Conversions API Archives - Jon Loomer Digital

Conversions for Meta Advertising Checklist

Jon Loomer — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 23:57:18 +0000

Conversions are the centerpiece of any effective Meta advertising strategy. They help you define success, measure performance, and optimize for the action that you want. If your focus isn’t on conversions, you’re likely swimming in misleading, low-quality results.

It’s easy to say, “Focus on conversions.” But, there are many steps required to make sure that conversion attribution is complete and accurate.

That’s why I created this checklist for website-first businesses. You may not need all of these steps, but you should at least consider them all. In this post, we’ll cover the following:

Add the Pixel
Standard Events
Custom Events
Custom Conversions
Conversions API for Web Events
Conversions API for Offline Events
Test Events
Understand Attribution
Interpret Results

I’ll cover the basics of each. At the end of each section, I provide a list of resources for deeper learning.

Let’s get to it…

1. Add the Pixel

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard the rumor that the pixel is about to die, I’d have at least $10. But, it remains relevant.

The Meta pixel is a snippet of code that is unique to the advertiser who controls it. When a page of your website loads, the pixel loads. Once that happens, any conversion events can be associated with the pixel. This will be necessary for conversion attribution, reporting, and optimization.

You need to add the pixel to your website. Not just on your home page. Not just the pages you believe are important. Every single page of your website. If some pages are owned by a third-party that allows you to inject your pixel, add it there, too.

I’d love to tell you that there is one, simple way to do this. But, it depends on how your website is set up.

If you’re lucky, there’s a simple integration. Shopify, for example, makes it very easy.

You can also inject the pixel to every page of your website using WordPress plugins and customizations of the header. I added the pixel to this website using Google Tag Manager.

Create a pixel.

To get started, go to Events Manager and click on the left to Connect Data Sources.

Select Web.

Enter the name of your dataset (whatever you’re calling your pixel) and click “Create.”

If you utilize one of the partners that can be used for integration, select it.

The “WordPress” integration utilizes the official Meta for WordPress plugin. Just know that you don’t necessarily need to use that plugin if your website is on WordPress.

If you’re connecting manually, let’s connect the pixel only for this demonstration.

Click “See instructions.”

You will now be taken through a pixel installation wizard.

Copy the pixel code and paste it into the bottom of the header section (right before the closing “head” tag) of the template of your website.

Consider turning on Automatic Advanced Matching to improve attribution (you can turn it on later within the Settings tab of Events Manager if you want to wait).

Apply a previously created pixel.

If you already have a pixel, find it within Events Manager under Data Sources. If there hasn’t been any activity on the pixel, select the option to Set up Meta Pixel.

If there has already been activity on the pixel, click the Add Events dropdown menu from the Overview tab and select “Add New Integration.”

Select “Meta Pixel” and click “Set Up.”

Choose to either manually add code or use partner integration.

From this point forward, the steps are the same as when creating a new pixel.

RESOURCES:

2. Standard Events

The pixel itself is pointless without events. Events notify Meta when an important action occurs so that it can be used for attribution purposes. For example, if someone who saw or clicked your ad performs that event, it can be reported in Ads Manager.

Standard events are predefined actions that any advertiser can track. Examples include Purchase, Add to Cart, Initiate Checkout, Complete Registration, and Lead.

Once again, there are multiple ways to add standard events.

Add standard events manually.

Standard events are marked with a separate snippet of code that will be important if you’re adding standard events manually.

I also have a resource that generates the code if you are adding it to a page manually.

The main pixel will load with each page load. An event should only load when the action it represents has completed. For example, you don’t want the Purchase event to fire until the purchase is completed. This is why you might add the Purchase event code to the confirmation page following a successful purchase.

I add standard events manually, specifically with Google Tag Manager. A separate tag and trigger is created for each standard event.

Use the Event Setup Tool

The Event Setup Tool is a codeless method for creating standard events. You’ll find it once you reach the final step after creating your pixel.

You can also find it within the Settings tab in Events Manager.

Enter the URL of the page where you want to add a standard event and click “Open Website.” NOTE: Your pixel first needs to be on this page.

The page will load and a box will appear at the top left for managing events.

Only events created with the Event Setup Tool will appear here. You can create an event by button click (if the button is detected on the page) or URL (the URL of the current page).

Use partner integration.

If you use a partner like Shopify, most or all of this manual work will be unnecessary.

