Macros — also called tokens, dynamic parameters or placeholders — are variables written into a tracking URL that a traffic source replaces with real values at the moment of the click.
Definition
Macros — also called tokens, dynamic parameters or placeholders — are variables written into a tracking URL that a traffic source replaces with real values at the moment of the click. Typical values are the zone or placement ID, the campaign ID, the creative ID, a unique click ID, the device type, the operating system, the carrier and the user's country.
They are the mechanism by which a media buyer gets source-level detail into their own tracker, which is what makes optimisation possible.
Every traffic source defines its own macro syntax. One network uses {zoneid}, another [CAMPAIGN_ID], a third ##CLICKID##.
There is no standard, so a tracking link that works on one source will pass literal, unreplaced text on another. This means links must be built per source from that source's documentation, and a link copied from one network and pasted into another is a common cause of a campaign that records clicks but cannot break them down.
In context
Macros feed two things. First, the SubID breakdown: by passing zone, creative and campaign into the tracker, the buyer can later see that three of eighty push zones drove all the deposits, or that one creative variant carries the campaign.
Without those macros, the tracker has only a total, and the buyer is optimising blind. Second, the click ID: a per-click unique value passed into the offer URL so the advertiser can echo it back on the server-to-server postback, giving cookie-free, cross-device conversion attribution down to the exact click.
Common failure modes are worth memorising because they are silent. A missing click-ID macro means conversions come back with no click to attach to, so they go uncounted or land in an "unknown" bucket.
A misspelled macro passes as literal text and pollutes reports. A macro placed after a URL fragment or inside an already-encoded parameter may not be read.
Buyers test every new link by clicking it and inspecting what actually arrived in the tracker before sending paid traffic, because a macro error discovered after $2,000 of spend has already destroyed the campaign's data.
Worked example
A push link is built as ?zone={zoneid}&creative={banner}&cid={clickid}. In the tracker the buyer sees per-zone and per-creative rows; three zones account for 68% of deposits and are whitelisted, and one of five creatives is carrying the rest.
Without the click-ID macro, none of the postback conversions would have matched a click.
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