AdAce AdsTrack Telegram, WhatsApp and call clicks as leads without a form
For businesses and agencies whose leads tap a messenger or phone button instead of filling in a form. Learn how to count those taps as leads, link each one to the campaign that paid for the click and keep personal data out of it.
What it does
On mobile, a “Message us on Telegram” or “Chat on WhatsApp” button usually beats a form: one tap and the person is in a conversation. The catch is measurement. The ad platform sees a visit, then the visitor leaves for t.me or wa.me, and the conversation happens in an app no pixel can see. Without extra tracking these campaigns show traffic and zero conversions, smart bidding optimizes for the wrong signal, and nobody can say which campaign filled the recruiter's chat. Calls have the same blind spot when the number is a plain tel: link.
The practical fix is to treat the click on a contact button as the lead event and record it on your own site. Recognize buttons by their link: t.me or telegram.me for Telegram, wa.me or api.whatsapp.com for WhatsApp, tel: for calls and mailto: for email. At the moment of the click, capture what connects the lead to an ad: the UTM tags from the landing page address, the Google click ID (gclid, or gbraid and wbraid, which Google uses instead in some iOS cases) and Meta's click marks fbc and fbp, plus the page address and its language.
Attribution only works if the marks exist. Keep auto-tagging on in Google Ads so every click arrives with a gclid, and put UTM tags on every Google and Meta ad, ideally with the campaign ID in utm_id or utm_campaign, since names get edited. Make sure redirects keep the query string, or the click IDs are lost. Then test each button on a phone and a desktop: a floating chat widget, a button that copies a number instead of opening tel:, or a page-builder link can behave differently from a plain link.
In AdAce Ads this is the lead tracking script in “Analytics” → “Leads”: one line that you add to the client's site. It counts clicks on Telegram, WhatsApp, phone, email and form buttons as leads and stores only technical marks: the channel, the page address and page language, UTM tags, Google click IDs (gclid, gbraid, wbraid) and Meta click marks (fbc, fbp). It does not store names, phone numbers, emails, IP addresses or a browser fingerprint. Leads are deleted after 90 days, and one browser produces at most one lead per 30 minutes, so nervous double taps are not counted twice.
Counting is only the first half. Every new lead is posted to the client's topic in your agency Telegram group with buttons for “wrote”, “interview”, “hired” and “not a fit”, plus the candidate's language, and the same statuses can be set in the service. Leads are matched to campaigns by utm_id or utm_campaign, so you see cost per interview and per hire for each campaign. Marking “interview” or “hired” also sends the result back to Google Ads as an offline conversion and to Meta through the Conversions API, so both platforms learn which clicks turned into real candidates.
Why it helps
- Messenger, call and email leads stop being invisible in reports.
- Each lead is tied to a campaign through UTM tags and click IDs.
- No personal data is collected, so there is less to protect.
- Repeated taps from the same browser do not inflate the count.
- Lead statuses flow back to Google Ads and Meta as conversions.
How to set it up
- Open “Analytics” → “Leads” for the client and copy the one-line script.
- Add it to every page of the site: in the page template, through your tag manager or with “Settings” → “Site pages”, which saves a copy before each change.
- Make sure Google Ads auto-tagging is on and every ad carries UTM tags with utm_id or utm_campaign.
- Open the site with test UTM tags in the address and tap each button: Telegram, WhatsApp, call, email and form.
- Check that the test leads appear in “Leads” and in the client's Telegram topic.
Good to know
- A click is intent, not a conversation: some people tap and never write, which is why statuses matter more than raw counts.
- Leads without UTM tags or click IDs are still counted, but they cannot be matched to a campaign.
- Lead records are deleted after 90 days, so mark statuses while the lead is fresh.
- You can start free: the Free plan includes two ad accounts and 50 calls from AI assistants a month. Paid plans start at $29 a month. Ad budget is paid to Google and Meta directly.
Try it on your own accounts
Create a workspace, connect Google or Meta in a couple of clicks and see your accounts clearly. Changes follow your approvals or the policy you configure.
Create your workspace