UTM Parameters: The Complete Tagging Guide

Why analytics needs UTM parameters

The nine campaign parameters

GA4 accepts nine campaign parameters. Most guides cover the original five and stop there. The other four have been supported for years, and two of them are collected without ever appearing in a report.

Six naming rules

Tagging usually fails at the level of convention, not syntax. These six rules are worth documenting somewhere the whole team can reach, because fixing any of them retroactively means rebuilding reports.

1. 1.Lowercase everything

   GA4 treats Facebook, facebook and FACEBOOK as three separate sources. One campaign tagged in title case splits a year of data across rows that look like separate channels. Lowercase is also what the ad platforms generate automatically, so it is the value your manual tags need to match.

2. 2.No spaces in values

   A space is encoded as %20 or + somewhere between the ad and the report, and which one you get depends on the platform. spring sale can end up as three different campaigns across three channels. spring_sale cannot.

3. 3.Keep utm_medium to a closed list

   Source is open-ended, because new partners appear all the time. Medium is not. Agree on your list once (cpc, paid_social, email, affiliate, referral, organic_social, display) and do not add to it casually. Medium drives channel grouping, so an invented value creates a channel nobody is looking at.

4. 4.Match the medium regex GA4 uses

   GA4 recognises a paid click when utm_medium matches ^(.*cp.*|ppc|retargeting|paid.*)$. That covers cpc, ppc and anything starting with paid. Values like advertising, ads and sponsored do not match, and end up in the same bucket as a broken tag.

5. 5.Prefer IDs over names for anything you might rename

   Campaign names get edited. When one is, utm_campaign={{campaign.name}} starts writing a different value and your historical rows stop joining to the new ones. Send the ID in utm_id, send the name in utm_campaign if you want it readable, and group on the ID.

6. 6.Document the convention where media buyers can find it

   A shared sheet with one tab per platform and the exact paste string is enough. What matters is that a freelancer setting up a campaign at 11pm can find it without asking anyone.

These strings go in the platform's tracking field, not in your landing page URL. Do not start them with ?: every platform on this list joins them to your URL for you.

Google Ads

ValueTrack macros in a final URL suffix, set once at account level.

Google Ads›Admin›Account settings›Tracking›Final URL suffix

Google Ads calls its macros ValueTrack parameters. They go in the final URL suffix, which is a separate field from the landing page URL. That separation is the point: change the suffix and your ads keep serving, change the landing page URL and the ad goes back through editorial review.

Set it at account level and every campaign inherits it. A campaign, ad group or ad with its own suffix overrides the account one, so put your defaults at the top and only override where you need to.

There is no macro for the campaign name. Google only exposes IDs. If you want readable campaign names in your reports, either accept the ID and map it later, or type the name into utm_campaign per campaign by hand.

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Final URL suffix, account levelCopyFinal URL suffix, account level

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

＋ All 9 Google Ads macros

{campaignid}	The numeric campaign ID.
{adgroupid}	The numeric ad group ID.
{creative}	A unique ID for the ad that was clicked.
{keyword}	The matched keyword on Search, or the content-matching keyword on Display.Returns blank on Performance Max, Dynamic Search Ads and AI Max for Search.
{matchtype}	e exact, p phrase, b broad, a AI Max keywordless.
{network}	g Google search, s search partners, d Display, ytv YouTube, x Performance Max.
{device}	m mobile, t tablet, c computer.
{targetid}	Prefixed target ID: kwd, dsa, aud, pla or hpi.
{lpurl}	The landing page URL. Tracking templates only, never valid in a suffix.

Auto-tagging and manual UTMs work together

Auto-tagging adds gclid to the URL and is how Google Ads and GA4 exchange conversion data. Manual UTMs are how every other tool reads the click: your CRM, LeadTrackr, a spreadsheet. Keep both. Turning one off to avoid conflicts costs you a working integration.

