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A Uniform Campaign Ad Tracking ID that Makes Sense

Is there any trick to naming ad tracking codes for your various ads? It may not matter if there's just a single person handling ads for your company. But if several people or several departments are carrying out advertising, how can you make sense out of it?

At the Emetrics Summit in San Francisco, May 7, 2007, Jodi McDermott from InPhonic spoke on "Optimizing Display Ads and Landing Pages." When she came to InPhonic each department was using its own tracking ID system, making any kind of intradepartmental analysis difficult. McDermott came up with the following system based on the various components of the typical ad. It could be easily adapted for your company. Here's what the tracking portion of the URL would look like:

TrackingID = YDA_0405_001_razrad

• YDA stands for "Yahoo display advertising." You could come up with your own codes for Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, etc.
• 0405 indicates April 05. Of course this could be extended to include the year rather easily: 070405 and has the advantage of being easier to sort in date order than other date formats.
• 001 represents creative element #1. Various banners, wording for ads can be categorized here.
• razrad would provide a short description of the ad, the keyword being used, etc.

If all the data from an advertising campaign uses the same system of ad tracking IDs, now it's a simple matter to parse the codes, sort, and analyze interdepartmentally by any of the factors. Useful!