Our PPC UTM URLs Aren't Registering In GA Properly

[kirmeliux]

Hi,

We recently ran a few ads on Facebook and Reddit for a campaign of ours. Each of the URLs were properly attributed UTM links. Some of them register properly in campaigns, but the vast majority aren't.

I can only find the attribution by checking All Traffic and displaying the landing page and the source/medium. Our Facebook Ad Manager reports MANY more clicks than our Campaign section in GA is for the campaign name.

Here's the URL I receive for the landing page: /?url=http://www.ourwebsiteurl.com/our-landing-page?utm_source=facebook.com&dm_redirected=true

Is Facebook writing over our UTM with their own so all I receive is that it came from Facebook? The URL we used was complete with utm_source, utm_campaign and utm_medium, yet these aren't fully reported.

Any ideas?

[davidhughes]

Were the UTM tagged links built at scale (spreadsheet), or with a tool (Google's own URL Builder)? Creating links without some sort of process will commonly introduce mistakes.

Also, are you utilizing a 'raw' View within GA? Doing so would allow for easy troubleshooting of many issues; including this one. A raw View is exactly what it sounds like...a view with no rules, no filters, nothing. If in this View the links showed up as desired under Campaigns, then you would know a filter or view setting was the culprit in your 'main' View.

Good luck

[kirmeliux]

Hi Josh,

Thanks for the response.

The URLs were built through Google's URL builder and I believe they're valid. Thee view in GA is definitely raw. The only filters I have are to ignore the common spam bots like all-buttons and such.

I believe the dm_redirected is due to our mobile site being configured by a service called DudaMobile. So it looks like mobile users clicked the Facebook ad and were redirected to our mobile version, which Duda apparently tags themselves in the redirect? Would this wipe out the original UTM?

[davidhughes]

Yes, unfortunately that would do it. The original UTM is lost in the hand-off it appears. There are cases where vendors, similar to DM, can account for both the incoming UTM and their own parameters but in your case that doesn't appear to be the case. I am not familiar with their product, but may be worth asking their Support folks if this is something they have, maybe buried in advanced settings, or are working on.

Good luck!

[TrentonGreener]

Hello Kirmeliux!

Josh is correct. The redirect is likely causing your issue, especially if you are only seeing the issue on mobile traffic.

One fix would be to create two versions of your ad, one targeting the Desktop Right Column & Desktop News Feed with your desktop URL & another targeting the Mobile News Feed with your mobile URL. GA will still combine these data sets into one campaign assuming those UTM parameters match.
Also, check to make sure you're using Facebook's new URL tags feature at the bottom of the ad creation page to ensure your tagging is correctly appended.

Hope that helps!
Trenton