Guide

Check your ad links before launch

A misspelt macro or a capital letter, and a campaign’s visits arrive with no name. You find out once the budget is spent. Check each link before the ad goes live, and again on its first real click.

Steps

  1. Build the link with the network’s macros. The free ad link builder writes it for one landing page. In Pagestra, add the network as a traffic source and each funnel gets an entry link for it with the same macros.
  2. Click the test link yourself. Beside each source’s entry link, a funnel shows a test link with every macro filled in as test. Your click goes through the funnel like a visitor’s, and Reporting marks it as a test click.
  3. Read the first real click. Once the ad runs, click it, copy the address you land on and paste it into the free ad link reader. It names a macro left as written, a capital letter in a key, a parameter twice and a space.
  4. Look at Reporting on the first day. Cut the report by UTM campaign or content. A value still written as a macro is marked, and Reporting says so above the table even when it isn’t cut by UTM. Your AI app’s report marks the same rows.

What Reporting marks

Beside a UTM value in Reporting’s rows.

Not filled in
The value is still a macro, such as {{ad.name}}. The link was opened outside the ad, such as in a test, or the network doesn’t know the macro. Those visits can’t be told apart by ad.
Test click
The value reads test, as a funnel’s test link sends it. These are your own clicks, so leave them out when you judge an ad.
Not set
The link had no value for this parameter at all. Visits from a link typed by hand, or shared without its parameters, land here.
Find the ad that made the sale
Each network’s macros in the ad’s link, a funnel that keeps them, and a postback that credits the sale to the visit. Then revenue by campaign and ad.
Send ad traffic through a funnel
Entry links for each ad network, split tests and rules, action links on buttons, and revenue per visitor from your checkout’s postback.

All guides

Your AI app writes it. Pagestra checks it before it goes live.

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