utm_id is not a new parameter, but since Google Analytics 4 it is now almost standard, because it is a required key for cost data import in GA4 and beside that it makes a lot of sense to use it. Therefore it should be covered in the Campaign attribution enrichment IMO. It is obvious that the parameter can simply be extracted via data modeling, but it is cluttered to split the extraction into to different places.
Ideally the other “new” parameter utm_source_platform, utm_creative_format, utm_marketing_tactic would be covered as well, more details in the GA4 documentation.
An idea regarding utm_source_platform: I think it would be a useful addition to make it possible to set mkt_network via utm_source_platform since not all platforms have clickId parameter and can be set via the mktClickId option in the enrichment.
I appreciate any feedback.
David
PS: In an ideal world it would be possible to ad an option the set custom parameters in the enrichment since it is quite common to use parameters beyond utm for special cases. I know that there is a mapping solution in the enrichment, but thats not suitable for custom parameter which can’t be mapped to a utm.
We are actually considering a flexible URL parameter extraction enrichment that would allow you to take whatever parameters and put in a context/entity of your choosing. Would that work?
A flexible parameter extraction enrichments sounds promising, but as you know that would already be possible via JavaScript enrichment (obviously not so convenient). Since utm params are in atomic columns in the historical data, a migration to the new enrichment would be a headache. I think it would be more consistent to place all utms (including the new params) in atomic columns.
Just to check, does your suggestion involve adding new mkt_* fields to the atomic schema? If so, I’m afraid that’s an even bigger migration, since the enriched event format is used everywhere…
Yes…I didn’t think about the influence on the enrich format
But to be honest, in the long term there should be a solution to adapt the enriched event format anyway, to deprecate or add fields in the future - right?
My current thinking on this (and probably future functionality that moves things from the hardcoded atomic fields and into their own contexts) is that these things will have a compatibility mode.
e.g., for something like marketing attribution the enrichment would populate a new context (that also allows for custom UTM parameters) as well as the default ones in addition to populating the old mkt_* fields if compatibility mode is set to true, if it’s false it would populate the context only.
Thanks @mike and @stanch for your feedback. Can you give an approximate date when the URL parameter extraction enrichment will be released? …looking forward to it.
There’s a dependency in Enrich that needs to be released first but once that is done the enrichment will likely be reasonably quick to get going - so I’d say February, possible earlier if you’d like to trial an early version and provide feedback.
