Tracking and attribution basics

Advertising in trusted places works partly because people see it, remember it and act later — which is exactly the behaviour that is hardest to measure. This page is about measuring what can be measured, being honest about the rest, and not judging a campaign by the one number that happens to be easy to count.

What each placement can tell you

Placement	Directly measurable	Not directly measurable
Newsletter	Sends, opens, clicks on your link, visits to the landing page	People who searched your name later
Podcast	Downloads of the episode, visits via the vanity URL, promo-code use	Listeners who heard the read and did not act yet
Display	Impressions, clicks, landing-page visits	Familiarity that made a later click more likely
Sponsored feature	Page views, time on page, clicks on the call to action	Readers who saved it or shared it offline
Social	Reach, engagements, link clicks	Anything after the click unless the page is tagged

Every channel measures the click. Almost none measure the memory — and the memory is often the point.

Set up the landing page first

Most measurement failures happen on the advertiser’s side, not the publisher’s.

1. One landing page per campaign A page that matches the advertising — same offer, same wording — so a visitor knows they are in the right place.
2. Analytics installed and tested Google Analytics, Plausible, Fathom or your platform’s built-in stats. Confirm a test visit appears.
3. A conversion worth counting A form submission, a download, a booking, a phone call. Make sure it fires a goal or event, and that someone gets the notification.
4. Tagged links for every placement Build them with the UTM link builder; test each one.
5. A vanity URL or promo code for anything spoken or printed, redirecting to a tagged link.
6. Someone to answer An enquiry that waits three days is an enquiry lost. Decide who replies, and how fast.

Attribution methods, from simplest to most useful

Method	How it works	Good for
Tagged links	UTM parameters on every link	Clicks and visits by placement
Vanity URLs	yoursite.com/porch redirecting to a tagged link	Podcasts, print, anything spoken
Promo codes	One code per placement	Purchases and bookings; also a memory test
“How did you hear about us?”	A field on every form and a question on every call	The channels that clicks miss — this is often the most revealing number
Search and direct uplift	Compare branded searches and direct visits during the flight to the four weeks before	Awareness effects
Call tracking	A dedicated phone number per placement	Businesses that convert by phone

Use at least the first, the fourth and the fifth. Together they catch both the immediate response and the delayed one.

Judging a campaign fairly

• Compare like with like. A podcast read is not a display banner; judge each channel by what it can do.
• Look at the sequence, not the last click. A reader who saw the sponsored feature, then the newsletter, then searched your name shows up as “organic search”. The earlier placements did the work.
• Give it time. Response to a trusted-media campaign builds over weeks. Judge at 30 days, not at 3.
• Count enquiries, not just clicks. Ten qualified enquiries from 200 clicks beats fifty from 2,000.
• Ask. “How did you hear about us?” outperforms every tracking pixel for local and professional services.

What we report

Our campaign report combines publisher figures, tagged-link data and whatever you can share from your side — enquiries, bookings, the answers to “how did you hear about us” — into one plain summary. The more of the setup above is in place before launch, the more that report can say.