How to build campaign links that actually track properly

Which UTM tags do I actually need?

You don’t need all of them. But you do need these three to keep your attribution from falling apart:

Should I use one link for the whole campaign, or a different link for each ad?

One link per campaign tells you something happened. One link per variant tells you why. Here’s what you lose when you reuse the same link across everything:

• Variant A (image) vs Variant B (video), which actually got the click?
• Feed placement vs Stories placement, where are people actually seeing this?
• Audience 1 vs Audience 2, which group cared more?

Can I automate this so I’m not doing it manually every time?

Yes. HikrLink’s API can create tracked links on the fly with the right UTM structure already baked in. Your campaign tools can mint a unique short URL for every ad variant at launch time, no manual copying and pasting required.

And because tracking runs server-side through Hikr, the attribution actually survives the journey instead of getting lost in browser limbo.

What usually breaks campaign attribution?

Three things, over and over again:

• Missing utm_source or utm_medium: without these, your analytics tool just shrugs and files the traffic under 'Direct.' Useless.
• Inconsistent naming, google_ads vs Google Ads vs google-ads are three different things to your reports. Pick one format and stick to it.
• Reusing the same link for everything, you see total clicks but can't compare anything.