedIn account to Hubspot. Therefore, when running a digital ad on LinkedIn, the metrics automatically get pulled into Hubspot’s reporting. However, when we evaluate clicks reported from the LinkedIn campaign manager vs the amount of “views” reported in Hubspot, there is a discrepancy. We’ve noticed this discrepancy with publisher reporting vs Hubspot reporting as well. Has anyone else experienced this? If so, what was your solution?
LinkedIn reports “clicks” which includes all clicks on the ad (link clicks, social actions, company name clicks, “see more” on the text). HubSpot on the other hand only counts a “view” when someone actually lands on the page with the HubSpot tracking code installed and the page fully loads. So anyone who clicked the ad but bounced before the page rendered, had an ad blocker that stripped the tracking script, or landed on a page without the HubSpot code won’t show up in HubSpot at all.
A few things to check: make sure the HubSpot tracking code is on every landing page your ads point to, not just the main site. Also verify your UTM parameters in the tracking URLs are consistent because HubSpot groups traffic by UTM source/medium/campaign and any typo or casing difference will split the data into separate buckets. If you’re using LinkedIn’s native integration with HubSpot, the metrics it pulls are engagement level data from the API, which can lag or differ from what LinkedIn’s own dashboard shows in real time.
The gap will never be zero since the counting methodologies are fundamentally different, but getting it within 10 to 15% usually means your tracking setup is healthy. Note This response was written based on my own experience and lightly reformatted with AI for clarity.
Hope this helps
Hi @Schristian7,
One possibility is that you may be comparing different metrics. LinkedIn is reporting ad clicks, while HubSpot “views” in Campaigns/Tracking URLs typically reflect on-site activity (sessions/page views) after the tracking code loads. It’s common for clicks to be higher than HubSpot views because the user may click, but the landing page never fully loads (bounce, slow load, closed tab), or tracking is blocked by consent/ad blockers.
If you want an apples-to-apples comparison, compare LinkedIn clicks to HubSpot Ads > Clicks (those clicks sync from LinkedIn). Also confirm HubSpot and LinkedIn time zones match, and check for redirects/UTM stripping and cookie consent settings that could prevent HubSpot from registering sessions.
Josh
Hi @Schristian7
Totally understand the frustration, this is one of those things that catches almost every marketing team off guard at some point. Josh already nailed the main issue, LinkedIn reports on ad clicks which happen on their platform, while HubSpot’s tracking URL “views” only register after someone actually lands on your page and the HubSpot script fires.
Those are fundamentally different events, so a gap between the two is expected. The question is really whether the gap is within a normal range or if something is broken in your setup.
A good sanity check is to look at your Google Analytics (or whatever analytics tool you use on site) and compare sessions from LinkedIn UTMs there against what HubSpot shows. If GA and HubSpot are roughly aligned but both are lower than LinkedIn clicks, then the gap is mostly click loss, people tapping and bouncing before the page loads, ad blockers, bot clicks from publishers, that sort of thing. If GA shows way more sessions than HubSpot does, then something is off with your HubSpot tracking code specifically. Could be a consent banner blocking it, could be a redirect stripping UTMs before the page loads, or the tracking script might not be installed on certain landing pages. HubSpot has a guide on troubleshooting tracking installation that could help (Install the HubSpot tracking code).
For the publisher side specifically, it’s worth knowing that many publishers report “clicks” from their ad server which can include pre fetches, bot impressions, and other noise that no website analytics tool will ever capture. That’s not really a HubSpot problem, its an industry wide gap between ad serving metrics and actual human visits. Some teams I’ve seen handle this by pulling all their source data, HubSpot included, into a centralized database where they can normalize metrics and build their own attribution view. Stacksync can be useful for that if you ever go down that route, since it keeps HubSpot data in sync with your database in real time so your reports always reflect the latest numbers. Note: The content is based on my personal experience and was refined using AI for better clarity.
Hope that gives you a few angles to investigate, and feel free to share more details about your setup if the numbers still seem off after checking those things.
Thank you all for your input. Getting closer to making sense of it all. As stated in the responses, clicks and “views” are different events and because of that, there will always be disparities between the two since it’s not an apples to apples comparison.
As far as setup with tracking URLs. Can the “short url” and “tracking url” be used interchangeably? For instance if I were to send a publisher the “short url” instead of the “tracking url” for a url redirect, will that data still be tracked and measured correctly in Hubspot?
For instance, we have an ad that has 4 reported clicks from our publisher. Hubspot reports 24 “views”(page views). Now, this could be possible if we had returning viewers. However, Hubspot also reports 24 “new visitor sessions” for that specific ad. So could there be an issue with tracking? Would the use of the “tracking url” vs “short url” solve this issue?
Hi @Schristian7,
The tracking URL allows you to add UTM paremters to it which would be ideal as it will allow you to better track and organize the source, medium, campaign, etc.
A shortened URL is esentially just a redirect, so it’s not ideal for tracking.
One caveat is, there are times where a UTM can be stripped from the URL which would then show as direct traffic, not a click on the link, yet a pageview still registers. Usually this happens if you’re going from a non-http to an https page, but when you’re talking about a link that exists on a 3rd party site, something on their end they are doing for tracking could also make the tracking URL/UTM not function as you hoped.
Josh
Thank you Josh