What is Campaign?
In web analytics, a campaign is a coordinated set of marketing activities grouped under one objective, audience, and naming convention. In reports it’s a dimension that helps attribute traffic, behavior, and outcomes (e.g., a summer sale or a product launch) to the right marketing effort. Campaign performance ultimately rolls up to outcomes like Conversion and revenue, often evaluated via ROI and customer LTV.
How campaign tracking works
Most tools (GA4, Matomo, Plausible, Simple Analytics) identify campaigns via UTM parameters—especially utm_campaign, paired with utm_source and utm_medium. See: UTM and Source.
Campaigns can be online (ads, email, affiliates) or offline (QR codes on print, vanity URLs). When a visitor lands, the session is tagged, feeding metrics like Engaged Sessions, Pages Per Session, and Pageview. Organic efforts are bucketed separately under Organic Search, while untagged traffic may show as Direct or Referral.
Metrics you’ll watch
| Metric | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| CTR | Ad/email appeal and relevance. |
| CPC | Cost efficiency of paid clicks. |
| CPM | Cost to reach audiences at scale. |
| CPL | Lead efficiency for demand gen. |
| Conversion Rate | Landing page + offer effectiveness. |
Goals and attribution
Tie each campaign to a clear Goal and downstream event model (e.g., App Event or Custom Events). Credit is assigned via Attribution rules; your choice of Attribution Model (e.g., First Touch vs. Last Touch) will change which campaign gets credit for the conversion.
Practical tips
- Standardize campaign names (consistent case, delimiters, and UTM usage) to avoid report fragmentation.
- Align channels, creatives, and landing pages to a single objective; measure with the same success metric.
- Close the loop: evaluate not just clicks but qualified actions and revenue—optimize by CPL, CVR, and LTV, not vanity metrics.