Hi @jyotisharmav I believe UTM Parameters and CID (campaign identifier) are supposed to do the same thing: Hold descriptive data about your online marketing campaigns.
In Adobe you put all campaign data in one parameter, separated by a delimiter. The campaign parameter might be named “cid”, but actually you can use any other name for it as well. This is what my understanding so you can also track UTM links.
Let's check with @jennifer_dungan - Hi Jennifer, Can you help us here in this scenario?
Thanks,
@gokul_agiwal you are correct, CID and UTMs do the same thing, they are just a different way of doing it.
Adobe traditionally uses CID, basically an "all-in-one" tracking code. The format and order of how the info is put together must be carefully specified (i.e. source_medium_campaign_subcampaign_somethingelse_etc).
UTMs are more of a Google designation, but also tends to be used more universally in other tools as well. These are actually separate parameters for each use, with 5 core parameters (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_content, utm_term), but you can create more to suit your needs.
We use UTMs as well... first, we have backup GA as well as other tools that read UTMs. So I am not going to ask my teams to double campaign everything, but also, I have enough trouble getting them to use UTMs correctly... trying to get them to use a very specific CID format is unlikely to happen... lol.
So I have approached our tracking from multiple directions.
First, I get all the values of each UTM.
I then build my "Campaign" variable (aka "Tracking Code" or "eVar0"). Here is where I build out an all-in-one value. I do this in such a way that I can use Regex Rules to break it down easily.
For you, this can come down to personal preference... you can choose an order to place the values together with a delimiter (making sure that you always have value in the same relative positions, and if no value for one, then to use a placeholder like "na")... or you can do like me, and use name pairs and delimiters, and only pass values that exist (i.e for utm_source I use "us=value", for utm_medium I use "um=value, etc)
Next, in addition to this, since "Tracking Code" has a 1 week attribution, I have an eVar set at Visit Expiry to track each UTM in isolation. This can be used for segments and breakdowns in my reporting.
Then the last part is setting up my Marketing Channels to read the UTM parameters to set the proper Marketing Channels (which by default has a 30 Day Attribution.. though, we use 7 Day Attribution here as well)... the difference between Marketing Channels and Tracking Code is that Marketing Channels take more than the campaigns into account.. they look at referrers and other logic to determine how to classify the tracking. Tracking Code only looks at the campaigns... so things like Organic Search, Organic Social, Referrer traffic, Direct traffic, etc are all covered here (things that Tracking Code cannot do).
Now, all that aside, looking at your original ask... I wouldn't use any of this for the purpose!
CID and UTMs are both for external campaigns (i.e. traffic coming from outside your site... where you have no other information (aside from referrer.. and even that isn't a given if referrer is suppressed) to help you determine how users got to your site.
I would use a similar but different way of tracking this... ICID or ITMs.. these are internal tracking campaigns.
You don't need all the same information on an internal campaign (i.e. the medium.. you know it's your own website... etc). Keeping your internal separate from your external also means you aren't overriding all your paid and marketing campaigns driving traffic to your site.... and while yes, you can use a Participation Model to see all the interactions... why would you complicate it like this?
Example:
- Page 1 (Paid Search)
- Tracking Code = "Google_Paid_CampaignX"
- Marketing Channel = "Paid Search"
- Marketing Channel Detail = "Google"
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Click on Banner Y
- Page 4
- Internal Campaign = "Promo Banner Y"
- Purchase Order
Now on your Order, you can see the Marketing Channel (that brought people to your site) is a Paid Search, Campaign "X"
You can also see that your Internal Campaign was your Promo Banner Y
Your banner doesn't overwrite your marketing channel, so your paid campaign still gets visibility for bringing people to the site and you have access to your internal campaigning.
Now, in the old days, GA when it saw any new UTM would start a whole new session! So it was very bad to use UTMs on your internal links, GA4 doesn't do that any more, but its still considered bad practice to mix your external and internal campaigns.
For internal campaign tracking, I use Visit level expiries (I can always use custom Attribution in Workspace to increase my attribution period), but internal promos, I almost exclusively need to see Visit level data anyway. I would suggest the same.
