Pulsar · Field guide · No. 23 · Why sales go dark, the five UTMs, protecting click IDs through redirects, and the macro trap that silently lies.
Stop Losing Who Sent the Sale
When two-thirds of your buyers arrive untagged, every “double down on the winner” is a guess. Tag every link, protect the click IDs, and verify the macros actually expand.
Dark sales are plumbing failures
On one real store, 64% of buyers were unattributable — no campaign tag, no click ID retained, no answer to “which ad earned this?” (No. 05). Dark sales aren’t mysterious; they’re broken plumbing: untagged URLs, stripped click IDs, and macros that never expanded.
With most buyers unattributable, every “scale the winner” decision is a guess wearing a suit.
The five UTMs — what each answers
| Parameter | Answers | Example |
|---|---|---|
| utm_source | where from | |
| utm_medium | what kind | paid_social |
| utm_campaign | which campaign | summer_launch |
| utm_content | which ad/creative | hook_a_video |
| utm_term | audience / keyword | lookalike_1pct |
Protect the click IDs
Beyond UTMs, the platform’s own click ID — fbclid (Meta), gclid, ttclid — is what ties a session back to the exact click. A redirect chain that drops the query string strips it, and attribution goes blind.
The macro trap
Meta’s URL macros (like {{campaign.id}}) only work if they expand at delivery. Get the syntax wrong and the literal text lands in your data — we’ve seen 13 sessions tagged with the raw string {{campaign.id}}.
A tracking template you never tested is a tracking template that’s lying.
One naming convention
Pick a convention and never deviate: lowercase, no spaces, consistent tokens. It’s what lets reports group cleanly instead of fragmenting the same campaign across a dozen spellings (see No. 19 on trustworthy views).
Verify before you scale — and the setup
Pulsar classifies every session by a fbclid → gclid → referrer priority ladder, so tagged and untagged traffic is separated automatically — but it can only work with what your links actually carry. Tag everything.