Troubleshooting
Organised by what you are seeing, not by which part is at fault — because when something is wrong you know the symptom and not the cause.
#The button does nothing
The call to action still points at #utmcap, or at a literal /out/{click_id}, and pressing it goes nowhere.
Check the tag version first. The tag is cached, so a fix that is live on the server but not yet in your browser looks exactly like a fix that does not work:
window.utmcap.version // should be '5'
If that is old, hard-refresh, or add ?x=1 to the page address.
Then check whether the tag has a click id at all:
window.utmcap.clickId // null means it could not open one
If clickId is null, the page was not recognised. The tag sends the page's own address and UTMCAP matches it against your registered landing pages, so the URL saved on the landing page must be the address a visitor actually reaches. A trailing slash, a www that is or is not there, or a staging address saved instead of the live one will each prevent a match.
If clickId is set and only the pasted /out/{click_id} is unfilled, that is deliberate:
window.utmcap.fromRedirect // false = no redirect brought this visitor
{click_id} is a redirect macro and fills only where a redirect happened. Under parallel tracking use #utmcap — see the call to action.
#The button worked, then stopped, then worked again
Almost always the thirty-minute session window, met without a cookie.
One visitor per campaign gets one click per thirty minutes. That is enforced by the tag's cookie and by the server. If you test from a private window, or after clearing cookies, you arrive inside your own earlier window with nothing to identify you — and the server hands back the click id it already issued rather than a new one. The button works and no second click is counted.
If you are seeing a genuinely dead button on a repeat visit, check the tag version: this behaviour arrived in version 5's predecessor and older cached copies answered with nothing.
#Clicks are counted against the wrong campaign
Two campaigns on one landing page, and the traffic of one showing up under the other.
Open the campaign's Tracking tab and look for the orphan warning. If it is there, the Final URL in your ad has lost its utm_id — see parallel tracking. Fix the ad, and add the campaign tag so the page names the campaign even if the URL loses it again.
If there is no warning, the traffic you are looking at is genuinely organic, and organic visitors to a shared page are routed by the most recently edited campaign. That is documented behaviour, and the fix is a separate landing page URL per campaign.
#Every click records zero cost
The traffic source has no cost macro, or the Final URL was assembled by hand and the macro is spelled wrong.
A macro that is almost right substitutes nothing, and a click with no cost records as free. Take the URL from the Tracking tab rather than editing one you already have — that is the only version with the chosen source's macros in it.
Both halves have to be set on the source and they have to agree — the macro the platform writes, and the parameter UTMCAP reads it from. See cost.
#No conversions are arriving
Work backwards along the chain:
- Does the offer URL carry the click id? It needs
{click_id}somewhere in it, so the network knows which click to name. - Has the network been given your postback URL? It is on the campaign, and it has to be configured on their side.
- Is the network firing it? Most networks show a postback log. A conversion they never sent cannot arrive.
- Check Gateway events in the app for what did arrive and what was done with it.
A conversion for a click id that does not exist here is recorded and marked, rather than dropped — so if the network says it fired and you see nothing, the id it sent is the thing to compare.
#Conversions arrive but revenue does not
Open the conversions log and read Status.
Only approved conversions become revenue. A column of pending on a network that has approved everything is not an approval delay — it is a status word the mapping does not recognise, held as pending rather than guessed into revenue. Map it on the network and the conversions arrive as what they are. See the four states.
#The numbers do not match the ad platform
Three ordinary causes before assuming a bug:
- Bots are excluded here and counted there. The clicks log shows which signal excluded each one.
- A click and its conversion can fall in different date ranges. A click is counted the day it happened; a conversion the day it arrived. Widen the range before looking further — see which date a row falls under.
- Cost is missing, so ROI looks impossible. See above.
#The page shows old data
Clicks are recorded as they happen. Two things are cached deliberately:
- A tenant's plan and limits for about a minute.
- The map of landing page addresses to campaigns for five minutes — so a landing page URL you have just changed takes up to five minutes to be recognised at its new address.
Everything else is read live over the date range on the screen. If a number looks stale beyond that, check the range picker before anything else.
#Still stuck
Write to [email protected] with the campaign alias and, if it is a landing page problem, the exact address a visitor reaches. Those two facts answer most of it.