UTM tracking is crucial if you’re looking for detailed insights into your campaigns within Facebook Ad Manager. Google Analytics may give you an overview of your Facebook and social traffic, but it won’t give you detailed and distinctive data if UTM tracking isn’t in place. This makes analysing your campaigns almost impossible without. If you’re after more accurate data, then setting up UTM codes for Facebook ads is key.

Fortunately, Facebook gives you the ability to add UTM codes within Facebook Ad Manager. This can be done either manually or dynamically. In this article, we’ll help you to apply both, as well as give you some useful tips on how to get a deeper understanding of your UTM campaigns.

Manual vs. dynamic UTM codes

Manually setting your UTM parameters can be a time-consuming task and is prone to errors. UTM parameters are case sensitive, so even using an uppercase letter instead of lowercase can result in your data being unnecessarily split in Google Analytics.

Using dynamic UTM parameters, on the other hand, can provide you with more insight and is less error-prone.

Facebook can indicate in the campaign source, whether the traffic originated from Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messenger or the Facebook Audience Network. This is useful information, especially when it comes to further optimization of your Facebook Ads.

Overview of the dynamic UTM parameters used by Facebook Ads

Below you’ll find an overview of the dynamic UTM codes for Facebook ads.

Facebook dynamic parameter	Value of the source corresponds to the UTM values	Descriptive statistics	Example
{{ad.id}}	yes	no	23845917166800246
{{adset.id}}	yesy	no	23845917166800246
{{campaign.id}}	yes	no	23845917166800246
{{ad.name}}	not always*	yes	my_ad
{{adset.name}}	not always*	yes	my_adset
{{campaign.name}}	not always*	yes	best_campaign
{{placement}}	yes	yes	facebook_desktop_feed, facebook_mobile_feed, Instagram_feed, Instagram_stories
{{site_source_name}}	yes	yes	fb (facebook), ig (instagram), an (facebook audience network), msg (facebook messenger)

*Changing the ad, ad set, or campaign name in Facebook Ad Manager afterwards, does not affect the dynamic name assigned at the beginning.

Combining dynamic and static parameters for additional structure

Campaigns are often rolled out across multiple channels and Facebook is just one aspect of this. For consistency, it’s important to use the same campaign name for your UTMs across all of your channels (Facebook, LinkedIn, Email, Offline etc.).

It’s important to remember that if your medium is ‘social’, it would suggest that the traffic is organic. If you’re working with advertisements, then it is wise to use ‘social_ads’ as a medium. This makes it clear that these are advertisements.

UTM Star recommends using the following setup when it comes UTM Tracking for Facebook Ads:

Campaign source: {{site.source.name}}
Campaign medium: social_ads
Campaign name: your_campaign_name
Campaign content: {{placement}}
Term: {{adset.name}}

* Static parameters in red

Setting UTM parameters for campaigns within Facebook Ad Manager

Setting UTM parameters in Facebook Ad Manager is simple. Follow the steps below to get started:

Select or create a campaign and go the ‘ad level’
Create a new ad or select an existing one
Scroll down and click on ‘build a UTM parameter’
Add the UTM parameters manually or use dynamic UTM parameters
Yous the UTM Star setup as mentioned before for the best performance. You can copy the campaign name from your UTM Star dashboard.

Now that you know exactly how UTM codes for Facebook ads work, you can start to implement them.

Struggling with UTM parameters or have any other questions? Our team at UTM star will be happy to help. Get in touch here.