Your first campaign

Four things exist before a click can be tracked, and they are created in this order because each one refers to the last.

#1. A traffic source

Traffic sources describes where clicks come from — Google Ads, Facebook, a push network. Choosing a source matters more than it looks: it carries that platform's macros, the placeholders the platform substitutes when it builds your URL.

Without them every click records at zero cost and every profit figure on the campaign is wrong. A source that sets a cost macro is the difference between reporting and guessing.

#2. An offer

Offers is where the click ends up: the page that pays you. An offer needs a URL and, if you are working with a network, that network's own click id placeholder in it.

Use {click_id} anywhere in the offer URL and UTMCAP substitutes this visitor's id:

https://network.example/landing?subid={click_id}

That is what lets the network's postback tell you which click converted rather than only that one did.

#3. A landing page

Landing pages is the page in the middle, if you use one. Not every campaign does — a straight-to-offer campaign has no lander and no second hop.

Two things to know:

• The URL must be the address the visitor actually reaches, because that is how UTMCAP recognises the page when a visitor arrives without a campaign on the URL.
• The page needs the tag and a call to action the tag can rewrite.

A landing page used by more than one live campaign is fine, and worth understanding before you rely on it. See when two campaigns share a lander.

#4. A campaign

Campaigns ties them together. Inside one you build paths: a path sends some share of traffic to a lander, and from there to an offer. Several paths in a campaign split traffic by weight, which is how a lander or offer test is run.

Once it is saved, the campaign's Tracking tab gives you what to paste into the ad platform. What it gives you depends on the platform:

• Most platforms accept a tracking URL — a link that redirects. See tracking URLs.
• Google and Microsoft do not. They get a Final URL with parameters instead. See parallel tracking.

#Then check it

Open the tracking URL yourself, or load the landing page, and look at the campaign's numbers. A click should appear immediately — clicks are recorded as they happen, not on a schedule.

If nothing appears, or the button on your lander does nothing, troubleshooting covers both by symptom.