Set up click trackers

As of September 11th, 2023 Google Ads is requiring transparent click trackers for Google Ads accounts that are using click trackers for the first time (either new accounts or existing accounts that hadn’t implemented click trackers before). Learn more about how this applies to Campaign Manager 360

Click trackers are ads that are used to record the number of clicks on text links, links in emails, or on other elements that are hard-coded on a website. They can also be used to track clicks on creatives that are not delivered by Campaign Manager 360.

• To create a click tracker, click the New > Click tracker in your campaign.

• For help completing the click tracker properties, use the guidance below.

• For info about click tracker tags or help setting up a meta refresh, see our placement tags guide.

Next Steps: Once you have finished creating your click trackers, you can assign them to placements.

Click tracker Properties

To edit the properties of a click tracker, select it in your campaign.

Identification

The fields in the Identification section create a unique identity for your click tracker and identify its type.

Name: Create a name for the click tracker, which will be used internally and in reports.

Ad type: Click trackers can be either static or dynamic.

• Static click trackers do not request a landing page URL from Campaign Manager 360. The landing page is hard-coded in the tag. That means you can't change the landing page URL for a static click tracker that is already on a publisher's site. Instead, you have to export new tags and ask the publisher to trade them in.

• Dynamic click trackers request the landing page URL from Campaign Manager 360. That way you can update the URL without making any changes to the publisher's site. If you change the URL in the ad properties, it changes for your click tracker wherever it's implemented.

Status: This affects whether your click tracker can log clicks on a site.

• Dynamic:

  • Active dynamic click trackers redirect clicks through the Campaign Manager 360 servers to log clicks in your reports. This may affect billing.
  • Inactive dynamic click trackers do not log clicks in your reports and do not affect billing.

   

• Static:

  • Unarchived static click trackers redirect clicks through the Campaign Manager 360 servers to log clicks in your reports. This affects billing. (They are technically never "active" because Campaign Manager 360 does not serve them.)
  • Archived static click trackers do not log clicks in your reports and do not affect billing.

   

Type	Will log clicks	Will not log clicks
Static	Unarchived	Archived
Dynamic	Active	Inactive or Archived

Comments: Enter any notes you have about this ad.

Delivery properties

Start and end date and time: Click tracker dates only have two functions.

1. In reports, you can search for data about click trackers based on their run dates.

2. If you're using Floodlight, any associated publisher tags will only be delivered for conversions that occur during the run dates of static click trackers.

Note that clicks on dynamic click trackers are always counted, even if they occur before the start date or after the end date.

Landing page: Choose one of the landing pages specified for this campaign, or choose custom landing page to enter a new URL.

For static click trackers, this URL is hard-coded into your tags, so you can't change it without exporting new tags. For dynamic click trackers, you can change this at any time.

Note that custom deep links are not supported for click trackers. If you select a landing page that uses custom deep links, only the URL portion of the landing page will serve. 

Landing page URL suffix

Here you can enter a suffix to be appended to the landing page URL of this ad. Leave the suffix locked to use whatever suffix is set at the advertiser or campaign level.

Does your landing page URL have more than one redirect? If so, you must add the suffix manually. Campaign Manager 360 will not add the suffix to landing page URLs with multiple redirects. Learn more

Creative groups

There are no creative groups for click trackers because click trackers do not display creatives.

Placement assignments

Here you can choose placements your ad is assigned to, plus information about the placements: status, site the placement will be on, and start / end dates.

Edit placements assignments: See these assignment steps.

Actions: Use the Actions menu to Archive placements.

Placements are set to Active by default. When you archive placements, you can no longer assign ads to them, and they are not displayed in your campaign unless they meet your filter criteria. However, existing ads will still serve to these placements if the tags are implemented on a publisher's site.