The Definitive Guide to Tracking Templates for Ad Platforms

Introduction

We created this guide because this question comes up with nearly every consulting client we work with: “How should we structure our tracking templates to get clean, consistent campaign data?”

Rather than answer it one-off each time, we decided to build a resource that anyone can use to get it right from the start.

Our goal is to make it easy for teams of any size to properly implement UTM tracking templates across all major ad platforms — so that your analytics system receives:

  • Clean, consistent data

  • Parameters that make cost and performance data easy to join

  • A structure that scales with your campaigns over time

Whether you’re running Google Ads, Meta, or TikTok, this guide will walk you through:

  • What a tracking template is

  • What parameters you should include

  • How to set it up efficiently (and avoid costly mistakes)

  • How to automate it for even greater reliability

Let’s get started.

Table of Contents

Section 1: What is a Tracking Template?

A tracking template is a URL format used in advertising platforms to automatically append query parameters (usually UTM tags) to your landing page URLs. These appended parameters allow web analytics tools like Google Analytics, HubSpot, Adobe Analytics, and others to:

  • Attribute sessions and conversions to the correct source/medium/campaign.

  • Group traffic in reporting dashboards by the correct marketing channel.

  • Segment users by campaign targeting (ad type, audience, creative, etc.).

Tracking templates can be applied at various levels (account, campaign, ad group, ad) and typically leverage dynamic URL parameters provided by the ad platforms (like {lpurl}, {campaignid}, {{ad.id}}, etc.) to minimize manual entry and reduce tagging errors.

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