RESOURCES:

3. Custom Events

The concept of a custom event is rather straightforward. This is an action that is important but it cannot be defined using one of Meta’s standard events.

When possible, use standard events. Meta has standard event data from advertisers around the world to help optimize ad delivery to make sure that the people who are most likely to perform the action that you want will see your ads.

But, this isn’t always possible. You also may not use custom events for delivery optimization, but instead to provide additional reporting information.

I track dozens of important actions on my website that cannot be defined with standard events. They include:

2 Minutes Time on Page
Scroll Depth 50%
2 Minutes AND 50% Scroll
Video Watched
Podcast Play
Google Referral
Internal Link Click
External Link Click

Custom events for website activity are most often sent using code. They utilize the same code structure as standard events, but you define them. If you send an event that Meta doesn’t recognize by name, it’s a custom event.

I use Google Tag Manager to track these custom events. The primary reason for that is that GTM offers built-in trigger actions for things like timers (to track time spent), scroll depth, and embedded YouTube plays.

RESOURCES:

4. Custom Conversions

Standard events and custom events are for tracking important actions so that they can be used for reporting, optimization, and even targeting. Custom conversions are similar, but they should not be used in place of standard or custom events.

Think of it like this…

You have a purchase event that fires whenever someone purchases a product from you. It could be your most expensive or least expensive product. It could be a training course or a t-shirt. They are all tracked as purchases.

Custom conversions allow you to segment those purchases. You don’t need code or help from partner integrations. It’s all done within Events Manager.

Click “Custom Conversions.”

Click to “Create Custom Conversion.”

You could create a custom conversion based on the specific URL that someone views.

Or select the specific standard or custom event…

…and then create a rule based on the specific URL, referring domain, or event parameters when that event fired.

A common use case for custom conversions is to add a column to your Ads Manager reporting for the purchase of the specific product that you’re promoting. Meta’s “Results” column will otherwise include all purchases (for example) that are attributed to your ads. But, those who engage with your ad may purchase something you didn’t promote. The custom conversion can provide more certainty.

Standard events fire on my website following any purchase or registration. I created custom conversions for the purchase of specific products and registrations to specific lead magnets.

RESOURCES:

5. Conversions API for Web Events

The purpose of the Conversions API is to send events to Meta directly from your server. Combined with pixel events from your browser, this can help provide a much fuller picture of conversions that customers are having with your business.

Of course, there are two primary ways that typical businesses can take advantage of this. One is for web events (we’ll get to offline events in a moment).

As discussed earlier, there have been rumors of the Meta pixel’s demise for years. It’s simply not as dependable as it once was. The reasons for this are mostly due to privacy restrictions and cookie blocking, but this is also where my technical expertise on the subject gets a little thin. The main thing is that the pixel alone has big holes.

The Conversions API for web events allows you to send a second set of events for website activity from your own server. By itself, the Conversions API for web events is far more dependable than the pixel alone. When you send events from both sources, Meta is more likely to reflect conversion activity on your website.

If you have some technical expertise or know someone who does, the Conversions API can be set up manually. Otherwise, it’s going to require partner integration.

The key consideration here is deduplication. Since events will be sent from two different sources, Meta will need to be able to sort out whether events are unique or duplicates. Otherwise, your results will be inflated.

This is where third-party integration can be especially helpful. Especially when a partner manages both your pixel and API integration, the deduplication is often done for you.

In some cases, this integration requires very little of you. If you’re on Shopify, it’s practically as simple as checking a box. That’s the case for many platforms.

I use the Conversions API Gateway, which mimics all of the events that are sent with the pixel. It utilizes an AWS server. While you can set up the API Gateway directly with Amazon (I have), you also may not need that much power (or cost). I’ve found a great alternative to be Stape, which allows me to set up the API Gateway at a fraction of the cost.

On average, I see about 10% additional events as a result of using the Conversions API Gateway.

This can be found within the Events Manager Overview tab.

RESOURCES:

6. Conversions API for Offline Events

Another reason you may send events using the Conversions API is so that Meta has events that do not happen on your website. In this case, you are passing offline events, which typically come from your CRM.

This method isn’t necessary for all businesses. If conversions happen exclusively online and you aren’t struggling to get full attribution, I have a tough time making the argument of sending offline events. But if you do, deduplication becomes an even bigger hassle, and you’ll undoubtedly need an expert who knows how to sort that out.

