All About Publishers/Referrers in Campaign Grouping

Overview

It helps your marketing team to scale admissions by knowing which partners worked and which didn’t.

What is a Publisher/Referrer?

A Publisher/Referrer in Meritto's Campaign Grouping is a group of sources — like utm_source — that helps you identify who sent a lead.

Think of it like this:

• “Facebook Ads” is a publisher
• “Shiksha” is a publisher
• “Offline Counsellor Upload” can be a publisher

You now have institute-level control over how these are defined, grouped, and reported — no more raising support tickets for publisher-related requirements.

Why Does It Matter?

Your entire marketing strategy depends on clean attribution. If you can’t track which partner, campaign, or channel delivered results, your admissions funnel becomes blind.

Clean publisher/referrer setup ensures:

• You know which campaign is driving ROI
• Reports reflect your team’s reality — not a fixed system logic
• Agencies and partners can see their performance accurately
• Lead allocation and automation rules stay reliable

In short — your source of lead generation efforts truth starts here.

What Makes Up a Publisher?

Publisher/Referrer Types in Meritto

1. System Publishers/Referrers

   • Created by Meritto for you
   • Used for consistent reporting and backward compatibility
   • Limited editability: most allow traffic channel reassignment, but “Not Mapped” is fully locked
     
     

2. Custom Publishers/Referrers

   • Created by you (the institute)
   • Fully editable: name, source tags, traffic channel, logo, offline toggle
   • You can assign multiple source tags, as long as:
     • Source Tags are unique
     • Not already linked to another publisher/referrer in your system

Where Publishers/Referrers are Reflected in the System?

• Campaign Dashboards
• Admin Dashboards
• Publisher/Referrer-wise filters in Report Builder
• Attribution at lead-level via Publisher Name
• Publisher Panel (if shared with agencies or channel partners)
• Logic setup in automation and allocation flows if Publisher Based logics are defined

What is the “Unclassified” Traffic Channel?

This is a system-maintained fallback:

• Appears when any publisher/referrer is unassigned
• You’ll see it in dashboards or filters when publishers exist within this traffic channel
• Publishers can enter Unclassified when:
  • You deselect them from a traffic channel
  • You disable a traffic channel
  • You create them directly from the Unclassified accordion

Unclassified Traffic Channel is your campaign sorting station. Any ungrouped Publishers/Referrers ends up here — assign them quickly to ensure clean attribution across your reports.

How Offline Mapping Works?

• When:
  • Lead Origin = Offline (Quick Add, Bulk Upload)
  • Offline toggle is ON for a publisher
• Then:
  • Those leads are routed to Offline Traffic Channel, regardless of the primary traffic channel.
  • This is not a fallback, it’s by design.

Sync = Retroactive Attribution Change

• Every time you:
  • Create a new publisher
  • Change source tags
  • Reassign traffic channels
  • Toggle Offline ON/OFF
• You’ll be asked to click “Sync Leads” to create/edit/disable/enable a publisher. Please tread carefully. 
• What happens after that?
  • Attribution for past + current leads updates across:
    • Campaign dashboards
    • Admin reports
    • Publisher Panels (what your agency or partner sees)
    • Lead/Application/Opportunity Managers
  • Point to Note about making edits to source tags of your Publishers/Referrers
    • You’re not just changing how you see attribution.
    • You’re also changing how your marketing partners see their performance inside the Publisher Panel.
  • So review carefully before syncing.

Fully Locked System Publishers/Referrers

These are fixed forever to their Traffic Channels (and hence, you won’t find them in your Campaign Grouping Settings)

Recommendations while managing your Publishers/Referrers

• Keep source tags short, clean, lowercase
• Use the offline toggle only if that partner sends offline uploads and you want to see them separately
• Keep assigning Publishers/Referrers from Unassigned Traffic Channel to their relevant traffic channels for better insights
• Make edits and sync only when you’ve reviewed the attribution impact
• If you're onboarding a new marketing agency or a lead partner, create their publisher before the campaign goes live

Conclusion

You track counselors. You track inquiries. Now track your lead sources with the same clarity.

Campaign Grouping + Publisher Control = Real marketing visibility for real admissions results.