This guide details how to set up optimal tracking configurations for Google Ads. You can see more details on why we recommend setting up tracking parameters for Polar Attribution in this article.
Note: If you already have some configuration set up at the campaign level, you only need to add two UTM parameters for attribution in Polar to work. You can simply add the following two parameters alongside those you already have:
&campaign_id={campaignid}&ad_id={creative}
Step 1. In your Google Ads account, click the Settings dropdown menu on the left-hand side, and then Campaign Settings.
Step 2. Select the campaign you're hoping to update UTMs for. (Note: You can use the tracking template below to configure UTMs at the ad account level as well using these steps, as long as you reference the right parent campaign name within the actual_campaign_name_hardcoded parameter).
Step 3. Scroll down to Additional Settings, and select the "Campaign URL options" dropdown.
Step 4. Within the Campaign URL options, paste the recommended Google UTMs (see below) into the "Tracking Template" text field. Note: You'll need to include the actual campaign name in the utm_campaign field. Click "Save".
{lpurl}?utm_source=google&campaign_id={campaignid}&ad_id={creative}&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=actual_campaign_name_hardcoded&utm_content={adgroupid}&utm_term={placement}&gclid={gclid}
More on how we attribute your Google Ads
Ideally, you would provide campaign ids when configuring the tracking parameters of your Google ads. However, our matching algorithm is also able to leverage strings within UTM parameters to attribute campaigns and sources to a certain extent.
The following “misconfigured” UTM sources will still be linked to Google Ads:
any string containing “google” (e.g. google.be, google.dl, com.axndroid.google , etc.)
gmail
youtube
adwords
Keep in mind that a match will still be made for “misconfigured” UTM campaigns that have a similar enough name to their counterpart in your ads data.