You gather leads from YouTube through Ninja Forms, but connecting them to a particular ad isn’t feasible. Similarly, when those leads convert, there’s no way to identify which ad brought them in.
Proper tracking is essential to measure YouTube ad performance and determine the ads that lead to conversions. Without it, you risk wasting your budget on ads that underperform.
Fortunately, it’s simple to determine which YouTube campaign, ad group, and ad are responsible for generating each lead.
Let’s organize the process into simple steps!
How to track YouTube Ads in Ninja Forms
Step 1: Add Leadsources in the head tag of your website
Leadsources provides an easy way to trace lead sources. By adding it to your site, it captures up to 7 details about each lead’s origin.
➡️ Sign up to Leadsources.io for free
➡️ Add the Leadsources tracking code to your site
Step 2: Add the UTM parameters to your YouTube Ads
Incorporate UTM parameters into your ad URL to track YouTube campaigns and ads. Here’s a setup example to guide you:
UTM_source=youtubeUTM_campaign=campaign-nameUTM_term=ad-group-nameUTM_content=ad-name
The final structure of your URL will look like this:
https://www.yourdomain.com?UTM_source=youtube&UTM_campaign=campaign-name&UTM_term=ad-group-name&UTM_content=ad-nameTip: Leadsources automatically records all lead source data, ensuring full tracking across channels, even if UTM parameters are excluded.
Step 3: Add the hidden fields in Ninja Forms
Hidden fields in forms are not seen by users, but they contain data that is submitted with the form.
When someone completes and submits your Ninja Forms, Leadsources automatically populates the hidden fields with the YouTube ads data. Upon submission, this data is directly saved in your Ninja Forms.
Step 4: Capture the YouTube Ads data in Ninja Forms
When someone clicks on your ads and comes to your site, Leadsources retrieves the YouTube campaign, ad group, ad data (and more).
Leadsources places the YouTube ads data in the hidden fields of Ninja Forms, as shown in this example.
When the form is submitted, you’ll have direct access to the YouTube ad data and lead information in Ninja Forms.
How does Leadsources work?
Every time a user visits your site, Leadsources retrieves YouTube Ads data and populates the hidden fields in your form. When the form is submitted, this data, along with lead details such as name and email, is sent to Ninja Forms.
Every lead’s source data is carefully tracked by Leadsources:
| Lead source data | Fetched automatically |
| Channel | ✅ |
| Source | ✅ |
| Campaign | ✅ OR use UTM_campaign for paid ads |
| Content | UTM_content parameter is required |
| Term | UTM_term parameter is required |
| Landing page | ✅ |
| Landing page subfolder | ✅ |
As indicated in the table above, when UTM parameters are not present—like in organic sources such as Google search or referrals—Leadsources still captures some lead source data:
- Channel
- Source
- Campaign
Content(UTM parameter required)Term(UTM parameter required)- Landing page
- Landing page subfolder
Unlike other tools, Leadsources can track lead sources across both organic and paid marketing channels.
Choose a channel to inspect the lead source data that Leadsources populates in your form.
Performance reports: Lead, sales, and revenue by source
By monitoring YouTube Ads data in Ninja Forms, performance reports like the following can be generated:
- Leads, sales, and revenue by channel
- Leads, sales, and revenue by source
- Leads, sales, and revenue by campaign (aka. YouTube campaign)
- Leads, sales, and revenue by term (aka. YouTube ad group)
- Leads, sales, and revenue by content (aka. YouTube ad)
This lets you readjust your YouTube budget based on the performance of the campaigns, ad groups, and ads that bring in the most leads, sales, and revenue.
Let’s discover the reports you can generate!
1. Lead source reports
Generate performance reports indicating the number of leads generated by:
- Channel
- Source
- Campaign (aka. YouTube campaign)
- Term (aka. YouTube ad group)
- Content (aka. YouTube ad)
- Landing page
- Landing page subfolder
Example #1: Leads by channel
This report helps you track which channel is delivering the highest lead numbers.
Example #2: Leads by YouTube campaign
With this feature, you can focus on a particular lead source (e.g., YouTube) and measure how each YouTube campaign contributes to lead generation.
Example #3: Leads by YouTube ad
After identifying the YouTube campaign with the highest number of leads, you can determine which ad group or ad is most responsible for those results.
2. Sales and revenue source reports
Now that we know where our leads are coming from—via YouTube campaign, ad group, and ad—we must assess if these leads are converting into sales and revenue.
For optimal tracking, send your leads to a CRM like GoHighLevel. This will allow you to track sales and revenue from various channels, YouTube campaign data, landing pages, and subfolders.
This data helps you shift your YouTube ad strategy, focusing on the channels, sources, campaigns, ad groups, and ads that generate the highest sales and revenue.
It’s possible to put together a selection of sales and revenue reports, such as:
- Sales and revenue by channel
- Sales and revenue by source
- Sales and revenue by campaign (aka. YouTube campaign)
- Sales and revenue by term (aka. YouTube ad group)
- Sales and revenue by content (aka. YouTube ad)
- Sales and revenue by landing page
- Sales and revenue by landing page subfolder
Example Scenario:
| Channel | Search Paid | Social Paid |
|---|---|---|
| Leads | 50 | 75 |
| Sales | 5 | 6 |
| Average Order Value | $150 | $100 |
| Revenue | $750 | $600 |
After launching ads on Google (Search Paid) and YouTube (Social Paid), the initial “Leads by Channel” report showed that YouTube ads outperformed Search Paid ads in terms of lead generation.
Upon examining the sales and revenue figures in your CRM, you found that the Search Paid channel outperformed the Social Paid channel by generating more revenue with fewer leads. Based on this insight, you increased your budget for Search Paid.