A use case for needing to pass offline events goes like this:

You collect leads on your website
A salesperson contacts these leads
The purchase and other important actions are recorded in your CRM (not via a customer-initiated website action)

I do pass a small number of offline events using the Conversions API, but these are events that are only recorded within my CRM. There isn’t going to be an issue related to deduplication, so it’s rather straightforward in that case. I use these events for reporting purposes so that I can see what leads who came in via ads, for example, do further down the funnel.

Another example of leveraging offline events is when running ads optimized for Conversion Leads. In this case, you pass the offline events so that Meta can follow new leads through various stages of your funnel so that it can help improve optimization.

An important point here is that the Offline Conversions API is getting phased out and will no longer be active come May of 2025. You’ll still be able to send offline events, but you’ll need to do so via the main API.

Admittedly, this is a transition that I still need to make. I use Zapier to pass offline events, and I haven’t yet been able to get it to work for sending them using the main Conversions API.

You may have another partner or method for sending those events. I encourage you to do so, especially if important actions happen exclusively away from your website.

RESOURCES:

7. Test Events

Once you’re sending events, you’ll need to test them.

This is a primary source for overcounting and undercounting conversions. If you aren’t sending events properly (or they aren’t getting deduplicated), your results will be off.

The primary way to test events is within Meta’s own testing tool in Events Manager.

You can test web and CRM events.

When testing website events, you can focus on server events or browser pixel events.

When testing, you can get an actual accounting of the events that fire from your visit. This can help troubleshoot issues when you fear that events aren’t getting sent or they’re getting sent too often.

RESOURCES:

How to Test Meta Conversion Events
Are Ads Manager Results Too Good to Be True?
Test your app or web browser events using the test events tool

8. Understand Attribution

Passing conversion events to Meta is great, but you also need to understand how attribution works. Otherwise, the entire exercise is pointless.

Attribution is how Meta gives credit to an ad for conversions. In the simplest terms, someone you paid to reach clicked on an ad and converted within the attribution window. As a result, your ad gets credit for that conversion.

The attribution setting is defined within the ad set when utilizing the Website conversion location and optimizing for conversions.

The default attribution setting is 7-day click and 1-day view. In other words, Meta will attribute conversions to your ads if someone clicks on your ad and conversions within 7 days or views your ad (without clicking) and converts within a day.

But, you have options for defining the attribution setting:

Click: 7-day or 1-day
View: 1-day or none
Engaged View: 1-day or none

Engaged View is only relevant to videos. If someone views at least 10 seconds of your video, doesn’t click, and converts within a day, it’s considered an Engaged View conversion.

The attribution setting controls two things:

1. How conversions are reported, by default.
2. How delivery is optimized.

Meta’s goal will be to get you as many conversions as possible. Changing the attribution setting can impact who ends up seeing your ads. For example, if you remove 1-day view, Meta won’t see a view-through conversion as successful. Because of this, the focus may be on those who will click to convert.

Finally, understand that Meta utilizes a last-click attribution model. Two ads can’t get credit for the same conversion. If someone engaged with two different ads before converting, attribution goes to the most recent click. If neither ad was clicked and a view falls within the attribution setting, credit goes to the most recent view.

RESOURCES:

9. Interpret Results

This is related to understanding attribution, but it’s an extension of it. Knowing how attribution works is an important step. But, then you have to apply that knowledge.

You can’t always take your results at face value. You need context behind those results. There are two features that are especially helpful in this area.

Compare Attribution Settings.

Let’s assume that the attribution setting is 7-day click and 1-day view, which it will be in most cases. How many of those conversions were view-through? How many happened within a day of clicking? This context matters.

Within the Columns dropdown menu, select Compare Attribution Settings.

From there, you can choose to add columns for each attribution window — even if it wasn’t used in the attribution setting. There’s even an option for 28-day click.

Were most of the reported conversions from 1-day view attribution? If that’s the case, it’s likely that this is a remarketing campaign and many of the conversions would have happened without your ad. Were most 1-day click? That would be a good sign that your ads were directly responsible.

It’s not that view-through or 28-day click are worthless, but the context is important.

First Conversion.

This is the latest addition to the Compare Attribution Settings feature that helps solve issues where your results appear inflated. Let’s assume that someone clicks your ad and makes three separate purchases within the attribution setting. In that case, all three conversions would be reported.

But, you can have only the first of those conversions appear within your reporting.

And when you do, you may see a drastic difference in results — especially for non-purchase conversions.

