gas shows numbers from the accounts you have linked to it: from Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, from ad systems and from web analytics. But part of your marketing happens outside them. A link in a newsletter, a QR code on a flyer or a poster, a banner on someone else's website, a PR article in an online magazine: none of the linked platforms records such a click, so it would be missing from your reports.
Custom measurement is a counter that you set up yourself in gas. Depending on what you want to track, you get either a measurement link that sends the visitor to your target page and records the click on the way, or a short measurement code that you insert into a web page. You then find the collected numbers in the Custom measurement section in the left menu, just like the data from other networks.
Before you start
The Custom measurement section is a paid part of the application. You only see it in the left menu if it is included in your customer account plan, or in an add-on to it. If it is not there, the plan does not include this feature. To check what your plan includes, go to Settings → Customer account → Subscription; only user accounts with the Administrator role can see this page. To extend your plan, write through the contact form.
The plan also determines how many measurements you may have at once. The limit is called Max. custom measurements and it only counts measurements that are still running, that is, their end date is today or later. When you get close to the cap, a yellow or red bar appears above the list of measurements and the Create measurement button turns grey.
A user account with the Administrator or User role may create, edit and delete custom measurements. The Viewer role can look at the collected numbers, but does not see the button for creating a measurement.
Custom measurement cannot fill in numbers retroactively. It starts counting only once the measurement link or code is actually in place, which is why the start date cannot be set in the past.
Three measurement types and what they are good for
When creating a measurement you fill in the Measurement type field. It offers three options and you can tick more than one at a time, but at least one is required.
Choose the measurement type correctly right away. Once saved, you cannot change it, and the same goes for the target URLs and the start date. If you get it wrong, there is only one way out: create the measurement again and delete the original one.
Click-through to link
Counts clicks on a link. gas creates its own short URL for the measurement. Anyone who clicks it is counted and continues straight to your target page, so they notice nothing unusual.
This is useful wherever a link comes from a place you do not measure yourself: a button in a newsletter, a QR code on a flyer, a poster or in a shop window, a link in a PR article, a banner on someone else's website, an address mentioned in a podcast or in print advertising.
You can enter several target URLs and each one gets its own measurement link. That way you can tell which placement brought how many people, and a Link click-throughs table is added to the measurement detail.
Impressions
Counts how many times the measured place was displayed and how many people saw it. To do that, a short measurement code is inserted into the page.
This is useful when you need to know not only the clicks, but also how many people the content was shown to at all: a PR article on someone else's website, a banner placement, a campaign landing page. Combined with the Click-through to link type, these two numbers give you the CTR, that is, the share of clicks in impressions.
Conversions
Counts completed actions and their value: a submitted order, a filled-in enquiry form, a completed booking, a downloaded file. The measurement code is inserted into the page that the visitor sees only after completing the action, typically a thank-you page. You can also pass the conversion value in CZK, so you see not only the number of orders, but also how much they brought in.
Putting the link and the code in place, that is, where to find them in the application and what to hand over to whom, is described in a separate article, Deploying a custom measurement.
Steps: where to find a measurement and its results
- In the left menu, click Custom measurement.
- A list of pages opens: Overview, the individual metrics and Campaigns.
- The Campaigns item is the list of all your measurements. From there you get to the individual measurements and to the Create measurement button.
- Click the name of a measurement in the list to open its detail with detailed numbers.
Overview
A dashboard made of tiles that summarises all your measurements together for the period selected in the top bar. By default it contains Click through, Conversions and Reach as separate numbers, and Impressions and Spend as graphs.
You can rearrange the dashboard: use the Add widget button to add another metric, use Edit layout to move or remove tiles, and Reset to default layout to restore the original arrangement.
Individual metric pages
The Spend, Reach, Impressions, Clicks, Engagement rate and Conversions items always show one indicator over time, summed across all measurements of the customer account for the selected period, together with a comparison against the previous period.
What each metric means:
- Spend: the budget entered for the measurement, spread evenly across the days it runs. It is not money actually spent that gas would read from somewhere.
- Reach: how many people the measurement recorded.
- Impressions: how many times the measured place was displayed. It is usually higher than Reach, because one person can see the content repeatedly.
- Clicks: how many times someone went through the measurement link. The page itself is titled Click through, it is the same number.
- Engagement rate: the ratio of clicks to the number of people reached.
- Conversions: the number of completed actions.
Campaigns
Despite the name, this is a list of custom measurements, not a list of campaigns. Each row shows the measurement name, the campaign the measurement is assigned to, the start and end date and the collected numbers. On the right there are actions: Integration instructions (the link or code to deploy), edit and delete.
