Segment, Amplitude and gclid

timelineapp

Hi everyone,

We have Amplitude set up on our site via Segment (in device mode, i.e. it uses Amplitude SDK).

We have the Track GCLID option set as true

I even see some events with gclid in the last 7 days:

But if I try to get the utm_campaign, I get zero results:

Is there any configuration I’m missing?

I’m not being able to find info about how gclid and Amplitude work together.

Any help is welcome

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Accepted answers

Yuanyuan Zhang

Hi timelineapp,

This is Yuanyuan from the Amplitude Support team - thank you for writing the post!

I understand you are ingesting data via JS SDK, correct? If so, have you set the includeUtm option to true as per JS SDK documentation: https://developers.amplitude.com/docs/javascript#enabling-via-sdk?

In Amplitude, once you set the includeUtm option to true, the JavaScript SDK will automatically pull UTM parameters from the referring URL and include them as user properties on all of the relevant events:

includeUtm: If true, finds the standard UTM parameters from either the URL or the browser cookie and sets them as user properties. This will set utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_term, and utm_content as well as initial_utm_source, initial_utm_medium, initial_utm_campaign, initial_utm_term, and initial_utm_content as user properties for the user.
UTM parameters are captured once per session by default and occurs when the user loads your site and the Amplitude SDK for the first time. You can disable the once per session restriction through the saveParamsReferrerOncePerSession configuration option. When the SDK detects that it should start a new session, it will pull the UTM parameters that are available at the time. Those UTM parameters will be set as user properties which will persist for all of the user's events going forward. However, initial UTM parameters are captured only once for each user via a setOnce operation. See the Javascript SDK Configuration Options for reference.

I hope this is helpful to you. Please let me know if you have follow-up questions!

Best,

All comments

Yuanyuan Zhang

Hi timelineapp,

This is Yuanyuan from the Amplitude Support team - thank you for writing the post!

In Amplitude, once you set the includeUtm option to true, the JavaScript SDK will automatically pull UTM parameters from the referring URL and include them as user properties on all of the relevant events:

includeUtm: If true, finds the standard UTM parameters from either the URL or the browser cookie and sets them as user properties. This will set utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_term, and utm_content as well as initial_utm_source, initial_utm_medium, initial_utm_campaign, initial_utm_term, and initial_utm_content as user properties for the user.
UTM parameters are captured once per session by default and occurs when the user loads your site and the Amplitude SDK for the first time. You can disable the once per session restriction through the saveParamsReferrerOncePerSession configuration option. When the SDK detects that it should start a new session, it will pull the UTM parameters that are available at the time. Those UTM parameters will be set as user properties which will persist for all of the user's events going forward. However, initial UTM parameters are captured only once for each user via a setOnce operation. See the Javascript SDK Configuration Options for reference.

I hope this is helpful to you. Please let me know if you have follow-up questions!

Best,

timelineapp

Hi Yuanyuan,

Thank you for your help.

That’s correct, we are ingesting data via SDK and we have `includeUtm` as true.

Could it be that I’m confused about how Gclid works with Amplitude?

What I don’t understand is that if the link in the Ad has a gclid query parameter, then at some point that will be transformed into having utm_campaign, utm_source, info in Amplitude?

Having just the gclid is not useful if I can’t understand which Campaign/Ad Group/Ad etc. 🤔

Am I correct?

Thank you very much!

Nacho

Yuanyuan Zhang

Hi timelineapp.

Thanks for letting me me know that you have enabled `includeUtm` in the SDK. Could you please let me me know if you are still not seeing any UTM parameters as user properties on Amplitude? In some cases, the UTM parameters show up after some delay.

If the issue persists, please check if the UTM parameters are set in the URL when your users first visit your webpage? By default, we only parse UTM params from the URL at the beginning of the user’s session.

If the set up is alright, could you please share the URL that you use to track the performance of campaigns and content? Thanks.

Best,

Jeremie Gluckman

Hi timelineapp I hope all is well 😀 I wanted to circle back here. Were you able to make progress? Please keep us posted.

Luis

Hi!

Sorry to bump an old topic, but it’s the first one to show up in Google (and one of the few) about this topic.

We have a similar implementation (through Segment) and then connected to Branch for attributions. After almost going crazy looking for the “Advanced Settings” I have realized the Amplitude Destination has been replaced for “Amplitude (Actions)”.

Is there any way to decipher the GCLID and get the UTM parameters with the new destination?

Thank you very much!

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