Branded short links: a URL short enough to say on a podcast
TV, radio, podcast reads, billboards, packaging. Nobody types a tracking URL from a billboard. They type go.yourapp.com/tv, if you're lucky.
Updated Sep 3, 2026
Who runs this
- Growth marketers
- Performance & paid
What it uses
- Custom domain
- Custom short slugs
- Smart routing
- Per-link source and placement tagging
- Deferred deep linking
A podcast host reads your ad and says the URL. A billboard shows it in letters a metre high. A radio spot has three seconds for it. In every one of these, the URL has to be short, memorable and yours — and it still has to route, deep link and attribute like any other. Long URLs and tracking parameters are not an option. 'Direct' traffic in your analytics is what happens when you use them anyway.
What problem does this solve?
A short, branded link per placement — one per podcast, one per TV creative, one per billboard site — that routes to the right store, lands on the right screen, and attributes the install to the placement. Spoken and printed media stop being a black hole labelled 'direct'.
How do you set the links up?
A custom domain, which is a Growth-plan capability, gives you go.yourapp.com. Custom slugs give you /tv, /pod, /nyc. Each slug is a full smart link underneath: destination, payload, source tag. The person types eleven characters; the link does everything else.
{
"deepLinkPath": "/welcome",
"customData": {"src": "podcast", "show": "the-daily-run", "offer": "RUN20", "read": "host-read-sep"}
}What makes a slug work when spoken?
| Works | Doesn't | Why |
|---|---|---|
| go.app.com/run | app.com/campaigns/podcast-q3 | Short beats descriptive; the listener is driving |
| /nyc | /new-york-billboard-1 | One word, one meaning |
| /pod | /podcast?src=pod | No punctuation you have to say aloud |
| A word | A number | Numbers are misheard; words are guessed correctly |
Test slugs by saying them to someone and asking them to type what they heard. The ones that survive that are the ones to use.
What about the people who search instead of typing?
Many will. They hear the ad, later search the app name, and install from the store — which attributes as organic. The short link captures the people who did what the ad asked; the organic lift in the days after a placement captures the rest. Read both, and compare the organic baseline before and after the spot.
Which metric should you watch?
Attributed installs per placement, plus the organic lift in the placement's geography and window. The first is the direct effect; the second is the halo. For broadcast, the halo is often bigger — which is exactly the kind of thing you can only learn by having a link for the direct part.
Related use cases
Offline to app
Offline to app: a QR code that lands on the thing next to it
Posters, table tents, event badges, receipts. The scan is easy; landing on the right screen after install is the part that fails.
SMS campaigns
SMS campaigns: a short link that opens the app, not the browser
High intent, a tight character budget, and the same failure as email — the link opens Safari on a phone that has the app.
Every one of these depends on the same two things: link context surviving an install, and an honest answer to which click produced it. The scoring model is published in full on our methodology page, and you can check any domain's association files with our free link validator.