UTM parameters
Otus assigns every visit to a predefined channel — Direct, Organic Search, Paid Search, Paid Social, and so on — using the page's UTM parameters and referrer. Tag every campaign link with UTM parameters. Without them, traffic falls back to Referral, Direct, or Other, and your channel breakdown stops reflecting where visitors actually came from.
This applies to every channel you run traffic through, not just paid ads: newsletters, affiliate links, social posts, QR codes on print materials, partner placements — anything you can put a link on.
The parameters
| Parameter | Purpose | Example |
|---|---|---|
utm_source | The platform or publisher sending the traffic. | newsletter, facebook, google |
utm_medium | The general category of the channel. This is what Otus reads first to determine the channel. | email, cpc, social, paidsocial |
utm_campaign | The specific campaign name. | spring_sale, product_launch |
utm_content | Optional — distinguishes similar links within the same campaign (e.g. two ad variants). | variant_a |
utm_term | Optional — the paid search keyword, if you track it. | web+analytics |
utm_medium is what maps a link to a channel — see the full list of recognised values (e.g. cpc/ppc for Paid Search, paidsocial for Paid Social, email for Email).
?ref= and ?source= as aliases for utm_source, but there's no alias for utm_medium. Without utm_medium, the visit is classified from the referrer instead, which is far less reliable — always set both.UTMs are required even with auto-tagging
Google Ads, and similar platforms, can automatically append a click identifier (gclid for Google Ads) to your landing page URL — this is auto-tagging. It's easy to assume auto-tagging means you don't need UTMs. You do:
gclidalone is a fallback, not a substitute. If a click arrives withgclidbut noutm_source/utm_medium, Otus classifies it as Paid Search — but you lose campaign, ad group and keyword detail, since none of that travels ingclid.- UTMs always take priority over
gclid. If both are present, Otus uses your UTM parameters. This means auto-tagging never overrides a UTM-tagged link, but it also means an incorrectly tagged UTM (e.g.utm_medium=referralon a paid campaign) will misclassify the visit even thoughgclidis sitting right there with the correct answer. - Other platforms (Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn Ads, etc.) don't auto-tag in a way Otus recognises today — for those, UTM parameters are the only way to attribute traffic correctly.
In short: turn on auto-tagging if your platform offers it, but always add manual UTM parameters as well. Most ad platforms let you set a default tracking template or final URL suffix so every ad gets tagged automatically, without per-ad manual work.
Related
- Predefined channel groups — the full channel list and precedence rules.
- Auto-tracked events — what Otus captures automatically without any tagging at all.