Traffic Source, or what you might see called referral source in Google analytics, is a report that details where your readers are coming from. This data point will help Mediavine publishers to understand more about their traffic and how well each source monetizes.

Publishers will now have detailed information regarding the earning power of their traffic, broken down by each individual referral source.

Traffic Source information can be used as a general guideline when determining things like allocation of marketing efforts, ROI, etc. It can also help troubleshoot swings in RPM because there is a dollar figure associated with how advertisers spend on each source.

You can change the date range at the top of the dashboard to view different ranges of time, as with the other dashboard reports.

A couple important details to note:

Why can’t I see XYZ listed in my sources?

The table shows your top 5 sources that contribute at least 2% of your revenue. These are the primary focus and the ones most impactful to your overall revenue. If you see less than 5 in the report, it means that you had fewer than 5 sources that accounted for at least 2% of your revenue.

If you have more than 5 sources comprising at least 2% of your total revenue or social media sources comprising at least 1% of your revenue, they will be displayed in the bar graph and in the list under the heading but will not be displayed in the table unless they are in the top 5 sources. Anything less than that will be included under “other”.

I don’t see revenue for one of the sources but there’s traffic there, did I earn no money for those sessions?

Yes, you absolutely received revenue! However, if there’s a link shortener or certain types of redirects being used, there may be a disconnect where the two data sources (Ad Manager and Analytics) recognize them as two different things and won’t match up the data.

We do our best to match up the most common ones, however there will be some lesser used link shorteners that may show up with revenue missing. Just know that the revenue IS recorded as part of your total revenue but we may not be able to parse it out for the purposes of this report.

Why does CPM vary from one source to another?

In short, usually it has a lot to do with reader behavior. Readers coming from search engines are more likely to be doing involved research, spending more time on the page etc. People coming from social media are more likely to skim the page quick, if at all, and bounce. Advertisers know this and are typically putting more of their budget into an audience that is sticky and more closely targeted.

As always if you have any questions, please reach out to publishers@mediavine.com for assistance.