In GA4 the gclid takes priority. When a click carries both a gclid and manual UTMs, GA4 reports the Google Ads values and ignores your utm_source. That is normally what you want, and it is also why a mistyped utm_source on a Google campaign does not show up as a problem in GA4 while still affecting every other report.

Keep auto-tagging on and add the suffix as well. They travel in the same URL without interfering with each other.

Sources: ValueTrack parameters · About final URL suffix

Microsoft Ads

The same model as Google, with different casing and a different source value.

Microsoft Advertising›Campaigns›Settings›Account level options›Final URL suffix

Microsoft copied the Google Ads model closely enough that your thinking transfers, and changed it just enough that your string does not. The macros are CamelCase in the documentation, so {CampaignId} rather than {campaignid}, and there is no {creative}: the ad ID macro is {AdId}.

Set it in Final URL suffix at account level, with the same inheritance rules as Google. Lower levels override higher ones.

The suffix cannot start with ?, & or #, and it cannot contain {lpurl} or {ignore}, which belong in a tracking template.

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Final URL suffix, account levelCopyFinal URL suffix, account level

utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_id={CampaignId}&utm_campaign={CampaignId}&utm_content={AdId}&utm_term={keyword}

＋ All 10 Microsoft Ads macros

{CampaignId}	The numeric campaign ID.
{AdGroupId}	The numeric ad group ID.
{AdId}	The numeric ad ID.
{keyword}	The keyword that triggered the ad.
{MatchType}	e exact, p phrase, b broad.
{Network}	o owned and operated, s syndicated partners, a audience.
{Device}	m mobile, t tablet, c computer.
{msclkid}	The Microsoft click ID, if you want it in the URL as well as auto-tagged.
{QueryString}	The full search query string the user typed.
{_yourname}	A custom parameter you defined yourself. Note the leading underscore.

Use bing as the source, not microsoft

GA4 classifies Paid Search by matching utm_source against a published list of search sites. bing is on that list. microsoft, microsoft-ads and msn ads are not, so a campaign tagged that way lands in Paid Other instead of Paid Search.

The platform was renamed, the classification list was not. Tag utm_source=bing and use "Microsoft" in your reporting layer, where renaming costs nothing.

Sources: What tracking or URL parameters can I use? · URL tracking with upgraded URLs

Meta Ads

Double curly braces, set per ad, and one source value that breaks Paid Social.

Ads Manager›Ad level›Tracking›URL parameters

Meta puts tagging in a dedicated URL parameters field at ad level, in the Tracking card alongside the conversion event settings. Paste the string without a leading ?, because Meta joins it to your URL for you.

Meta uses double curly braces and dots in the token names: {{campaign.name}}, not {campaign_name}. Getting the brace style wrong is the most common reason a Meta URL arrives with a literal {{campaign.name}} in it.

There is no account-level default. The field lives on the ad, so every new ad is a chance to forget it. Duplicating an existing ad carries the parameters across, so build one properly tagged ad and duplicate from it.

Meta stores the campaign, ad set and ad names when you publish the ad, and keeps using those stored values afterwards. Renaming a campaign later does not change what {{campaign.name}} writes into the URL, so your reports keep the original name while Ads Manager shows the new one. {{campaign.id}} has no such ambiguity, which is the argument for sending utm_id as well.

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URL parameters, ad levelCopyURL parameters, ad level

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

＋ All 8 Meta Ads macros

{{campaign.id}}	The numeric campaign ID. Survives a rename.
{{campaign.name}}	The campaign name as you typed it.Meta freezes the name at publish time, so a later rename does not reach the URL.
{{adset.id}}	The numeric ad set ID.
{{adset.name}}	The ad set name.
{{ad.id}}	The numeric ad ID.
{{ad.name}}	The ad name.
{{site_source_name}}	fb, ig, msg or an, depending on where the ad was shown.See the warning below before putting this in utm_source.
{{placement}}	The placement the ad was shown in.

