01 The store link is a wall
Whatever you knew about the viewer before the App Store, you lose on the other side.
A UTM tag survives on the web. It does not survive an app download.
On a website, the tags on a link tell you where a visitor came from. Apple does not pass those tags through the App Store download (RevenueCat’s CEO Jacob Eiting has said it on the Sub Club podcast “20 times”). The viewer taps, the store opens, the app installs, and the connection to the creator is gone.
The workarounds you have probably tried leak the same way.
Joseph Choi of Consumer Club described the old setup on Superwall: a code in the video, a link in bio, “use this code at checkout.” His verdict: people close TikTok, open the store, and search your name. No code gets typed. Apple also caps offer codes, so one code per creator stops scaling early.
Coconote’s Zack Hargett told Sub Club that at 20 or 30 million views you know exactly when a video went viral and can measure the days after it. When a few videos a week each do a million, the spike is everyone’s and no one’s.
“How did you hear about us?” catches some of it, and it changes the answer more than you would expect. If a creator’s subscribers are invisible to you, you will price that creator wrong.
What a Tracking Link does instead. It records the click, sends the viewer to the right store, and matches the later install and in-app events back to that click. What is left for you to decide is what to call things.
02 Three labels per link
One link per video, with the creator, the angle, and the video as three separate labels.
Each label gets its own column, so you can compare any two of them.
This playbook’s recommended naming uses three fields on every link. (It is our convention, not an Airbridge rule. Keep it consistent rather than perfect.)
| Question it answers | Airbridge field | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Which traffic is this? | Channel (a Custom Channel for the whole program) | ugc-creators |
| Who delivered it? | Campaign = creator | creator-maya |
| What idea is it selling? | Ad Group = angle | angle-gym-confusion |
| Which video is this? | Ad Creative = video or hook variant | hook-b |
Three rules, all of them about future you.
Keep the three separate. Not gym-confusion_maya_hook-b in one field. The creator is already in Campaign, so it does not go in the video name. Separate fields are what let you ask “did the angle work, or did Maya work?” in Lesson 06.
One link per video, not per creator. One link across five videos gives you a creator score and nothing else. A link per video gives you both.
Name before you film. The link goes into the brief, not the post-production checklist. If the creator gets it a day after posting, day one is untracked.
Fill in your first three rows
One video and one link per row. Lowercase, hyphens, no spaces. The creator’s name lives in the first column only.
01Creator and angle
02Videos
Your link naming sheet
Fill in a creator and an angle to start the sheet.
How to see this in Airbridge
- Open Tracking Links and create a Custom Channel for your program, for example
ugc-creators. - Create one link per video. Set Campaign to the creator, Ad Group to the angle, and Ad Creative to the video, exactly as written on your sheet.
- Open Reports → Actuals and group by Campaign, Ad Group, or Ad Creative.
You'll see:
one row per creator, per angle, or per video, with clicks as soon as the links are live and installs once the Airbridge SDK (the small piece of Airbridge code inside your app) is in your app.
03 Where the link goes
The link only counts the clicks it receives. Put it where the viewer is already looking.
Bio for the run, pinned comment per video, DM reply if you can.
The creator’s bio link for the whole run. One founder on Superwall has creators keep it there for the month.
One per video, pinned early, before the thread buries it. This is the per-video link.
Ask viewers to comment a word and reply by DM with the link. The Pushcroll founders said it “increased conversions like crazy,” and unlike “search our name,” it is measurable.
Say the caveat out loud. Some viewers will still search your name in the store, and those installs will not tie back to a creator. A Tracking Link measures the people who tapped it. That is the population you compare creators on, and it is the same population for every creator, which is what makes the comparison fair.
04 Check it before launch
One test click, one test install, one look at the report. Then post.
Tracking cannot be added to a video that has already been watched.
- Custom Channel created (
ugc-creators) - Naming sheet filled: one row per planned video
- One Tracking Link per row, fields set exactly as written
- Each creator has their links with the brief: bio link for the run, pinned-comment link per video
- You tapped one link on a test device and installed the app
- The test click and install show up in the right row of Reports → Actuals (group by Campaign, then Ad Creative)
If one box is empty, the video waits. Day one of a good video is the day you most want tracked.