Enterprise Event Telemetry, Paid Attribution & WAF Diagnostics
Full-funnel GA4/GTM attribution recovery, headless browser pixel verification, AWS WAF CAPTCHA triage, and high-efficiency paid acquisition ($0.42 Meta CPC, ~$21 SC CPA).
STAR Engineering Breakdown
01 · Situation & Problem
Paid campaigns reported zero downstream GA4 key events despite strong click volume, while top landing pages silently lost UTM parameters before session initialization.
02 · Technical Execution
Inspected tag execution with a headless browser to prove how Traffic campaign objectives, missing Conversions API, and consent-mode race conditions suppressed Meta Pixel events, and caught an AWS WAF CAPTCHA stripping UTMs on top landing pages.
03 · Campaign & Agency Transition
Escalated the WAF fix to DevOps, restructured GTM/GA4 event contracts during the transition from an external agency to the in-house team, and led statewide user acquisition reporting for the South Carolina partnership.
04 · Verified Impact
Delivered 2,300+ clicks at $0.42 CPC on a $1,000 Meta partner campaign, drove ~190 South Carolina registrations at ~$21 CPA in September, and achieved 290+ engagements at $1.71 CPE on executive LinkedIn Thought Leader ads.
test("preserves UTM params & fires GA4 signup", async ({ page }) => {
const events: string[] = [];
page.on("request", (req) => events.push(req.url()));
await page.goto("https://tallo.com/lp?utm_source=meta&utm_medium=paid");
expect(page.url()).toContain("utm_source=meta"); // No WAF strip
expect(events.some((u) => u.includes("en=talent_signup"))).toBe(true);
});Benchmark Table
| METRIC | MANUAL BASELINE | PROGRAMMATIC ENGINE |
|---|---|---|
| Landing Page UTM Persistence | Dropped by AWS WAF Challenge | 100% Preserved Across Redirects |
| Meta Paid Partner Acquisition | 0 Tracked GA4 Key Events | $0.42 CPC / ~190 SC Regs @ ~$21 |
| Paid Media Operations Ownership | Opaque External Agency Retainer | Audited In-House GTM/GA4 Stack |