Accurate advertising analytics depends on perfect tracking URLs. It’s almost impossible to get this right if you’re building your URLs by hand in Excel or with a separate builder tool.

Here’s how to automate your tracking URL construction for Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, HubSpot, Mixpanel, and others.

Advertising Analytics Depend on Tracking URLs

Website analytics give you the power to see if your advertising is working. The insights gleaned help you to optimize your campaigns, messages, and media placements.

The linchpin of website analytics is the Tracking URL.

What is a Tracking URL?

A Tracking URL is a specially constructed web address that includes parameters that identify campaign, source, creative, keywords, and anything else you want to track through website analytics.

Here is an example:

tracking URL

When a visitor comes to your website using a tracking URL, your analytics service automatically records all this data.

What are Common Mistakes with Tracking URLs?

One of the most common mistakes in advertising is malformed tracking URLs. These bad URLs send bad data to your website analytics.  This pollutes your website reporting and renders your analytics useless.

Clearly, you need accurate tracking URLs to get accurate advertising analytics.

The Problem with Tracking URLs

The biggest problem with tracking URLs is creating them.

To track properly, you need to create a unique tracking URL for every placement in your media plan. A single media plan might require dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of tracking URLs.

Won’t Tolerate Any Mistakes

The tracking URLs are complicated and vary for each client’s requirements. The coded formatting has to be perfect every time. It’s a minefield because if you get any little thing wrong, it won’t work.

Tedious and Time-Consuming

It is a tedious and time-consuming process, even more so when your media plan has hundreds of lines.  Using a standalone builder or separate spreadsheet requires copying and pasting, making it virtually impossible to match each placement with the correct URL.

Every time you make a change to your plan, you have to reformulate your tracking URLs. What a nightmare!

So, how do you get all the benefits of tracking URLs without the hassle?

The Ultimate Tracking URL Builder

Automate Tracking URL Building

Bionic’s new Custom Tracking URL Builder completely automates the process of generating perfect tracking URLs every time. You never again have to worry nor suffer eye strain while triple-checking your tracking URLs.

Better Than The Old URL Builder

The new Builder expands upon the capabilities of the old Tracking URL builder, which was limited to creating only Google Analytics standard Tracking URLs.

Supports All Website Analytics Tools

The new Tracking URL Builder is flexible enough to handle custom Google Analytics and all other analytics tools including Adobe Analytics (fka Omniture), HubSpot, and Mixpanel.

Fully Customizable

From the simplicity of a campaign name to the complexity of unlimited parameter values, this ultimate Tracking URL Builder handles every situation. Best of all, it’s 100% automated and fully-integrated into the media planning process.

How to Set Up Custom Tracking URLs

By default, the system will generate standard Google Analytics UTMs.

To set up an alternative Tracking URL pattern, go to your Organization Administration settings. Here, you’ll find the Tracking URLs tab.

tracking URL admin tool

Click the Add New Pattern button to bring up the new Custom Tracking URL Builder tool.  Watch the webinar below for a detailed demonstration of the Custom Tracking URL Builder.

Add a Tracking Pattern

Give it a Name

Bionic gives you the ability to create an unlimited number of Tracking URL patterns. To keep them straight, give each of them a name that helps you to remember its purpose.

Choose Your Delimiter

The delimiter is what separates the fields in your tracking URL. By default, it’s an underscore “_”.  However, you can customize it to a pipe “|”, colon “:”, or any other delimiter,

Choose Keys

You’ll next choose all the keys to include in your Tracking URLs. You can choose from a dropdown menu with all the standard Google UTM keys. Or you can create your own custom keys.

Specify Values

Your Tracking URL needs a value for every key. Populating values is the hardest part of creating tracking URLs.

Fortunately, Bionic automates this process by pulling values directly from your media plan. You have access to EVERY column and EVERY custom column in your Bionic account as both text and, when available, code.

This gives you flexibility, control, and the ability to drive deep insights with your performance analytics.

Choose Tracking URL Pattern for Your Media Plan

Campaign Settings Integrations

The settings of your media plan enable you to choose the default Tracking URL pattern for all the placements in your media plan.

Generate Tracking URLs While Media Planning

Tracking URLs in Media Plan

When media planning in Bionic, your tracking URLs are updated in real-time while creating and editing your media placements. Every time you add a placement, a new tracking URL is created. And with every edit, your tracking URL is updated.

This automation completely eliminates the need for a separate process to create tracking URLs. It saves time, eliminates errors, and avoids trouble with your analytics team.

Trafficking Your Ads with Tracking URLs

Export Tracking URLs

When you are ready to execute your campaign, Bionic automates the process of trafficking Tracking URLs to your ad servers and advertising platforms through trafficking sheets and Tracking URL sheets.

Watch the Tracking URL Builder Webinar

Below is the recording of the webinar on our new Custom Tracking URL Builder.  The webinar gives you an overview of the Builder’s benefits and a live demonstration of the software in action.

How to Get the Tracking URL Builder

If you’re already using Bionic media planning software, your Client Success Manager can answer any questions you may have to implement the right Tracking URL Pattern for each one of your clients.

If you’re not yet on Bionic, visit our website to see capabilities, watch a demo, see pricing, or request a trial.