RESOURCES:

Your Turn

This became a lot! Consider this your starting point with conversions, but drill down using the additional resources.

Have you had issues with conversions and attribution?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Conversions for Meta Advertising Checklist appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

8 Reasons Your Ads Aren’t Converting

Jon Loomer — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 04:17:41 +0000

If you’re a Meta advertiser, you’ve experienced this. You face the task of running ads that will drive more purchases or sign-ups, but they are utterly failing. Your ads aren’t converting at all, or the number of conversions is startlingly low.

It’s easy to blame Meta for your bad performance, but you know that’s a bad approach. Instead, you should troubleshoot to isolate the specific factors that are leading to these bad results so that you can address them.

Stop throwing money away. Your lack of conversions is likely due to at least one of these things…

1. Pixel, API, or Event Problems

If you get this wrong, you have no chance. Events are how important conversions are defined. This makes attribution (credit given to your ad for conversions) possible. And the algorithm learns from those attributed conversions to make adjustments to delivery.

You haven’t set up the pixel or Conversions API.

If you don’t have either set up, what are we even doing? I assume you’ve got the pixel set up — that’s the bare minimum now. But, attribution is bound to be incomplete if you haven’t also set up the Conversions API — either web or CRM version.

You’ve set up events incorrectly.

It’s one thing to have the foundation (pixel and Conversions API) set up properly. That’s worthless window dressing without events.

In some cases, event setup is straightforward. In others, it can be complex. The result could be undercounting, overcounting, or events that haven’t been deduplicated.

This confuses Meta, which will impact your results.

You’re optimizing for the wrong event.

You could have everything set up properly, but the problem could be that you’re optimizing for an event that isn’t your ultimate goal.

Advertisers often do this because they are unable to exit the learning phase by optimizing for their conversion event of choice (like a purchase), so they may optimize instead for something further up the funnel that will generate more volume.

It’s not that this is necessarily something you shouldn’t try. But it’s always a gamble to optimize for an event that isn’t what you ultimately want. More often than not, this results in not getting the thing that will make the campaign successful.

2. Your Performance Goal

A surefire way to get disappointing conversion results is to set a performance goal for something other than a conversion.

The performance goal may be the most important step you take when creating a campaign. It defines what you want to accomplish. This also impacts who sees your ads. The algorithm will dynamically update delivery in an effort to get you more of that action.

If you set a performance goal for link clicks, landing page views, ThruPlay, post engagement, or some other top-of-the-funnel action, don’t be surprised if you struggle to get any conversions.

Why? Meta’s delivery algorithm doesn’t care if you get conversions in that case. The only focus is on getting you those clicks or other actions because that’s what you defined as your performance goal.

If you want conversions, set a performance goal that reflects that.

3. Your Ad Copy or Creative

You could summarize this section by simply saying that if you create a bad ad, you should not expect to get conversions. But, let’s dig a bit deeper.

Understand that people aren’t robots. You can’t just create an ad and expect people to perform the action that you want. You have a role to play.

In fact, ad copy and creative may be more important now than ever before. Since your targeting inputs mean less than they once did, much of the targeting is determined by your ad. You attract your ideal audience.

Here are some examples of how your ad can go wrong…

Your copy doesn’t inspire an action.

This is the most important quality of good copy. It needs to inspire the action that you want. A prospective customer should read your ad and know what they are supposed to do and why.

Your ad doesn’t clearly articulate the value of your product.

What makes your product special? What is the customer’s pain point that your product solves? It’s not always easy to articulate these things in an ad, but that’s your job.

Your copy is unprofessional or is filled with typos.

The audience matters, but there’s often no better way to repel potential customers than an ad that’s littered with typos and grammatical errors. You don’t need to be buttoned up and professional for all audiences, but you still need to convey a trustworthy brand message.

Your creative is fuzzy, out of focus, or poorly done.

Unprofessional execution can be found in the creative, too. You don’t need professionally staged images. Those can be ineffective, too. And while there are arguments for the effectiveness of intentionally ugly ads, the audience matters.

Your creative isn’t optimized by placement.

Your ads will be shown in many different placements with various aspect ratios and design specs. Some of it will be taken care of automatically for you. But, your creative can also be cropped in ways that impact your brand. The copy may also be limited by character counts, thereby impacting your message.

Your ad is bombarded by negative comments that you don’t address.

