Import past ad tracking data

Use an Ad tracking import to record where existing users came from, such as the campaign and click id behind a signup. Each row adds one touch to a user that already exists. The import never creates users.

Before you start

• You need permission to manage data.
• Your file needs one column with the user's external ID, and at least one column of tracking values.
• Users that are not in TrueEngage yet are skipped and counted. Import them first. See Import users or events from a CSV.
• Imported touches fill in profiles and segments. They do not send conversions to ad platforms.

The sample ad-tracking-import.csv has the columns customer_id, utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, gclid and captured_at.

Columns you can use

Column	Meaning
utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_content, utm_term	Campaign values
gclid, gbraid, wbraid, gad_source, gad_campaignid	Google click ids and campaign
fbclid or fbc, fbp	Meta click id and browser id
ga_client_id, firebase_app_instance_id	GA4 ids
gaid, idfa	Device advertising ids
client_ip, client_user_agent	Last seen IP address and user agent
captured_at	When the click or visit happened

Header names are not case sensitive. A row needs at least one value other than client_ip and client_user_agent.

Create the import

1. Go to Connect, open Data imports, then select Import.
2. Enter an Import name.
3. Choose Ad tracking as the Import type. The identifier is fixed to External ID.

4. Select Next, then drop your CSV on the page and select Next again.
5. On the mapping step, choose the Primary key column, the one with the external ID.
6. For every other column, choose what it maps to in Map to:
   • Tracking field, then pick the field in Tracking field
   • Captured at · when the touch happened, for the date column
   • Skip column

TrueEngage fills these in from your header names. Check them.

7. Check the Touch time note. With a Captured at column, each touch is dated from the file. Without one, every touch is dated the moment the import runs, which can put an old click after a newer one.
8. Select Next and review. Create the import, then run a Dry run from its page to see the counts before the real run.

Read the result

A run reports three counts:

• Matched: users found and given the touch
• Unknown: the external ID matches no user, so nothing was created
• Invalid: no tracking field was filled, a date could not be read, or the row was not recorded

Rows are checked against these limits: captured_at cannot be more than 5 minutes in the future, or before 2010.

Open Run history and a run's menu to see row failures. For details, see Read a run's results.

Order does not matter

First touch keeps the earliest captured_at and last touch keeps the latest. You can import an older file after a newer one, and the result is the same.

Tracking columns in a users import

A users import can also carry tracking columns. TrueEngage moves them out of the user's attributes and records them as a touch. Without a Captured at column, the touch is dated now. A column whose name matches an existing custom attribute shows a warning, because its values become a touch and not that attribute.

To backfill history, use the Ad tracking import.

What happens next

• See where each user came from
• Import users or events from a CSV