Introduction to Website Links

UTM Parameters

URL parameters that are populated dynamically are important to measure web-based campaigns.

The UTM parameter convention is broadly supported in tools such as Google Analytics, Hubspot, and others:

• utm_source: Identifies the channel, site, publisher, etc. that is sending traffic to your website. E.g., "google", "facebook", "monthly_newsletter".
• utm_medium: Typically the type of advertising activity, such as "banner" or "email".
• utm_campaign: The name of the individual activity used with the link, referred to as the campaign.
• utm_term: Commonly used for search keywords.
• utm_content: Commonly used to distinguish between different versions of content or creatives used in the same campaign.

Using UTM parameters properly, with fixed conventions, is important to create consistency in reporting. These five parameters are also the ones that are shown by default in Google Analytics reports and its API.

You may be using Google's URL Builder or your own builder, but the end result should look like the following:

http://my_website.com/some_landing_page?utm_campaign=my_campaign_name&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

Macros in Website Links

Similar to mobile, most advertising platforms support dynamic macros that, when placed correctly within the link, would populate automatically by the publisher. This is a powerful tool to ensure that the data passed on the link contains identifiers that can later be used to join conversion data with other datasets such as spend data.

For example, having a macro for Campaign ID will make it easy to later join the campaign's spend with its conversions, even if the actual datasets are measured by completely different tools.

Different ad platforms may refer differently to macros. For example, in Google Ads, they are called ValueTrack parameters. In Google's Display & Video 360 ("DV360"), they're just called macros.

When using Singular for tracking web conversions, your links would always contain the relevant macros needed to join upstream data such as ad spend, with downstream conversion data. 

URLs that contain macros would look differently according to the platform, but would typically have URL parameters that contain curly braces, such as the following (which is a Google Ads link):

https://my_website.com/my_landing_page?wpcid={campaignid}&wpsrc={network}&wpkwn={keyword}&wpkmatch={matchtype}&wpcrid={creative}&wpscid={adgroupid}&wpkwid={targetid}

Format Used for Singular Website Links

When creating website links using Singular, we want to allow your existing UTM parameter conventions, if applicable, to remain intact so that existing reports do not change. However, Singular adds its own set of parameters, recognized by the wp prefix, which we then use for automatically reporting critical identifiers that we can later join by.

A Singular-generated website link that also contains existing UTM parameters may look like the following:

https://my_website.com/my_landing_page?utm_source=google&utm_campaign=my_campaign&utm_term=my_keyword&wpcid={campaignid}&wpsrc={network}&wpkwn={keyword}&wpkmatch={matchtype}&wpcrid={creative}&wpscid={adgroupid}&wpkwid={targetid}

As can be seen above, a marketer may commonly use "google" as the source. Similarly, while utm_campaign reports the campaign name, using {campaignid} to report on Campaign IDs will make it much easier to assemble the dataset for the full funnel of campaigns.

Creating Website Links

Selecting the Target and Partner

The URL Builder is located under the Attribution section and can be accessed through this link.

After selecting the relevant target (web app), you are able to modify the domain and add a landing page or select from previously used ones:

The Partner dropdown contains a set of pre-configured channels with the corresponding templates. Some are partners for paid ads, while others are common source names that you may want to use for reporting, to appear under Source.

In any case of a missing partner that you'd like us to add, reach out to Singular's Integration Team at partners-int@singular.net to create a request, and provide the relevant details,

Generating Links

Once the partner is selected, you'd be able to enter any UTM parameters, as well as learn further about how campaigns are set up with this partner and best practices to be used:

Generate the link by clicking Generate Link, which would yield the full URL as well as a table listing all parameters used in the link: