What is utm_source=instagram?

Who adds it

Meta says it may add URL parameters to ad traffic automatically, with Campaign Source set to Facebook or Instagram and Campaign Medium set to paid. Advertisers and social tools also add it by hand.

What it means

The visit came from an ad on Instagram, or a link someone tagged as Instagram. The browser's referrer for the same visit is often l.instagram.com, or missing when the in-app browser doesn't pass one.

What to do with it

GA4 counts it as Paid Social when the medium matches its paid pattern, and Organic Social when the medium is social. Pick one spelling (instagram or ig) for your own links so reports don't split.

How Vireo shows it

Vireo Pro's UTM campaigns card lists tagged visits by Source, Medium and Campaign, with visitors and pageviews. The tags are read from the first page of each visit, and the same tags feed revenue by source.

In the free plugin, Vireo drops the query string from page addresses, keeping only a few WordPress ones such as p and page_id, so a tagged URL counts as the same page as the untagged one. The visit is counted under the referrer it arrived with.

When a link carries utm_source with no utm_medium, as ChatGPT's do, Pro's revenue attribution takes the medium from the referrer's source group. With no referrer either, it's labelled campaign.

UTM campaigns are part of Vireo Pro. See UTM campaigns in the docs.

Sources

As of January 1, 2024, you may have the below URL parameters automatically added to your ad traffic: Campaign Source = Facebook or Instagram Campaign Medium = paid

Add URL Parameters to Your Meta Ads - Meta Business Help Center

Paid Social Source matches a regex list of social sites AND Medium matches regex ^(.*cp.*|ppc|retargeting|paid.*)$

Default channel group - Analytics Help

Organic Social Source matches a regex list of social sites OR Medium is one of (“social”, “social-network”, “social-media”, “sm”, “social network”, “social media”)

Default channel group - Analytics Help