Why do my UTMs disappear after the payment gateway redirect?
Our paid campaigns show almost no purchases, but the payment gateway shows plenty of orders. Most of them land under direct or under the gateway's own domain.
Answer from the Linkrunner team
The UTMs were only ever on the landing URL. When the visitor leaves for a gateway or a 3D Secure step and comes back, three things can break the chain: the return opens in a new tab that cannot read the first tab's session storage, the gateway sits on another domain, or the referrer on your thank-you page becomes the gateway. Exact behaviour depends on your gateway and setup. Fixes that help: store campaign data in local storage with an expiry as soon as the visitor lands, pass it through the gateway as metadata where supported, send the purchase from your backend once payment is confirmed, and exclude the gateway as a referrer. Linkrunner's Web SDK (beta) keeps last-touch UTMs in localStorage for 24 hours from the campaign click, so a new-tab return keeps its credit.
More on this: linkrunner.io/blog/track-utms-through-payment-gateway-redirects