How to Target Campaigns to Your Pay Per Click Campaigns

Do you want to display unique campaigns based on the specific ad which referred the reader? This is one of the most powerful ways to use OptinMonster to present targeted offers to your users. Use this doc to learn how to target traffic from your Pay-Per-Click campaign like Adwords or Facebook Ads.

REQUIREMENTS: This guide makes use of OptinMonster’s parameter targeting rule which requires a Pro subscription.

To do this, use a link with UTM parameters as the click event in your ad, rather than a simple URL.

Then, in your campaign’s Display Rules, you can target the parameters of that link using the URL query arg.

What is a UTM Code?

A UTM parameter is a small snippet of code added to your URL which allows you to track information about the source, medium and campaign of the link. The simplest way to create a UTM link is to use Google’s Campaign URL Builder.

The parameters you can add to a link are:

Campaign Source




Example: google

Campaign Medium



Example: cpc

Campaign Name



Example: spring_sale

Campaign Term



Example: running+shoes

Campaign Content



Examples: logolink or textlink

Examples of Targeting UTM Links In OptinMonster

If we wanted to track an Adwords campaign that was a leaderboard ad for our fall sale, the URL we would use in our campaign might look like this:


In this case, the URL has three query argument keys, and three matching query argument values:

Key: utm_source Value: adwords

Key: utm_medium Value: leaderboard

Key: utm_campaign Value: fall_sale

You can target any of these query argument keys and query argument values in your campaign.

For example, if you only wanted to display a campaign for those referred by a UTM link from your Adwords campaign (as opposed to one from your Facebook campaign), you could target the query argument key utm_source and the query argument value adwords:

Adwords Source Targeting

You can target any of the parameters, not only the utm_source.

For example, if you wanted to show campaigns only to visitors who were referred from your Adwords campaign for your fall sale (as opposed to those referred from an Adwords campaign for free shipping), you can use the utm_campaign parameter instead.

Adwords Campaign Targeting

The examples above use the condition “exactly matches.” You also have the following options:

  • does not exactly match
  • contains
  • does not contain
  • starts with
  • does not start with
  • ends with
  • does not end with
  • is anything
  • matches the pattern

These conditions allow you very fine control over what campaigns are displayed in response to your specific PPC campaigns.

Want to create a popup that lets visitors like your Facebook page? See our guide on how to create a Facebook Like Box popup.