Facebook ads: why you should ‘build a url parameter’

When it comes to investing in Facebook ads, it’s critical that you have access to data that tells you how well your ads are performing. 

After the iOS14 update in 2021, tracking the effectiveness of Facebook ads became more difficult. Due to this, it’s now even more important to set your ads up in a way that makes use of all tracking options available.

Using URL parameters allows you to track the effectiveness of your campaigns in Google Analytics, alongside Facebook Ads Manager. I’ll cover why you want to use both in a mo.

What are URL parameters?

URL parameters are extra pieces of information that are added to the end of a URL to track where the traffic came from. 

Through the use of these details, you can track both the source of the traffic and even the campaign and ad that the user clicked on.

Why use URL parameters?

Without them, Google can only track that someone:

• Came from Facebook

• Landed on your webpage

The main issue with this is that you won’t be able to differentiate between organic and paid Facebook traffic, i.e. your Google Analytics data will be pretty useless when it comes to tracking the performance of your Facebook Ads.

You also one be able to see how one ad is doing vs another. Without this information you’ll struggle to know what action to take next when managing your ads.

Why use both Google Analytics and Facebook Ads Manager reports?

The reporting you can see within Facebook Ads Manager is pretty in depth, so you may be wondering why you should care about Google Analytics as well.

The reason is that these 2 tools track some different things to each other and they also track behaviour in different ways.

Facebook ads manager reports tell you things like who saw your ad, who clicked through, who added to cart and who bought. 

Google Analytics, however, tells you additional information like what pages they visited after they landed on your website and how long they stuck around. Facebook is unable to tell you data like this.

Another slight curveball to add is that a lot of marketers report that Facebook isn’t always correct at attributing sales to the correct ads. By tracking your data via a 2nd separate system you will have a more rounded via of each ads performance.

Why results differ between Google Analytics and Facebook

As I mentioned above, the two track data in different ways, so it’s worth bearing in mind that your reporting across the two platforms won’t match up (for various reasons).

For example, Facebook will track someone’s behaviour for a period of time after they click on your ad, so if they purchase some days later, it will record this against the ad, even if they went directly to your website to make the purchase.

Google Analytics, on the other hand, will attribute this sale to ‘direct traffic’, as that’s the last click made before the purchase.

Regardless of these differences, it’s still good to track via both tools, so that you have all the data possible about your ads performance.

How to use the url builder

In your ads, you’ll find the url builder in each ad, underneath where you enter the main url for the ad.

When you click on this there are a number of fields to fill in. You can fill these in with your own text or choose a dynamic field from the drop down.

Here’s my cheat sheet to show what I input:

• Campaign source: Facebook 

• Campaign medium: cpc 

• Campaign name: {{campaign.name}}

• Campaign content: {{ad.name}}

The top 2 are free type and the last 2 are dynamic fields.

I make sure my ads name reflects the ad set it belongs to, so that if I’m testing different audiences against one campaign then I can still tell my ads apart in Google Analytics.

You can either do the same or add an additional parameter to capture the ad set.

Viewing your ads in Google Analytics

Once people start clicking on your ads you will be able to see this in Google Analytics by going to the report section and choosing acquisition / traffic acquisition.

To wrap up

Thanks to the tool in Facebook, adding url parameters to your ads takes just a few seconds. The value you get from that extra few seconds of work is huge.

Now that you know why it’s important, start adding URL parameters to your ads and see how the additional data benefits your marketing efforts right away.

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As ever, if you want more hands-on support in launching and growing your business reach out to me about 1:1 coaching. There’s really nothing you can’t do with the right support.