What is the Difference Between a Click-through URL, a UTM Code, and a Conversion URL?
Click-Through URL
A click-through URL (CTURL) is a destination webpage (URL) that the user is directed to when they click on your ad. For example, your ad for baby clothes clicks through to the click thru URL www.Babyclothes.com.
UTM Codes
A UTM code is a snippet of code that you can add to the end of a URL to track the performance of campaigns through Google Analytics (GA). There are five variants of URL parameters you can track - source, medium, campaign, term, and content. The dimensions you track via UTM codes show up in your GA reports to give you a clearer insight into marketing performance.
UTM stands for "Urchin Traffic Monitor." This name comes from Urchin Tracker, a web analytics software that served as the base for Google Analytics.
We add default UTM source, medium, and campaign codes to all provided CTURLs (unless the CTURL already has a UTM applied). The UTM source, medium, and campaign codes we apply are:
- Source: 3461
- Medium: display/video/IP/email (depending on the product that’s ordered)
- Campaign: the line item number associated with that particular campaign
The UTM Source parameter allows you to track where the traffic originated from. The parameter added to your URL is utm_source. The sources you are able to track are Facebook, Google, Bing, or the name of an email list.
Our UTM source code looks something like this (in bold below):
http://yourwebsite.com/your-post-title/?utm_source=3461
The UTM medium parameter tracks what type of traffic the visitor originated from – display, email, social, referral, video, etc. The parameter is utm_medium.
Our UTM medium code looks something like this (in bold below):
http://yourwebsite.com/your-post-title/?utm_source=3461&utm_medium=display
The UTM Campaign code parameter allows you to track the performance of a specific campaign. For example, you can use the campaign parameter to differentiate traffic between a Facebook ad campaign or an email campaign. The parameter is utm_campaign.
Our UTM campaign code looks something like this (in bold below):
http://yourwebsite.com/your-post-title/?utm_source=3461&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=12345
Conversion URLs
Conversion URLs are various webpage URLs from a client’s website that the client wants to track pageviews on. For example, we could use the conversions URL "https://www.test.com/contact" to track how many users viewed the "contact" page after viewing and/or clicking on an ad running for your campaign.
We can track up to 5 conversion URLs per display campaign.
Example conversion URLs:
- https://www.test.com/contact
- https://www.test.com/locations
- https://www.test.com/about
- https://www.test.com/ourteam
- https://www.test.com/
Conversion tracking can only be done if a pixel is placed and firing on all pages of the client’s site. We are able to track the click through URL as a conversion URL.
The difference between a conversion URL and a clickthrough URL is that conversion URLs track general site activity (pageviews on various webpages of the client’s site as listed above) and a clickthrough URL is the landing page URL of the client’s site where the ads click through and immediately direct users to.