Mobile traffic from apps is difficult for Google Analytics to categorize correctly. When someone sees the mobile ad inside an app (and most mobile inventory is in apps) and clicks the ad, if this opens the browser on the phone to display the advertiser’s website, rather than opening it within the app, the app may not pass the tracking code to Google Analytics. So, when Google Analytics is seeing the user visiting your website, it is seeing that there is no referral code and it will deem the traffic to have no source and therefore assign that referral traffic incorrectly as “Direct traffic” and as an immediate “bounce” (recording it as zero time spent on the advertiser’s website). This is a known Google Analytics limitation and well documented.
If a client is tracking website traffic from your campaign in Google Analytics you may want to suggest using UTM codes (although there are limitations – see other FAQs) or bit.ly links
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