How to Track Facebook Ads in Google Analytics [Using URL Parameters]
I'll show you how you can start
tracking Facebook ads more effectively in
Google Analytics.
We'll be using something called URL Parameters
to make it easier for us to start tracking
Facebook ads in Google Analytics.
So why do we need to use URL Parameters?
Two reasons.
One is that there's a lot of discrepancy between
the data that you get in Facebook Insights
and the data that you get in Google Analytics.
So by using URL parameters, you can avoid
that and you'll know exactly which campaign
is driving traffic to your website.
Secondly, the data that you find in Google
Analytics, you'll see that there's no differentiator
between the traffic that you get from Google.
There's no differentiating between the traffic
that you get from Facebook organic and Facebook
ads.
So with the URL parameters, you'll know exactly
which ad campaign, which ad set is driving
traffic to your website, and you can also
track conversions on your website that way.
So to generate URL parameters for your Facebook
the ad campaign, I would recommend a free tool
called Campaign URL Builder.
This
is a free tool by Google, and in the next segment, I'll show you how you can use this tool to generate URL parameters for your Facebook ad campaign. So let's get
started. So I'm in Google's Campaign URL Builder now, and as you can see there's
a form here that we need to complete, and once the form is completed, there will
be a campaign URL generated with all the URL parameters. And you can use this URL
in your Facebook ads and start tracking traffic in Google Analytics. So it's a
very simple process.
To
begin with, just go to the article that you wish to promote on Facebook. Copy the
URL and paste it into the website URL box. The next field is Campaign Source. So
mention Facebook ad as the campaign source or you can just mention Facebook, but
I like to differentiate between the traffic that I get from Facebook organic and
the traffic that I get from Facebook ads. So I recommend mentioning Facebook ads
here. The next field is Campaign Medium. You'll notice that the first two fields are mandatory and the rest are not, but I recommend filling in the rest of the
information as well because you'll be having multiple campaigns on Facebook and
you would like to track each campaign individually in your analytics report.
The more specific you get with your URL parameters, the better, and you'll know exactly which campaign is driving traffic to your site and which campaign needs
to be improved. So just fill in the remaining information as well. For Campaign
Medium go to Ads Manager, and click on Budget & Schedule under Ad Set. Look
for Optimization for Ad Delivery, and in this case, I think by default Link
Clicks what is mentioned in Optimization for AdDelivery.This means we'll be
paying for each click, which means the campaign medium is CPC. It can also be
something else. It depends on your requirements. So suppose you have selected
Impressions as your optimization, then you need to mention CPU here. But in this
case, it's CPC for us. For the campaign name, just go to Ads Manager once again,
click on the campaign and copy the campaign name. Paste it here.