Do you publish ads and walk away? If you get bombarded with negative comments, you can’t just ignore them. They need to be addressed in some way, or they may be the reason why no one is converting.

4. Ineffective Offer

This is loosely connected to your copy itself, but there is a difference.

You could actually do everything right with your ad, but your offer itself isn’t desirable. Great copy can’t fix a bad offer.

Is the price too high? Is the discount a weak 10% off or free shipping? Did you fail to make your offer irresistible?

You could potentially create an ad with no copy at all. If the image features an amazing offer, it will generate conversions.

Your offer is that important. Take your goggles off. Would you act on your offer? If not, come up with something better.

5. Landing Page Issues

You’re doing everything right. You’ve set up the pixel, Conversions API, and events properly. You created an amazing ad with an inspiring call-to-action and an offer that can’t be refused. But, you still aren’t getting conversions.

It’s probably because of your landing page. And that’s part of the problem for advertisers. You are judged on the performance of your ads, but you may have no control over the landing page experience.

Consider these problems…

Loading and connection issues.

Your ad inspired a potential customer to click. They’re excited. The page loads and loads or eventually crashes. Do not overestimate the potential customer’s patience. They will move on and never come back.

Poorly designed page.

I’ve seen some amazing ads that lead to the cheapest, lowest-quality landing pages. While ugly ads might work sometimes, don’t expect that to be the case for your landing page. You will lose trust.

Confusing or broken purchase flow.

You require multiple steps to complete the purchase, and those steps are unclear. Maybe the customer is unable to easily able to update their cart or apply a promo code. If you make it too complicated, they will leave.

Branding and messaging are inconsistent with your ad.

Do not underestimate the importance of consistency. Colors, branding, and messaging should be consistent from ad to landing page. Was the product or offer that you promised in the ad found on the landing page, or does it look different?

The landing page violates rules related to post-click experiences.

Low-quality post-click experiences like pop-ups, lots of ads, and more can increase your costs, if not get your ads rejected.

If any of these are problems, consider experiences that eliminate, or at least minimize, the landing page. If you need leads, use instant forms. For sales, consider Shops.

6. Product Problems

If you can confidently check off every item we’ve listed so far, you are running out of excuses. The problem might be obvious.

If no one will buy your product, maybe it’s because no one wants to buy your product.

Or maybe the competition in this space is so great that you are unable to stand out. If someone can buy a similar product from a well-known and trusted brand, what makes your product special?

It’s possible the problems go even deeper. Your product has a bad reputation. Bad reviews. Low quality or poor customer service.

These are all issues that are difficult to overcome.

7. CPM Related Issues

When we talk about CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions) related issues in this context, we’re not talking about slight increases that drive up your costs. We’re talking about CPMs that are so high that they’re virtually impossible to overcome.

There are many factors that drive a high CPM:

Competition for the audience
Seasonal competition (Black Friday)
Stale ads with high frequency
Negative feedback on your ads (hide, report)
Limiting your audience size unnecessarily
A difficult or controversial industry

A high CPM gives you fewer impressions for your budget, which will likely mean fewer conversions and potential delivery issues.

8. Your Budget is Too Low

It’s simple. If you can’t spend enough to generate conversions, the delivery algorithm can’t properly learn from the results that it gets. More volume helps the algorithm properly optimize and make adjustments to get you the best results possible.

If you’re generating five conversions per week because you’re spending $20 per day, the algorithm is mostly going blind. It won’t exit the learning phase, and you’ll end up in learning limited.

That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to get results in that state, but performance won’t be stable or optimal.

I realize that not everyone can simply spend more money to get more conversions. But, in some cases, this is self inflicted. You have an excuse if you can only spend $20 per day and it’s all dedicated to one ad set. You don’t have an excuse if you can spend $100 per day, but only $20 is dedicated to the ad set for conversions.

You could combine campaign and ad sets and focus your budget, but you’ve chosen not to.

Your Turn

Are there any other issues I missed?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post 8 Reasons Your Ads Aren’t Converting appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

How to Sync Offline Events Using Conversions API

Jon Loomer — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 21:47:58 +0000

If your business logs important conversion events that happen offline and you run Meta advertising, you should send those offline events using the Conversions API. These offline events can be used for attribution (provide credit to your ads for conversions) and optimization (show ads to people likely to perform that event).

The most common scenario is when you have reps who contact leads in an effort to close sales. If those sales aren’t represented by website conversions, you’ll want to send those to Meta so that they are eligible to appear in your Ads Manager reporting.

