Click ID (gclid / fbclid / wbraid)

A click ID is a unique identifier an ad platform appends to your landing-page URL at click time: gclid from Google Ads, fbclid from Meta, wbraid and gbraid in Google's privacy-constrained iOS contexts, msclkid from Microsoft Ads, ttclid from TikTok, li_fat_id from LinkedIn. One ID identifies exactly one click.

#Not tracking junk: the match key of paid measurement

Click IDs look like URL clutter, but they're the deterministic match key connecting money spent to outcomes earned. A captured gclid is what lets a CRM deal be uploaded back to Google Ads as an offline conversion; a preserved fbclid raises Conversions API event-match quality. Unlike UTMs (labels you write and can read anywhere), a click ID is opaque and only meaningful to the platform that issued it. Losing them is a named failure mode: redirects that strip query strings, URL "cleaners", and consent-blocked capture scripts all sever the match, and every severed match is a conversion that can't be matched back to its click.

In practice: click IDs are match keys in Buron's attribution datasets, captured by the first-party pixel, stitched into the identity map, and matched against platform claims.

The whole family, organized by what each platform lets you do with its ID, is Click IDs: what gclid, fbclid, and wbraid do. The uploads they power are Offline conversion tracking: send CRM deals back to Google Ads, the labels they complement are UTM parameters, and the territory routes from Conversion tracking & signal quality.