The list follows the period selected in the top bar. It shows only those measurements whose duration overlaps with the selected period.
Measurement detail
At the top there is a summary card: Measurement name, Measurement type, Target URL (or the number of links), Measurement value, Start date, End date, Measurement duration, Last update time and Measurement code, which is the identifier the measurement code works with.
Below the summary there are graphs and numbers according to the types the measurement has:
- Impressions: a Reach graph, plus Impressions and Engagement rate.
- Click-through to link: a Click through graph, plus CTR (the share of clicks in impressions) and CPC (the cost of one click).
- Conversions: a Conversions graph, plus Conversion rate, Average cost per conversion and Conversion value.
If a measurement has several target URLs, a Link click-throughs table is added, with the number of clicks for each URL separately.
What happens next
Recorded clicks, impressions and conversions do not appear in the graphs immediately. gas recalculates them roughly once an hour, and the measurement detail shows when it last happened in the Last update time row. So expect the first numbers within an hour of the moment someone first went through the measurement link or opened the page with the measurement code.
Only the days between the start date and the end date are counted into the reports. A measurement therefore ends by itself as soon as the end date passes, which also frees up its slot in the plan limit. If you need to extend a measurement, the end date can be moved even after it has been created.
Monetary indicators are based on the amount you enter for the measurement in the Measurement budget field (in the detail, the same value is labelled Measurement value). It is entered in CZK excluding VAT and gas spreads it evenly across the individual days the measurement runs. It then uses this to calculate the cost per click and the average cost per conversion.
If you assign a measurement to a campaign, its numbers are also written into the detail of that campaign and added there to the data from other networks. Assigning to a campaign is not mandatory and can be added or changed later.
Common problems
I cannot see Custom measurement in the left menu
gas shows the section only if it is included in the plan of the customer account you are currently switched to. Try switching to another of your customer accounts in the top bar, each one has its own subscription. If the section is missing everywhere, write through the contact form to extend your plan.
I cannot see the Create measurement button anywhere
The Administrator and User roles may create measurements. The Viewer role does not see the button at all. Ask the administrator of the customer account to change your role, or have them create the measurement.
The Create measurement button is grey and cannot be clicked
The plan limit on the number of measurements is used up. Hover over it and a tooltip shows how many measurements out of how many are in use. Free up space by deleting a measurement you no longer need, wait until the end date of some measurement passes, or have your plan increased.
The measurement I created is not in the list
The list in the Campaigns item shows only measurements whose duration falls within the period selected in the top bar. If you scheduled the measurement for next month and you are looking at this week, it will not be in the list. Set a period that overlaps with the measurement.
The measurement is running, but all the numbers are zero
Most often because the measurement link or code is not yet in place at the target location, or because the original URL is being circulated instead of the one from gas. Check in Integration instructions that exactly the URL or the code generated by gas is being used. The other possibility is that the recalculation has not run yet: look at Last update time in the measurement detail and wait up to an hour.
I chose the wrong measurement type
The measurement type is locked after saving and cannot be changed. Create a new measurement with the correct type and delete the original one so that it does not needlessly take up space in your limit. Before you start again, keep in mind that the new link or code will have to be deployed again.
I need to change the target URL of a measurement
Target URLs and the start date cannot be changed after saving, because measurement links are already running based on them. You can change the measurement name, the assignment to a campaign, the end date and the budget. To change a target URL you therefore have to create a new measurement.
Spend does not match what we actually paid for the campaign
Spend in a custom measurement is not read from an ad system. It is the amount you entered as the measurement budget, spread evenly across the days it runs. If the amount does not match reality, adjust the budget when editing the measurement; the numbers will line up at the next recalculation.
Reach is lower than Impressions
That is correct. Reach is the number of people, Impressions is the number of times the content was displayed. One person can see the measured place repeatedly, so there are always more impressions than people.
Conversions are being counted, but Conversion value is zero
The conversion value is passed directly in the measurement code, and in the default version of the code it is zero. For gas to know the value of an order, whoever deployed the code on the website has to add it. The procedure is described in the article Deploying a custom measurement.
Clicks in gas do not match the numbers from our newsletter tool
Every tool counts differently. gas counts every pass through the measurement link, while a newsletter tool often counts one recipient only once, even if they clicked several times. Smaller differences between the two numbers are therefore normal.
The measurement detail uses a different word for the type than the form
The Click-through to link type is labelled clicks in the detail, and the Impressions type is labelled impressions. They are the same types, just named after the metric they collect.
The measurement has ended and the numbers stopped changing
After the end date, no new days are counted into the reports. The history already collected remains available. If the measurement is meant to continue, open it for editing and move the end date.