When a viewer clicks on a link, the link takes it to a target URL and is usually followed by a long list of ?attribute=value pairs. These parameters communicate different types of variables to the advertiser. Some of them are campaign tracking parameters usually called ‘utm-parameters’ which carry information like the campaign source, medium, content, and keywords etc.

The advertiser has a right to be able to track its advertisement campaign and the advertiser’s affiliates and influencers have the right to be compensated fairly for their effort in making the content reach the eyes of the viewer and to make the viewer interested in the product and click on the provided link.

But the fair and honest effort of campaign tracking is getting increasingly marred by the practice of behavior tracking; a practice where intelligent scripts embedded with the content increasingly analyze the viewer’s behavior. As the user goes through the provided content, the behavior tracking scripts are busy counting, calculating and analyzing every single act, movement and even pauses to make sense of what is going on in the viewer’s head.

Such practice is frowned upon at the very least by most users, if not outright detested. Different browsers and extensions are available to block behavior tracking. But there is collateral damage in the process; the otherwise benign campaign tracking parameters are also suppressed and never sent to the advertiser servers as the viewer clicks on the link.

How do we separate the two practices using technology? Campaign tracking parameter values are known ‘before’ the content is presented to the viewer, while behavior tracking parameter values are generated only ‘after’ the content is presented to the viewer.

Now there is technology help available that has addressed the issue and provided a service to allow and enable campaign tracking while neatly separating from any other behavior tracking activities which may or may not be there. Even if the behavior tracking parameters are blocked by any script, the campaign tracking is still available.

Introducing 3u.gg URL Shortener Service

3u.gg is a premium only URL shortener service. The service solves the problem by embedding all campaign tracking parameters into a short-URL. The values of those parameters are booked initially when the short-URL is generated. The values can be edited / updated later on as well.

When the short-URL is clicked by a viewer, the request is received by the 3u.gg server which forwards the short-URL to the target URL. In the process, if configured in this way, the 3u.gg server can fetch all parameters from the database and append them to the target URL which are consumed as utm-parameters by the target advertiser server.

In this way, when the end viewer clicks on the link, it does not have any campaign related ?attribute-value pairs appended to the URL. The target URL looks clean. Since 3u.gg is a premium only URL-shortener service, smaller URLs with four or five characters are usually available. A typical short URL would look like 3u.gg/b7xva

The suffix will resolve to any combination of campaign tracking URL parameters like
utm_source=google
utm_medium=cpc
utm_campaign=spring_sale
utm_term=running+shoes
utm_content=logolink

When a viewer clicks on the neat and clean short-URL of 3u.gg/b7xva, the URL either forwards to https://serverdomain.com/target?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=spring_sale&utm-shoes&utm_content=logolink

Alternately, if configured in this way, the target URL can only be https://serverdomain.com/target. Without any campaign tracking parameters appended as query parameters. The access logs, in this case can later be correlated between 3u.gg servers and the advertiser server.

The Final Takeaway

Behavior tracking is a newer technology that is increasingly blocked by browsers. With this, the advertiser campaign tracking is also falling a victim to such blocking. 3u.gg is a premium only URL-forwarder service that allows to separate the two and enables an advertiser to continue getting useful results from its campaign tracking. The shortened are optimized for non-clickable media advertising as well.