Why utm_source=meta breaks Paid Social

The string meta does not appear in Google's published source categories. Traffic tagged utm_source=meta matches no entry on the social list, falls out of Paid Social, and is reported under Referral or (other), while the spend still sits on your Meta invoice.

facebook is on the list, and so is fb. Use one of those.

That is also the argument against utm_source={{site_source_name}}. It returns fb and ig, which are fine, but also msg and an for Messenger and Audience Network, which are not documented as social sources. If you want to split Facebook from Instagram, split at the ad set level and hard-code utm_source per ad set.

Keep utm_medium in the paid family as well. paid_social, cpc and paidsocial all match GA4's paid regex. social on its own is read as organic social, which makes paid campaigns look free.

Sources: About URL parameters · GA4 default channel group definitions

LinkedIn Ads

One string at account level, and a 2025 macro rename that invalidated older guides.

Campaign Manager›Account settings›URL tracking parameters›Account tracking parameters

LinkedIn takes a single string, the same way Google and Microsoft do, and applies it to every ad set and ad in the account. You can also set it per campaign, where it overrides the account string. You cannot set it on an individual ad: that level does not have the field.

The macros use double curly braces and upper-case names with underscores: {{CAMPAIGN_ID}}, not {campaignid} and not {{campaign.id}}. Every platform in this guide uses a different convention.

Keys accept letters, digits and underscores. Values also accept a plus sign and a hyphen, so paid_social and paid-social both work, but a space or a colon will be rejected.

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Account tracking parameters, account levelCopyAccount tracking parameters, account level

utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=paid_social&utm_id={{CAMPAIGN_ID}}&utm_campaign={{CAMPAIGN_NAME}}&utm_term={{AD_SET_NAME}}&utm_content={{AD_ID}}

＋ All 8 LinkedIn Ads macros

{{ACCOUNT_ID}}	The ad account ID.
{{ACCOUNT_NAME}}	The ad account name.
{{CAMPAIGN_ID}}	The campaign ID.
{{CAMPAIGN_NAME}}	The campaign name.
{{AD_SET_ID}}	The ad set ID.
{{AD_SET_NAME}}	The ad set name.
{{AD_ID}}	The ID of the individual ad.
{{AD_NAME}}	The name of the individual ad.

The macro names changed in October 2025

LinkedIn used to have its own vocabulary: Campaign Group, Campaign, Creative, where "campaign group" meant what everyone else calls a campaign and "campaign" meant the ad set. In October 2025 it renamed the hierarchy to Campaign, Ad set, Ad, and renamed the macros to match.

{{CAMPAIGN_GROUP_ID}}, {{CAMPAIGN_GROUP_NAME}} and {{CREATIVE_ID}} are gone. The expensive part is that {{CAMPAIGN_ID}} and {{CAMPAIGN_NAME}} still exist but now refer to one level higher than they used to. A string copied from a guide written before the rename saves cleanly, delivers, and reports your campaign where your ad set belongs.

Two sources will still hand you the old names. LinkedIn's marketing API continues to use CAMPAIGN_GROUP_ID and the rest, so anything built against the API uses the old vocabulary while the interface uses the new one. Every blog post older than late 2025 is the other.

A retired macro is rejected outright with "One or more parameters contain an error", which is the easy case to spot. The harder case is a valid but shifted {{CAMPAIGN_NAME}}, which produces no error at all.

Sources: URL tracking parameters in Campaign Manager · Dynamic UTM tracking (API)

ChatGPT Ads

Four macros, single braces, and no channel grouping to fall into yet.

ChatGPT Ads Manager›Campaign›⋯›Edit campaign›Landing page query parameters

OpenAI's Ads Manager is the newest platform in this guide and the one where tagging matters most, because no analytics tool has an auto-tagging convention for it yet. What you put in the URL is all anyone downstream will know.

The field is called Landing page query parameters and sits behind the three-dot menu on a campaign, ad group or ad. More specific levels win: ad URL beats ad, ad beats ad group, ad group beats campaign. Set it once at campaign level and leave the lower levels empty.

