The URL of a paid social ad above

[sharminakter]

Here's an Instagram ad with a link embedded in the "Shop Now" banner:

An Instagram ad with a link embedded in the “Shop Now” banner.
This is what a paid social ad URL looks like:

Google Analytics classifies traffic into the Paid Social channel when both of these conditions are true:

The traffic source is a list of well-known social media sites.
Traffic carrier matches exactly "ppc" or "cpc" or select other identifiers (you can review the others in this article on default channel groups ).

Direct traffic
Direct traffic includes visitors who typed your URL directly into their chinese overseas europe data browser or visited it from a bookmark in their browser.

Like this one:

This channel can also include visits that Google Analytics didn’t understand. This can often happen with email marketing traffic – one of the few traffic vehicles that Google Analytics can’t understand without the help of UTM parameters.

Google Analytics classifies traffic as Direct when both of the following are true:

Traffic source exactly matches "(direct)"
Traffic support exactly matches "(none)" or "(undefined)"
Pro tip

If you use UTM parameters for your email marketing campaigns, you can use utm_medium=email in your UTM tracking codes so that your email visits are grouped into the "Email" channel.