How to setup tracking on your Facebook Ads

This article will explain exactly how to set up your UTM parameters on your Facebook ads so that Cometly can track them perfectly!

Updated over a week ago

Setting up your UTM parameters correctly is ESSENTIAL for accurate attribution with Cometly. If any of your ads are not set up correctly then Cometly will not be able to track a portion of your sales (i.e. Cometly will not track any purchases from an ad if it does not have the correct UTM set up). If you follow the instructions below, your UTM setup will be perfect for tracking your Facebook ads with Cometly.

Cometly needs 1 of the the 5 following UTM parameter codes on every Facebook Ad:

  • utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign={{ad.id}}

  • utm_source=facebook&utm_medium={{ad.id}}

  • utm_source=facebook&utm_term={{ad.id}}

  • utm_source=facebook&utm_content={{ad.id}}

  • utm_source=facebook&ref={{ad.id}}

To set these up inside the FB Ads manager, navigate to the ad level and select an ad that you want to track with Cometly. There should be a section titled "Destination" with a box for "Website URL". Underneath that box, there is a line of blue text labeled "Build a URL Parameter". Click that to open up a popup (screenshots below)

-If you are running any carousel ads, follow the directions in this article

-If you using an "Existing Post" in the ad, follow the directions in this article

-If you are running dynamic ads, follow the directions in this article

First click into the first box for Campaign source, and type in "Facebook" here.

Then, click into any of the 3 text boxes on this popup (it does not matter which one) to reveal a dropdown. From the dropdown, make sure you select the {{ad.id}} option.

If all of these other boxes are already being used for other parameters, no worries! You can click the box that says "Add parameter" and type in "utm_term" in the box for "Parameter name" and {{ad.id}} for the box for "Value".

If you are already using utm_term and you definitely do not want to change any of them, you can also use the custom parameter "ref". We do not recommend using this parameter because you will not be able to see any "ref" UTMs in Shopify Reports, so there is no way for you to audit this data to see how much Cometly is helping your tracking :). However, if you still want to use "ref", set up the parameter like we have pictured below. Just type in "ref" in the box for "Parameter name" and {{ad.id}} for the box for "Value".

After you click apply your Website URL should now contain the proper UTM parameters set up as shown in the screenshot below:

Before you publish the ad, make sure this area on the ad level is completely EMPTY like in the screenshot below:

PLEASE NOTE: Make sure you do not use any of the above parameters more than once in your UTM string (i.e., do not use utm_campaign={{ad.id}} AND utm_campaign=paid in the same UTM string).

ALSO - If there is another "?" in your Website URL (for example if you have a variant in your URL), that means you are already using UTMs, so you would need to switch the "?" to a "&" before adding it to the end of your Website URL,

For example, if your Website URL is:

www.test.com?variant=123456

Then instead of adding:

?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign={{ad.id}}

You would need to add:

&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign={{ad.id}}

So your final Website URL would be

www.test.com?variant=123456&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign={{ad.id}}

Now you can go ahead and publish your ad. As long as you use this setup process on EVERY ad, your tracking and attribution with Cometly will be PERFECT.

You can quickly check that every ad is set up correctly by navigating to the ad level in the FB Ads manager, and selecting the column option "Setup" which will show you a column for Website URL and column for URL Parameters. As you can see below, this makes it very easy to quickly check that all of your ads are set up correctly.

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