decode gclid values?

[missinglink]

hi team,

we're a customer of your SaaS offering and I just noticed a potential feature improvement
when using Google Ads "Smart Campaigns", they don't append UTM params to campaigns, instead adding a ?gclid querystring param to clicks.

a quick search shows that the param value is a Procotol Buffer encoded string, I assume Google Analytics transparently decodes this value and uses the contents in place of UTM for tracking, Fathom currently ignores it.

so it might be that this is a secret Google thing and only applicable to google connected services, but some smart people have attempted to reverse engineer the contents and I was wondering if there was any value in attempting to do something similar in Fathom?

• https://deedpolloffice.com/blog/articles/decoding-gclid-parameter
• https://deedpolloffice.com/blog/articles/decoding-ved-parameter

[Daniel15]

The linked articles are 10 years old now... Are they still relevant?

I wouldn't rely on the format of the gclid remaining the same. It's an internal implementation detail for Google and could change at any time.