Campaign Tracking with UTMs and Click IDs: Setup Guide

You run ads on Meta, Google, TikTok or LinkedIn and want to know which campaign and which ad is driving your leads? Then everything depends on clean URL parameters. This guide is for performance marketers, agencies and lead-gen businesses. By the end, you'll know how to build a UTM naming convention, use dynamic parameters in Meta and Google Ads, which click IDs exist, where parameters typically get lost and how to check that everything works.

UTMs and click IDs: two different jobs

Campaign tracking relies on two kinds of URL parameters that complement each other:

• UTM parameters (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_content, utm_term) are set by you. They're readable and work in every tool – your own view of source, campaign and ad.
• Click IDs are appended automatically by the ad platforms. They identify a single click, and only that platform can resolve them.

You need UTMs for your reporting: which campaign brings leads at what cost? You need click IDs to send conversions back to the platform – for example a deal that closes in your CRM weeks after the click. If you only maintain one of the two, you either end up with gaps in your reporting or give the platform algorithms too few signals.

Set a UTM naming convention

The biggest problem with UTMs isn't the technology, it's inconsistency. "Facebook", "facebook", "fb" and "meta" show up as four different sources in every report. Define once how parameters are written – and stick to it.

Ground rules:

• Lowercase only, no spaces, no special characters. Separate words with underscores: nurse_recruiting_q4.
• Fixed values for utm_source and utm_medium – for example facebook, instagram, google, tiktok, linkedin and paid_social, cpc, email.
• utm_campaign follows a fixed pattern such as goal_product_period: leads_mortgage_2026q4.
• utm_content describes the ad or variation, utm_term the keyword or audience.
• No personal data in the URL – no email addresses, no names.

Document the convention in a shared doc that everyone on your team and at your agency knows. For manual links (newsletters, partnerships, social posts) a generator helps: the free UTM builder creates links without typos.

Dynamic parameters in Meta and Google Ads

With dozens of ads, nobody maintains every URL by hand. Both major platforms can fill in values automatically at click time.

Meta Ads

In Ads Manager, at the ad level, enter this under "URL parameters":

utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=paid_social&utm_campaign={{campaign.name}}&utm_content={{ad.name}}&utm_term={{adset.name}}

Meta replaces the placeholders with the campaign, ad set and ad names when someone clicks. To separate Facebook from Instagram, you can use utm_source={{site_source_name}}. Watch out: if you rename a campaign, the UTM value changes from then on. {{campaign.id}}, {{adset.id}} and {{ad.id}} give you stable IDs.

Google Ads

First turn on auto-tagging so the gclid gets appended. The easiest way to add UTMs is the "Final URL suffix" at account or campaign level, using ValueTrack parameters:

utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign={campaignid}&utm_content={creative}&utm_term={keyword}

Google inserts IDs instead of names here. That's more robust, but your reporting needs to map the IDs back to campaigns. For iOS traffic, Google sometimes sets gbraid or wbraid instead of the gclid – one more reason to maintain UTMs as well.

TikTok and LinkedIn

TikTok and LinkedIn also offer their own placeholders for campaign and ad information. Above all, make sure the click IDs ttclid and li_fat_id don't get lost – the principle is the same as with the gclid and fbclid.

Common mistakes that lose parameters

Even with a perfect convention, parameters get lost between the click and the lead. These are the usual suspects:

• Redirects: A redirect from http to https, from www to the root domain, a missing trailing slash or a link shortener – any redirect can strip the query string. Test the final URL with parameters.
• Cookie banners that reload the page: Some consent tools reload the page without parameters after the visitor makes a choice.
• Forms in iframes: An embedded form or funnel builder runs on a different domain and can't see the parent page's URL. The landing page's UTMs never reach the form.
• Switching domains: Landing page on offer.com, form or checkout on shop.com – without cross-domain tracking, a new session without a source starts on the second domain.
• UTMs on internal links: A banner on your own site tagged utm_source=website overwrites the original source.
• Missing parameters on individual ads: New ads get duplicated or created from scratch and the URL parameters are missing.

How to check that everything works

1. Open the ad preview

   In Meta and Google, click every ad variation in preview and check the URL in your browser: are the UTMs and click ID there, and were the placeholders replaced with real values?

2. Test your redirects

   Open the destination URL with test parameters, for example ?utm_source=test&gclid=test123, also without www and with http. Are the parameters still in the address bar after every redirect?

3. Walk through the cookie banner

   Repeat the test once accepting and once declining. The parameters must not disappear on either path.

4. Submit a test lead

   Fill out the form – including the one in the iframe or funnel builder – and check in your CRM or tracking tool whether source, campaign and click ID are stored with the lead.

5. Repeat regularly

   Check the share of leads without a source every week. If it suddenly jumps, something changed on your website, form or ads.

How leads get attributed to their source

UTMs and click IDs are only in the URL on the first page view. But leads often convert later: on a subpage, on a second visit or days later by phone. To keep the source, you need three steps:

1. Capture: On the visit, UTMs and click IDs are read and stored, typically in first-party cookies.
2. Link: When a form is submitted, the lead has to be connected to that visit – through a session ID sent along with the form, or through the email address or phone number.
3. Assign credit: If a lead had several visits from different sources, the attribution model decides. With first-click attribution the first touch gets the credit, with last-click attribution the last one.

An example: a prospect clicks a Meta ad on Monday, comes back via Google search on Thursday and books a consultation. With first click, the lead goes to Meta; with last click, to Google. Both views are valid – what matters is that both visits were captured with their parameters in the first place.

How LeadMetrics helps

LeadMetrics handles capturing and matching for you (Lead Tracking):

• One tracking script captures sessions, visits and page views including the traffic source – LeadMetrics' own ad parameters, UTMs and click IDs.
• Leads are matched to their session by session ID, email address or phone number, up to 90 days back. Unmatched leads are re-checked every hour.
• For iframes and funnel builders there are placeholders like {{LM_SESS}} for hidden fields and __LM_SESS__ for checkout links, plus redirects with ?email= and lmetrics.attribute().
• Multi Domain Tracking keeps the session together when visitors move between your domains.
• In the dashboards you switch between first click and last click. For each lead you see the journey timeline and click history.
• The stored click IDs (fbc/fbp, gclid, ttclid, li_fat_id) are sent along with leads, deals and payments to Meta, Google Ads, TikTok and LinkedIn via the Conversion API.