The Podcast Attribution Checklist: 12 Things to Verify Before Your Campaign Goes Live

There is a specific kind of frustration that comes from launching a podcast campaign, waiting 30 days for the attribution window to close, and then discovering your tracking was broken from day one. The data is gone. You cannot recreate it. You have to run the campaign again, if the budget allows.

Almost all of these problems are preventable. They happen in the setup phase, not the live phase, and most of them take less than ten minutes to catch if you know what to check.

This checklist covers the 12 things to verify before your podcast campaign goes live. Work through it once. Do not skip items because they seem obvious. The ones that seem obvious are usually the ones that are broken.

Why Most Attribution Problems Are Pre-Launch Problems

By the time you realise your attribution is broken, you have already lost weeks of data. The symptoms appear late: a campaign that should be showing conversions shows almost none, promo code data does not reconcile with your orders dashboard, your vanity path is recording zero visits despite the episode being live.

Diagnose everything before launch. These checks take 20 to 30 minutes total. The cost of not doing them is a campaign's worth of missing data.

Tracking Infrastructure (Items 1 to 4)

1. The tracking script is installed on every page, not just the homepage.

The most common installation mistake is placing the tracking script only on the homepage. Your podcast-attributed visitors will land on vanity paths, product pages, and blog posts. If the script is not on those pages, visitors who never touch your homepage will not be tracked. Verify the script fires on at least three different page types using your browser's developer tools.

2. The visitor ID cookie is being set correctly.

Open an incognito browser window, visit your site via your tracking link, and inspect your cookies. You should see a first-party cookie from your attribution tool. If it is not there, the script is not loading or is being blocked by a consent manager. Check your cookie consent settings and ensure the tracking script fires before the consent gate for first-party analytics (it does not require consent in most jurisdictions if it is anonymous and first-party).

3. Your conversion event fires on the correct page and only once.

Navigate to your thank you or order confirmation page. Confirm the conversion event fires. Then navigate back and forward to ensure it does not fire twice on the same order. Double-fired conversions will inflate your attribution numbers and make everything look better than it is, which is just as problematic as undercounting.

4. Your Shopify integration (if applicable) is connected and syncing.

If you are on Shopify, connect your store in the Castlytics integrations settings and place a test order using your campaign promo code. Confirm the order appears in your conversions dashboard with the correct promo code attribution. Do not wait until your campaign is live to find out the webhook is not configured.

Campaign Setup (Items 5 to 8)

5. Every campaign has a unique promo code.

One code per placement, always. If two shows share the same code, you cannot distinguish which drove which sale. Even if the discount is identical, give each campaign its own code: PODS15SARAH, PODS15TIM. The few seconds this takes to set up will save you genuine confusion when your data comes in.

6. Your vanity path is set up and detectable.

Visit your vanity path in an incognito browser (e.g. yourbrand.com/sarah) and confirm your attribution tool detects the landing. In Castlytics, you will see the visit appear in your campaign's analytics within seconds. If nothing appears, your vanity path detection is not configured correctly.

7. Your attribution window matches your product's purchase cycle.

The default 30-day window is appropriate for most consumer products. For high-consideration or high-ticket purchases, use 60 to 90 days. For impulse buys under £30, 14 days may be sufficient. Check your historical average time-to-purchase data if you have it and align your window accordingly. Setting it too short is the most common cause of undercounting.

8. Your campaign cost is entered accurately.

ROAS is calculated automatically from your campaign cost. If the cost is wrong, every ROAS figure in your report is wrong. Enter the total cost inclusive of agency fees, production costs, and the flat fee or CPM, not just the publisher rate. This is the number you will be judged against.

Conversion Tracking (Items 9 to 11)

9. Your post-purchase survey is live and includes "podcast" as an option.

If you are using a post-purchase survey to capture dark funnel attribution, verify it is appearing on your order confirmation page and that "podcast" or your specific show names are listed as options. A survey that does not offer "podcast" as a choice will still receive write-in responses, but you will miss the structured attribution data from listeners who pick from a list.

10. You have tested the full conversion journey end to end.

Click your tracking link in incognito. Visit your vanity path. Add a product to your basket. Complete a test purchase using your promo code. Check that the conversion appears in your dashboard with the correct attribution. This end-to-end test takes five minutes and catches problems that individual component tests miss.

11. Revenue is passing correctly through conversion events.

In your dashboard, the revenue figure on your test order should match what you entered at checkout. If it is showing as zero, or a different number, your revenue parameter is not passing correctly. Fix this before launch. Inaccurate revenue data makes every ROAS calculation meaningless.

Reporting Readiness (Item 12)

12. You know what you are going to measure and when.

Before your campaign goes live, write down three things: the metrics you will use to evaluate performance (ROAS, attributed conversions, CAC), the date at which you will make a first assessment (no earlier than four weeks post-launch), and the threshold at which you would consider the campaign a success.

Having this documented before launch prevents post-hoc rationalisation. It is easy to move the goalposts after a campaign if you have not defined what "working" looks like in advance.

The Cost of Skipping This Checklist

Running a podcast campaign without verifying these twelve items is not a small risk. A single broken component, a misfiring conversion event, a shared promo code, a 7-day window on a 30-day purchase cycle, can make a profitable campaign look like a loss.

More dangerously, it can make a losing campaign look like a winner. Brands that discover they were double-counting conversions halfway through a campaign series have sometimes spent thousands on placements that were not delivering. The checklist catches this before it costs you.

Set up your first campaign with confidence. Start free with Castlytics and use the built-in campaign setup guide to validate every step before going live.

Related reading: Podcast Ad Attribution From Scratch: What to Do in Your First 30 Days | Podcast Conversion Tracking Setup