How to Track Campaigns in Google Analytics 4

Trying to figure out which of your marketing efforts are actually bringing in traffic and making you money can feel like a guessing game. By tracking your campaigns in Google Analytics 4, you can replace that guesswork with real data. This guide will walk you through exactly how to set up campaign tracking using UTM parameters and where to find the data in GA4 so you know precisely what's working and what isn't.

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What Are UTM Parameters and Why Do They Matter?

UTM parameters are simple snippets of text you add to the end of a URL to give Google Analytics specific information about where a visitor came from. Think of them as breadcrumbs that lead back to the exact social media post, email link, or ad a user clicked on.

Without them, GA4 does its best to sort traffic, but it can get messy. For example, traffic from your email newsletter might get lumped into the "Direct" category, making it seem like your email in a weekly newsletter wasn't seen at all. Using UTMs solves this by explicitly telling GA4: "This person came from this specific campaign link."

There are five standard UTM parameters, but you'll primarily use three of them for most campaigns:

• utm_source: This identifies the platform or website sending the traffic. Examples: google, facebook, newsletter, influencer_a.
• utm_medium: The marketing channel or type of link. Examples: cpc (for paid ads), social_post, email, affiliate.
• utm_campaign: The specific name of your campaign, promotion, or content push. Examples: summer_sale_2024, q3_ebook_launch, welcome_series.*

The other two are more specialized, often used for granular tracking in larger paid campaigns:

• utm_term: Used to track the specific keywords in a paid search campaign.
• utm_content: Differentiates between links within the same ad or email. For example, if you're testing a button link vs. a text link in an email, you might use button_link and text_link.

By defining these parameters, you gain the clarity you need to judge campaign performance, prove marketing ROI, and make smarter decisions about your budget and time.

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How to Build UTM-Tagged URLs

You don't have to build these long URLs by hand. The easiest and safest way to create them is by using Google's free Campaign URL Builder tool. Here’s a quick step-by-step on how to use it.

Let's imagine you own an online store and you're running a Facebook ad campaign for your new summer clothing collection.

Step 1: Open Google's Campaign URL Builder. You can find it with a quick search for "Campaign URL Builder."

Step 2: Enter your website destination URL. This is the specific page you want to send people to. For our example, let's use: https://www.yourstore.com/products/summer-styles

Step 3: Fill in your campaign parameters. The Campaign Source, Medium, and Name fields are the most important ones.

• campaign_source: facebook
• campaign_medium: cpc (cpc stands for 'cost-per-click', a common way to label paid ads)
• campaign_name: summer_sale_2024

Step 4 (Optional): Fill in additional parameters if needed. If you're testing different ad creatives, you can use campaign_content to tell them apart.

• campaign_content: video_ad_blue_background

Step 5: Copy your generated URL. The tool will automatically generate a new, long URL at the bottom of the page. It will look like this: https://www.yourstore.com/products/summer-styles?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=summer_sale_2024&utm_content=video_ad_blue_background

That’s it! You can now use this full URL in your Facebook Ad. When someone clicks it, all that campaign information will be passed directly into your Google Analytics 4 account.

UTM Naming Conventions: My #1 Tip to Avoid a Mess

There's one big catch with UTMs: Google Analytics is case-sensitive and treats every unique name as a completely separate entry. This means Facebook, facebook, and Facebook_Ads will show up as three different sources in your reports, creating a huge data mess.

The key to avoiding this is establishing clear naming conventions from day one. Here are some simple rules to follow:

• Stick to lowercase. Always. It eliminates the risk of creating duplicates like Facebook vs. facebook.
• Use underscores_for_spaces. URLs can’t handle spaces properly. Use underscores (_) or dashes (-) instead. Underscores are generally easier to read. For example, use summer_sale instead of summersale or summer sale.
• Be descriptive but consistent. Name your campaigns logically so that anyone on your team can understand what they are by just reading the name.

To keep your whole team on the same page, create a simple shared spreadsheet (in Google Sheets or Excel) to track all the campaign URLs you generate. Having a single source of truth prevents confusion and ensures your data stays clean and reliable.

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Where to Find Your Campaign Data in GA4

Once you’ve started using your UTM-tagged URLs, Google Analytics 4 will automatically start collecting the data. Finding it is straightforward.

