The ‘Tracking Code’ dimension lists the names of tracking codes on your site. You can place links with different query string parameter values in different places across the internet. This dimension helps you understand which links were the most successful in driving traffic to your site.
Appending tracking code query strings are common in emails, advertisements, social media posts, and other marketing efforts that your organization uses.
This dimension retrieves data from the v0
query string in image requests. AppMeasurement collects this data using the campaign
variable.
Dimension items include the names of tracking codes on your site. Your organization determines what specific dimension items you want to use. See Campaign tracking for more information.
Some users who set up marketing channel processing rules configure a rule that takes all values used in the Tracking code dimension. Though an excellent practice, they are different because of inherent processing and architecture differences. The following list explains why these two methods, though similar at a glance, can change attribution behavior.
Marketing channels processing rules higher up in the list can prevent hits from attributing to your Tracking Codes marketing channel. For example:
Since ‘Social Networks’ is the first marketing channel processing rule, these users attribute to the ‘Social Networks’ marketing channel, and not your Tracking codes marketing channel.
When dealing with a standard Tracking Codes dimension, you don’t need to worry about other parts of your site stealing attribution. However, with Marketing channels, a user can match a different rule, giving different attribution. For example:
In this example, the Tracking codes marketing channel would not get last touch credit for that purchase. Instead, it would go to the ‘Direct’ marketing channel.
Marketing channels have a rolling 30-day visitor engagement expiration, whether a channel was touched or not. Tracking codes have an expiration based on when the variable was set. For example:
The user ultimately made a purchase beyond 30 days, but was never inactive for more than 30 days. In this case, you would see revenue attributed to the the Tracking codes marketing channel, but not for the Tracking code dimension itself.