Campaign tracking after third party cookies

Meta says 412 conversions. GA4 says 180. Someone's lying.

Nobody is lying. Roughly a third of your clicks never reach analytics at all, because ad blockers and Safari kill the tracking script before it fires. You still paid for those clicks. You just can't prove what they did.

Every link is also checked for malware and phishing before anyone clicks it. The only thing worse than losing your attribution data is sending a client's audience somewhere nasty.

Get early access Show me how it works

First 20 accounts keep founding pricing for life

The bit nobody warns you about

You've probably been blaming the wrong thing.

It's Monday. You're pulling last month's numbers for a client review.

Meta reports 412 conversions. GA4 shows 180 from paid social. The client's own CRM says they closed 31 deals and has no idea where any of them came from.

So you do what everyone does. You caveat it. "Platform attribution is always generous." "There's some discrepancy, it's normal." And you move on, because you've got four other accounts to report on and no better answer.

Here is the thing though. A big chunk of that gap is not Meta being generous. It is clicks that landed on the site and were never recorded, because the visitor's browser blocked the script that was meant to record them.

Third party cookies are gone. Safari has been stripping tracking for years, Chrome finished the job, and a large share of sessions now block browser side tags outright. Your UTMs are perfect. They just aren't being read.

What your analytics sees 6 lost
Recorded only if the browser lets the tag fire.
What actually happened 10 recorded
Recorded at the redirect, on your own domain.
Showing up in GA4   4 / 10
Showing up in Utmly   10 / 10
How it works

Record the click before the browser gets a say.

There is no pixel to install on your client's site, no tag manager container to argue about, and nothing for an ad blocker to find. The click is logged on the way through.

01

Point a subdomain at us

One CNAME record pointing go.yourclient.com at us. It takes about five minutes, and your client's IT team won't have questions, because it stays on their domain.

02

Build links like you already do

Same UTM fields, same naming conventions, saved as templates so nobody on the team invents their own version of utm_source=fb again.

03

We log it server side, then redirect

The click reaches our server first. We record it, then send the visitor on. It adds a few milliseconds. Nothing in the browser can block it, because nothing runs in the browser.

The other thing the redirect does

Every link gets checked. Then checked again.

Every click already passes through us, so we may as well look at where it is going. Destinations are scanned before the link goes live, then scanned again on a schedule, because a page that was clean in March can be compromised by June and nobody tells you.

AT BUILD

Checked before it's live

The destination is checked against Google Safe Browsing and threat databases the moment you create the link. If something is wrong you find out then, not from a client.

ON SCHEDULE

Checked again while it runs

Live links are scanned again automatically. Partner pages, client microsites and old landing pages get compromised far more often than anyone admits.

IF FLAGGED

Paused, not ignored

A flagged link stops redirecting and shows a warning page instead. You are alerted straight away, so you can pull the ad before it burns budget.

The version of this that actually costs money goes like this. You are running an affiliate or partner campaign, their landing page is hijacked three weeks in, and the first you hear of it is a client forwarding you a screenshot of a browser warning with your agency's branded link sitting in the address bar.

Inside the product

One number your current tool can't give you.

Every campaign shows what analytics saw versus what actually happened. That gap is the thing you've been caveating in client reports for two years.

app.utmly.io/northgate
Clicks recorded, last 30 days
24,812 clicks
Logged at the redirect, before anything could drop them.
Would have been invisible
3,214
13% of clicks your old setup never saw.
Links scanned clean
142 / 144
1 flagged and paused, 1 still being checked.
Matched to a customer
1,106
Clicks tied to a named signup or sale.
CampaignClicksRecoveredSafetyTrend
July Meta Ads, UK Launch
utm_campaign=uk_launch_july
 9,204
+18%
 Clean
Client Newsletter, Q3
utm_campaign=q3_newsletter
 6,110
+9%
 Clean
Partner campaign, TechFlow
utm_campaign=techflow_partner
 5,882
+26%
 1 flagged
Google Search, Brand Terms
utm_campaign=brand_search
 3,616
+5%
 Checking
Product preview. Numbers are illustrative.
Where it gets interesting

Clicks don't pay invoices. Customers do.

