How to track cliks on banners in google analytics

Question

I would like to track clicks and views of banners on my website to give statistics to the advertisers. These banners are added via custom post type in Wordpress. If I use the URL builder tool to generate that kind of URL: http://widget.newswire.ca/registration/submit_form_cnw.php?l=cafr&utm_source=fpjq&utm_medium=bigbox&utm_campaign=cnw is it ok?

I mean, is it the right way to do it?

Answer 1

Usually you use the URL builder tool when you have external campaigns like advertising on another sites, sharing links on social media, etc. It's normal that your advertisers will give you the destination URL with the tracking parameters they want so they can monitor their performance in GA on their end.

In order to track clicks on the banners you host on your site you should use either virtual pageviews or event tracking:

Classic GA: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/asyncMigrationExamples#VirtualPageviews https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/asyncMigrationExamples#EventTracking

Universal Analytics: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/upgrade/reference/gajs-analyticsjs#virtual-pageviews https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/events

You can add a small delay so GA has enough time to execute the code.