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UTM Tags & Attribution

How to tag ad URLs so you can attribute orders to a campaign, ad set, or creative inside your reports.

Updated 2 July 20265 min read

UTM tags are URL parameters that let you attribute an order back to the campaign, ad set, or creative that drove it. Without them, you have no idea which Facebook ad earned its budget back. With them, you can scale winners and cut losers.

The five UTM parameters

  • utm_source — where the click came from (e.g. facebook, instagram, email)
  • utm_medium — the channel type (e.g. cpc, social, newsletter)
  • utm_campaign — your campaign name (e.g. bmw-m4-launch)
  • utm_content — the creative variant (e.g. red-car-static, spinning-tyres-video)
  • utm_term — keyword or audience slug. Optional but useful for Google Ads.

Example tagged URL

https://yoursite.co.uk/competition/bmw-m4?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=bmw-m4-launch&utm_content=red-car-static

What we capture for you

When a customer lands on your site with UTM params, we:

  • Drop a cookie with the UTM payload, 30-day lifetime, scoped to your domain.
  • Read it at checkoutand write to the order’s metadata.
  • Persist across sessions via that cookie, so a customer who clicks on Monday and buys on Friday is still attributed correctly.

How to actually use them

  1. Tag every ad URL.Use Meta’s URL Parameters field or TikTok’s native UTM picker. Don’t hand-build — Meta auto-fills {{ad.name}} dynamic variables that make per-creative attribution trivial.
  2. Tag every email + SMS link. Same shortcode pattern; most ESPs auto-build the tag for you.
  3. Don’t tag organic links. Internal links from your own homepage to a competition page should NOT carry UTMs — they overwrite legitimate attribution from external sources.
  4. Pull the data weekly. Once Reports > Sales ships UTM-by-UTM breakdown (Phase 2.5), you’ll see which campaigns earn back. Until then, query the orders table directly via SQL Studio.

Anti-pattern: changing UTM schemes mid-flight

Once you pick a naming convention, stick to it for 6+ months. Mixing utm_source=facebook and utm_source=fb splinters your attribution and you have to manually merge in analysis. Document the scheme; share it with anyone tagging URLs.

Related: SEO Defaults · Meta Ads Playbook.