Every agency has had the meeting where you present click volume and the finance director asks which of those became revenue. Utmly carries a reference from the click all the way through to the signup, so you can answer that with names instead of a modelled estimate.

Step 01
Click gets stamped
The redirect issues a unique reference and passes it to the landing page.
Step 02
It rides along
Held on your client's own site for the length of the visit.
Step 03
The form sends it back
Their form, checkout or CRM returns it with the signup.
Step 04
Match recorded
Email is hashed on arrival and tied to the campaign and creative.
Hashed the moment it arrives, never stored raw. Matching runs on one way hashes, so you get attribution down to the individual without keeping a second copy of your client's customer list in someone else's database.
Fit

Worth being straight about who this suits.

You'll get a lot out of this

  • You run paid campaigns for clients and have to explain the numbers to someone
  • Your GA4 "(direct) / (none)" bucket has been quietly growing and nobody's sure why
  • You have stopped trusting the numbers the ad platforms report, but have nothing better
  • You manage links across several clients and the naming has gone feral
  • You send branded links on behalf of clients and can't afford one to go bad

Probably not for you yet

  • You only need short links for social bios, where a shortener is cheaper
  • You already have a data team running server side GTM
  • You don't run paid traffic, so there's nothing to attribute
  • You need enterprise multi touch modelling, which is a different tool
Straight answers

The things people ask first.

Isn't this just a link shortener?

Shorteners count clicks for their own dashboard. Your analytics still has to record the click again when the person lands, and that is the part that fails. We treat the click itself as the attribution event, record it on your domain, and pass the UTMs onward untouched.

Does the safety check slow the redirect down?

No. Scanning happens when you build the link and on a schedule afterwards, never at click time. The redirect only reads a status we already hold. If a link is flagged it stops redirecting entirely and shows a warning instead.

Will this slow my links down?

A few milliseconds. Redirects run close to the visitor rather than from one server in one country, so a click in Chicago does not travel to London first. If it were slow it would break the campaigns we are meant to be measuring, so it is the thing we watch hardest.

Do I have to rebuild my campaigns?

No. Same UTM structure, same ad setup. You swap the destination URL in your ads for the Utmly one. Historical data stays exactly where it is. This only changes what gets captured from now on.

What happens to my GA4 reporting?

It carries on exactly as before. UTMs pass through untouched, so GA4 sees what it always saw. Utmly runs alongside it and shows you what GA4 missed.

Does this work with GDPR?

It is built to be. No third party cookies, no cross site tracking, and emails are hashed on arrival rather than stored. That said, you are the data controller for your clients' data, so have your own legal advisor sign off on your specific setup.

What if I want to leave?

Export your click and campaign data, point the CNAME somewhere else. No contract, monthly billing. Holding data hostage is a bad business to be in.

Pricing

Priced for agencies, not for procurement departments.

Showing GBP
Solo
£5/mo
Freelancers and solo marketers running their own campaigns.
  • 1 custom domain
  • 5,000 clicks / mo
  • Clicks recorded on our servers
  • UTM builder and saved templates
  • Malware and phishing checks
Get early access
Team
£39/mo
Small agencies reporting on campaigns for several clients.
  • 5 custom domains
  • 50,000 clicks / mo
  • A separate workspace per client
  • Reporting on recovered clicks
  • Shared naming conventions
  • Scheduled link scans and alerts
  • White label client reports
Get early access
Scale
£79/mo
Agencies who need to match clicks to customers, not just count them.
  • Unlimited domains
  • 250,000 clicks / mo
  • Identity matching from click to customer
  • CRM webhook and integrations
  • Meta CAPI and Google enhanced conversions
  • Safety alerts in Slack
  • Priority support
Get early access
Early access

Find out what your last campaign actually did.

We are opening to a small first group so this gets built alongside people who run real campaigns. If that is you, leave your details and we will be in touch before launch.

First 20 accounts: £12/mo locked for life

No spam, no newsletter. One email when early access opens.