UTM Tagging Wiki

Why Using UTM Tagging

How can the results of your ad campaign in the context ad systems be estimated? How can you track what ad promotes your sales and what just loses your money?

There are some ways to do it, and here I'm going to tell about the most popular one – UTM tagging.

What is a UTM Tag

UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) has been developed by Urchin Software, a web analytics developer, in 2005 the company together with its product was acquired by the search giant Google.

A UTM tag itself is a set of variables in the form of GET requests. The data of these variables can be easily deciphered using popular analytic means, like Google Analytics.

What an UTM Tag Looks Like

Each UTM consists of 2 fields: a parameter name and its value separated with “=”. The UTMs are separated with an ampersand &.

The Structure of UTMs

There are 3 required parameters (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign) and 2 optional ones (utm_term, utm_content).

Required Parameters:

• utm_source is a referrer (Google, Email, Blog)
• utm_medium is a traffic type (PPC, CMN, retargeting, newsletter, post, banner)
• utm_campaign is the name of the ad campaign or the ad itself

Optional UTM Parameters:

• utm_term is a keyword
• utm_content is the contents that helps to differentiate ads containing the same keywords; it can be helpful for the text of an ad

The sample of an URL containing UTMs:

where www.utmurl.com/landing is your landing page converting PPC (pay per click) traffic of the ad “new-nexus” in Google Adwords with the keyword “nexus-16gb”.

UTMs help to track both the efficiency of any referrer and your ad campaign as a whole.

* Specify google as a referrer in Google Adwords ad campaigns. In this case, Google Analytics refers visits to AdWords and displays the statistics in its reports.

Advanced Tracking Options

Apart from general information specified manually, many advertising systems allow to get additional information, like ad position, website the ad has been clicked at, etc.

Dynamic Parameters in Google AdWords

Parameter	Description	Possible Values
{network}	Source type: search or context	g (Google search), s(search partners) or d(CMN)
{placement}	Placement, only for context media network	Placement URL
{adposition}	Ad position	1t2(page 1, on top, position 2), 1s3 (page 1, guarranteed showing, position 3) or none (CMN)
{creative}	ID of an ad	(to see the ad ID in AdWords, add the corresponding column)
{matchtype}	A type of keyword match	e (exact match), p (phrasal match) or b (broad match)
{keyword}	Keyword	keyword
{device}	A device type	m (mobile phone), t (tablet) or c (desktop or laptop)
{devicemodel}	Brand and model of a device	Apple+iPhone
{adwords_producttargetid}	ID of the advertised product (only for product targeted campaigns)	product ID