Make an ad link

An ad link is a tracking link you paste into your ad as its destination. A visitor who clicks it is sent on to your page. Along the way we count the click, pass your ad platform's details to your page, and keep bot clicks out of your numbers.

You can use one link for one ad or share it across a campaign. A link never changes address once it is made, so you can edit where it sends people without touching the ad.

#Where links live

Open Advertising → Links. The table lists each link with its Name, Platform, Link, Sent · 7 days, Bots · 7 days and Status. Press the copy control in the Link column to copy the address. Press a name to open the link.

Only owners and admins see New link.

#Make a link

1. On Links, press New link.

2. Where should visitors go?

   • Link name. For you. Up to 120 characters.
   • Link domain. Choose which address the link lives on. If you have a connected domain of your own, it is chosen for you. See "Use your own domain for ad links".
   • Visitor pages and percentages. Paste the HTTPS address of your page. Add up to 5 pages and give each a percentage; they must add up to 100. See "Split clicks across pages and route by device or country".

3. Press Continue.

4. Where will you run this ad?

   • Ad platform. Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, Google, Reddit or other.
   • Custom tracking parameters · optional. Leave blank for the platform's defaults. The box shows what the defaults would be.

5. Press Continue.

6. Where should bots go? Optional. See the bot page section below, and "Split clicks across pages and route by device or country" for routes.

7. Press Continue.

8. Make this link live? Check the summary and press Make link.

On the right, a preview shows the address as it will look and the details your platform sends. The final address is created when you save.

#Page rules

Each page address must:

• start with https://, and be a public page (no username or password, no private or local addresses);
• be used once only in a set of pages;
• not point at another tracking link.

#Use the link in your ad

After you save, the link page shows:

• Website URL. Paste this into your ad's destination field.
• Tracking parameters. Paste these into the ad's URL parameters field.
• Full link with parameters. Open this fold if your platform has no separate parameters field, and use the full link.

Each platform fills the parameters in with the campaign, ad set and ad it is serving. For Meta, they look like {{campaign.id}}. We mark Meta's as unchecked, so check the generated parameters in the ad preview before you publish. TikTok uses the creative ID here, and upgraded Smart+ campaigns may need their own ad-ID setting.

An address opened outside an ad shows the placeholders unfilled. That is normal. In the click list those show as a dash.

#What happens to the visitor

The link sends the visitor to one of your pages. Your platform's tracking details are added to the page address when they are not already there. These are the standard utm_ fields, the campaign, ad set and ad IDs, and the platform click IDs such as fbclid, ttclid and gclid. For clicks we count, we also add aeclid, our click ID for that click, and aeview, used for page views. See "Read your ad link's numbers".

#The bot page

Step 3 has an optional Bot page. When a click comes from a known bot, such as a search crawler or a link-preview tool, we send it to this page instead. With no bot page, a bot follows the same rules as everyone else and is labelled as a bot in your numbers.

Bots are always left out of Sent either way. Detection looks at the visitor's browser name. It cannot prove that a visitor is a person.

#Edit, pause or resume

Open the link and use Edit pages and routes. The domain cannot change, so existing ads keep working. Press Pause routing to send all visits to the first visitor page. Press Resume routing to go back. Changes take effect on the next click.

#If it didn't work

• "Enter a name and HTTPS pages with percentages totaling 100." Fix the name or the percentages on step 1.
• "Use a public HTTPS page without a username or password." The address is not https, or is a private address.
• "Choose a destination page, not another tracking link." The page you entered is one of our links.
• "Use supported tracking parameters…" In custom parameters, use no leading ?, no repeated keys, and only supported names (utm_ fields, IDs, click IDs, cwr, adset, adsetid, twradid, xid).
• No clicks appear. Open the Full link with parameters in a private browser window, or use the test link on the link's page. The page refreshes itself while it is open. See "Read your ad link's numbers".