Can I use custom parameters in Microsoft Advertising?

With Upgraded URLs, you can now add custom parameters to your tracking templates so that you can track what you want instead of being limited to using just the URL parameters that Microsoft Advertising provides.

Custom parameters work exactly the same as URL parameters with respect to dynamic substitutions, except that you will define the parameter names and variables (also known as key and value pairs).

You can define custom parameters for one or more campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords or Sitelink Extension and then add them to the corresponding tracking template. We recommend that you create custom parameters at the campaign level and then add them to your account level tracking template. To learn more, see Create an account tracking template.

Let’s look at an example:

Let’s say you have customers in 3 different locations and you want to report on the number of searches from each location.

First you define a custom parameter for each market:

Targeting market	Custom parameters
New York, USA	{_market}=ny-usa
Seattle, USA	{_market}=sea-usa
Miami, USA	{_market}=mia-usa

Then, you add the custom parameter to the tracking template:
{lpurl}?mkt={_market}&keyword={Keyword}
That’s it. Now when your ads are served, the landing pages will look like this:

Targeting market	Sample landing page URL
New York, USA	https://www.tendads.com?mkt=ny-usa&keyword={Keyword}
Seattle, USA	https://www.tendads.com?mkt=sea-usa&keyword={Keyword}
Miami, USA	https://www.tendads.com?mkt=mia-usa&keyword={Keyword}

What tracking or URL parameters can I use?

You add URL parameters to your destination URL or tracking template to find out how visitors got to your website. URL parameters allow you to track information about the source of an ad click.

Although the variable names and the parameters can change, the structure is always the same:

• A parameter, enclosed by { } that tells Microsoft Advertising what data you want returned when an ad is clicked. The specific parameters to choose from are listed in the table below.
• A variable that you define to store that data. The name of the variable is up to you, but it should be the name used in your website’s script to store the value that the parameter is returning. Work with your website programmers who can help you define appropriate names to use.

Putting it all together, it looks like this:

www.yourLandingPageURL.com?variable={parameter}If you are adding more than one variable={parameter}, you separate the variable/parameter pair with an ampersand (&).