The main report you’ll use is the Traffic acquisition report. Here’s how to get there:

1. On the right-hand menu, navigate to Reports.
2. Under the Life cycle section, click on Acquisition.
3. Select the Traffic acquisition report.

By default, GA4 shows your data grouped by the "Session default channel group," which offers a high-level view (like Organic Search, Direct, Paid Social). To see your specific campaign data, you need to change this primary dimension.

Click the dropdown arrow next to the "Session default channel group" title in the main table. From this menu, you can select the campaign dimension you want to analyze:

• Select Session campaign to view performance by the campaign name you set (e.g., summer_sale_2024).
• Select Session source / medium to see the source/medium pairs you defined (e.g., facebook / cpc).
• Select Session manual ad content to analyze your utm_content tags.

For even more detail, you can add a secondary dimension. Click the blue "+" icon next to the primary dimension dropdown to add another layer of data. For example:

• Primary Dimension: Session campaign
• Secondary Dimension: Session source / medium

This allows you to see all the different channels that contributed traffic to a single campaign, so you can compare how your summer_sale_2024 performed on Facebook versus in your newsletter.

Putting It All Together: Analyzing Your Campaign Performance

With your campaign report open, you can now start drawing meaningful conclusions. The numbers you see are no longer high-level guesses, they are a direct reflection of your specific marketing activities.

Here are the key metrics to focus on when evaluating campaign success:

• Users and Sessions: This tells you the raw volume of traffic each campaign is bringing in. It's a good initial indicator of reach.
• Engagement rate: Are visitors from a campaign sticking around, or are they leaving immediately? A high engagement rate suggests you've found the right audience with the right message. A low rate may mean your landing page doesn't match your ad's promise.
• Conversions: This is the ultimate measure of success. If you've configured conversion events in your analytics — tracking things like purchases, form submissions, or subscriptions — you can see exactly which campaigns are driving them.
• Total revenue: For e-commerce businesses, this metric directly connects campaign activity to dollars earned, giving you undeniable proof of your return on investment.

Let's go back to our example. In your Session campaign report, you see your summer_sale_2024 brought in 1,000 users. To dig deeper, you add "Session source / medium" as a secondary dimension. You now see:

• The facebook / cpc drove 800 users and brought in an amazing $3,500 in sales.
• The influencer_a / social got you your 200 remaining users and $800 in total sales.

These insights are instantly actionable. The Facebook campaign is clearly a winner, and you might consider increasing its budget. The Influencer content may be more of a discovery channel, so you wouldn't expect lots of direct sales, but you can get a better sense of things when drilling into the data provided by your UTM codes.

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Level Up Your Analysis with GA4 Explorations

While the standard reports are great, GA4’s Explore section lets you build completely custom reports to answer more complex questions.

Here’s a quick recipe for a clean, custom campaign report:

1. Navigate to the Explore tab in the left-hand menu and start a new Blank exploration.
2. In the Variables column on the left, click the ‘+’ sign next to Dimensions. Find and import Session campaign, Session source / medium, and Device category.
3. Next, click the ‘+’ sign next to Metrics. Find and import Sessions, Conversions, and Total revenue.
4. Drag Session campaign from the Variables column to the Rows in the Tab Settings.
5. Drag your metrics (Sessions, Conversions, Total revenue) to the Values in the Tab Settings.

Instantly, a custom table will appear, showing just the metrics that matter most for your campaign review. You can customize this report however you like, providing a focused view that you can save and return to any time.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, a dedicated UTM system is essential in understanding your data by bringing transparency between what activities bring value and those which perform otherwise. GA4's Traffic Acquisition report then gives you a powerful home base to analyze everything about campaign results, especially when using session campaign as the main search filter.

Of course, building URLs manually and then digging through reports to connect the dots between your ad platforms, email tool, and sales data still takes up valuable time. We built Graphed to cut out that intermediate grunt work. You can connect your various platforms (GA4, Google Ads, a few others etc.) so you’re not hopping in between to review reports, you can even just ask Graphed: "show me what my best performing ads are on Google." Instead of the usual BI workflow, simply ask, and you shall receive — without the headache of going in / having to rebuild entire sheets / presentations from beginning to end manually.