Macros use single curly braces and snake_case, so the Google style rather than the Meta style.

Landing page query parameters, campaign levelCopyLanding page query parameters, campaign level

utm_source=chatgpt&utm_medium=cpc&utm_id={campaign_id}&utm_campaign={campaign_id}&utm_content={ad_id}&utm_term={ad_group_id}

＋ All 4 ChatGPT Ads macros

{campaign_id}	The campaign identifier.
{ad_group_id}	The ad group identifier.
{ad_id}	The ad identifier.
{ad_account_id}	The ad account identifier.

How GA4 classifies ChatGPT Ads

chatgpt is not on GA4's search or social source lists, so a click tagged utm_source=chatgpt&utm_medium=cpc matches only the paid medium regex and lands in Paid Other. That is the correct bucket until Google adds the source, but it does mean the channel stays invisible unless you look for it.

Build a custom channel group in GA4 with a rule for utm_source=chatgpt so the spend appears next to your other paid channels.

Decide on the utm_source value in writing before anyone launches. chatgpt, openai, chatgpt-ads and gpt are all defensible and mutually incompatible. Consistency matters more than the specific choice.

Sources: Ads in ChatGPT: the basics · Create ads for ChatGPT

How GA4 classifies your traffic

Why browsers strip UTM parameters

Safari

Strips known tracking parameters from links in Private Browsing and from links classified as cross-site trackers. The list of what it removes is not published and grows between releases.

Brave

Removes a hard-coded list of tracking parameters from every URL, in every window, by default. No setting has to be changed and most users are unaware it happens.

uBlock Origin and similar extensions

Ship URL-cleaning filter lists that strip utm_*. Some enable it by default, others put it one checkbox away, and extensions marketed as "link cleaners" do the same thing.

Rename your parameters

Custom parameter names in Channel Flow

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Use one installation, not both. If Channel Flow runs through the WordPress plugin, the setting in GTM has no effect, and the other way round.

Channel Flow setup documentation covers both routes step by step, including the session timeout setting.

Seven common tagging mistakes

Seven ways a tagging setup goes wrong. None of them raise an error, and all of them are visible in a report once you know what to look for.

1. 1.Tagging your own internal links

   A UTM on a link between two of your own pages starts a new session and overwrites the original source. The visitor arrived from a Google ad, clicked your nav, and is now attributed to your newsletter. Tag links that arrive at your site, never links inside it.

2. 2.Turning off auto-tagging to avoid conflicts

   Auto-tagging and manual UTMs coexist without any conflict. Auto-tagging is what lets Google Ads and GA4 share conversion data, so removing it costs you a working integration in exchange for a shorter URL.

3. 3.Case and spelling drift

   Facebook and facebook. cpc and CPC. newsletter and nieuwsbrief. Each pair becomes two rows in every report, and GA4 does not merge them retroactively.

4. 4.Putting the campaign name in utm_source

   Source is the platform, campaign is the campaign. Swapping them turns every campaign into its own channel, which makes channel-level analysis impossible and is difficult to unwind once a quarter of data has accumulated.

5. 5.Campaign names that encode every dimension

   2026_q1_nl_prospecting_video_15s_audience-a_v2 is a database row with underscores. Keep the campaign name short and put the dimensions in the parameters built for them: utm_content for creative, utm_term for audience.

6. 6.Assuming the tag survived

   Click your own ad in Safari and in a browser with a blocker installed, then look at the address bar. It takes two minutes and it is the only reliable way to find out that something between the ad and the page is removing your parameters.

7. 7.Tagging the redirect instead of the destination

   If your ad points at a link shortener or a redirect, the parameters have to survive the hop. Many shorteners drop the query string by default. Test the final landing URL, not the one you typed into the platform.

Tagging is straightforward to set up and easy to get subtly wrong, because nothing in the chain validates what you write. Paste the right string into each platform, agree on your values once, and check twice a year that the parameters still arrive intact.