Campaign Attribution for Firebase with GTM & GA, without Dynamic Links

[Amanda Schroeder]

Hello all, 

I have been researching the best method to getting campaign tracking (utm params) in Google Analytics for an app using Firebase and GTM but I have not been able to find clear instructions for this approach. I have read through the forum and I see some mentions of doing this via Dynamic Links, but we are not using those. I also have found some related documentation for app install and campaign tracking, but they all seem to be specific to apps using the GA SDK. I want to know whether anyone has clear instructions on what steps to take to enable campaign attribution for an app using Firebase & GTM, where GTM (a Firebase GTM container) is sending data to Google Analytics.

For example - 

Does any of the documentation for the GA SDK apply here as well, even though we are using GTM to conduct Google Analytics tracking? If so, which parts? Are there dependencies that need to be installed in the app (Android and iOS)? 

Are there updates that need to be made in GTM and/or Google Analytics? I see a checkbox in GTM for Google Analytics tags called "Enable Advertising ID Features" - is this required? There is also an option to enable iOS Campaign Tracking from within the Google Analytics property - I'm guessing this is required? 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Amanda

[Amanda Schroeder]

It is beginning to look like the GA SDK is required in order to complete install tracking, regardless of whether you are using it for analytics tracking (such as in this scenario where GA is configured via Firebase + GTM). Is this true? If this is the case, it is not ideal...

[Amanda Schroeder]

Following up on this thread. It seems as though Dynamic Links should do the trick if you apply utm parameters, but in my testing I have successfully gotten the Dynamic Link to work as intended but the campaign information is not appearing in Firebase. Instead, I see (direct) as the source. 

I see others are having the same issue - https://groups.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!searchin/firebase-talk/dynamic$20links$20install|sort:relevance/firebase-talk/jaW7fXvRDAk/Ao_GKIboCAAJ

Does anyone know whether this is the right approach and what the issue might be?

[Ryan Chase]

I am interested in figuring out a solution as well. During my research it seemed like Dynamic Links are the way to go and give you an option to configure UTM params. However it is unclear to me how the UTM values are passed on to the tracking. I was thinking that somehow they were passed as properties to the app open event tracking but it's not completely clear from the documentation on this page: https://firebase.google.com/docs/dynamic-links/analytics#firebase_ddls_analytics