UTM Tracking Parameter Order?

[summerwaters]

Hi all-

My boss asked me to investigate why we have Visits/Visitors with a UTM Medium but without a UTM Source (UTM Source is listed as "Unspecified").

I realized that, in contrast to Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics prioritizes UTM Medium above UTM Source: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/marketo-measure/using/channel-tracking-and-setup/online-chan...

All of our links still use the GA tracking parameter order: UTM Source first, then UTM medium. Like this:

http://www.example.com/?utm_source=source&utm_medium=medium

Does this matter? Should I change our URL structure to be like this:

http://www.example.com/?utm_medium=medium&utm_source=source

Or is AA always going to collect medium first regardless of what order the tracking parameters appear in?

Can anyone shed any light on this?

[Hemang35 · Accepted solution]

Adobe Analytics should be able to correctly capture both UTM Source and UTM Medium, regardless of the order they appear in the URL. The order in which the parameters appear should not impact the data collection.

However, if you're encountering issues with UTM Source not being captured correctly and appearing as "Unspecified," it's worth checking your processing rules and marketing channel settings.

Processing rules are used to set variables based on the values of URL parameters. Ensure that you have set up processing rules correctly to capture both utm_source and utm_medium parameters and map them to the appropriate eVars or props in Adobe Analytics. Double-check the rules to make sure they're configured correctly.

Marketing channel settings can also influence how UTM parameters are recognized and processed. Review your marketing channel rules to ensure that they're set up to correctly attribute visits to the respective channels based on the utm_source and utm_medium parameters.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

I agree with this... order of parameters is irrelevant... 

How the data is presenting in your implementation depends on how you have coded/configured your items to track.

Without seeing your exact implementation it will be hard for us to pinpoint what is happening...

One of the things that I do, is I grab all the UTMs as separate items, then I concatenate them manually into my s.campaign dimension... I can choose exactly what order they appear, and how to handle when some of the items aren't populated...

In my Marketing Channels, I have a rule that looks for utm_source OR utm_medium OR utm_campaign... etc (so I will capture any use of UTMs into my bucket - this would be on my general affiliates, cause my paid would look specifically at utm_medium=cpc)

But, I use my concatenated s.campaign to populate the Marketing Channel Detail

This is just one way to handle it, but it needs to fit into your needs... 

[yuhuisg]

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@summerwaters wrote:

I realized that, in contrast to Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics prioritizes UTM Medium above UTM Source: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/marketo-measure/using/channel-tracking-and-setup/online-chan...

You might have misread this documentation.

Firstly, this is the documentation for Marketo, not Adobe Analytics. But even then, in the "What are UTM Parameters?" section, it states:

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UTM parameters always go after the top-level domain (.com in this example) and begin with a question mark. After this, the order of the parameters don’t matter, but following a consistent naming convention is advised.

(bold is mine)

As others have mentioned, the order of your parameters doesn't matter. So what you're experiencing could be due to 1 of 2 common reasons:

1. Your URLs simply don't have the "utm_source" parameter, or your URLs are using uppercase in that parameter name, e.g. "utm_Source" (capital "S"). If this is the problem, then the solution is simple: ensure that your URLs that have "utm_medium" parameter also always have a "utm_source" parameter.
2. Your implementation fails to track the "utm_source" parameter properly under certain conditions. For this, you'll need to check your implementation to verify that you are indeed tracking your "utm_source" value properly in your eVar.