Of course, there are countless ways to do this. It’s the biggest issue when communicating how to set up the Conversions API (whether web or CRM). I’m writing this post so that it can apply to the most people possible, requiring Google Sheets and Zapier.

This is a multiple step process, because nothing with Meta can be straight-forward. But, I’m hoping to make it as painless as possible.

In order to follow the steps in this tutorial, you’ll need the following:

A Google account (for Google Sheets)
A Meta Business and ad account
A Zapier account

1. Create an Offline Event Set

From your Business Settings (also known as Business Manager), go to Offline Event Sets under Data Sources.

Click the blue “Add” button. Then name your offline event set and click “Create.”

Select the ad account that you want to connect to the Offline Event Set and save or click “Next.” You can then give individual people access, if necessary.

2. Create an Initial Event Set

You haven’t provided any data yet, but we need to know what data we can provide and in what format. A good way to set this foundation is by creating an initial offline event set.

Go to Events Manager > Data Sources and find the Offline Event Set that you just created.

It won’t have any data in it yet, so click the blue “Upload Events” button.

It will look like this…

We’ll want to go through the steps of uploading a CSV file of offline customers. While you can rely entirely on the automation we set up to do this, manually uploading a couple of records is a good way to confirm that the format is correct.

You can click to view examples of the data and formats that Meta accepts. Hover over data types to get examples.

The easiest path forward may be to download an example CSV file. Meta provides a link to it, otherwise click here.

Delete any columns that you don’t use and fill in with some data — either some dummy data or a few of your customers. Make sure to use formats that Meta accepts.

Save the CSV. Then click the green “Select CSV File” button.

At the top right, click “Next: Map Data.”

Meta will attempt to map your columns to data they accept. Check to make sure they did so properly. If there’s a column that Meta doesn’t recognize, click it to help map it.

Then select what it should be.

If there’s anything Meta should ignore, select that option.

Then click the blue button at the top right for “Next: Review.”

Hopefully, you don’t have any issues. If you’d like to upload this initial data, click “Start Upload.”

3. Create a Google Sheet

Go to Google Sheets and create a new Sheet. Then paste the columns from the initial CSV. Make sure that you maintain the same format that you used in the original upload.

Do not add any new data to this Sheet until you’ve finished creating your Zap. You’ll then want to update this Sheet whenever you have a new offline customer event that you need to report. That can be done either manually or dynamically using a Zap or some other type of automation.

How you do that is up to you, but I won’t cover it here since there are limitless methods you could do that, depending on your CRM and setup. But you could potentially do it by creating another Zap with Zapier.

4. Create a Zap

Create a Zap where the Trigger event uses Google Sheets and the Action event uses Facebook Offline Conversions.

The “Event” that starts the Zap is “New or Updated Spreadsheet Row.”

Select your Google account. Then select the spreadsheet, specific worksheet, and trigger column. It could look something like this…

If you don’t see the spreadsheet that you created, first make sure that you’re logged into the correct account. Otherwise, click to refresh the data.

Test the trigger to make sure that it brings in data.

The action that you’ll want to perform is “Send Offline Event.”

Select your business account. Then select the Event Set. If nothing appears, don’t panic. This is a known problem that has a workaround.

If you are unable to select your Offline Event Set, go back to Events Manager. At the far right of the Data Sources Overview tab, you should see an Event Set ID that is 15 numerical characters long. Copy that.

Back to Zapier. In the Event Set field, there should be an option to enter custom data. Move to that tab and paste the Event Set ID. It will likely say “No matches found” and a link to use that ID that you pasted. Click that.

Select each of the fields that will pull from your Sheet (examples below are dummy data).

If you don’t provide a date and time, it will default to the time of the Zap. If your sheet is updated in realtime, it’s likely fine to keep that blank.

When you’re done, click “Continue” and test the final step.

Is It Working?

Once your Sheet updates, you should begin to see data in Events Manager. Just know that the date of the data is determined by the date used in your Zap.

You won’t see this data immediately, so don’t panic. It may take 30 minutes or an hour once a Zap runs with new data.

Ads Manager Columns

You’ll want to make sure this new data is reflected in your reporting, where possible. Remember that this will only happen if an offline conversion can be attributed to your ad.

Within Ads manager, click the Columns dropdown and select Customize Columns.

Search for the event that is reflected by your offline activity. Let’s say that it’s a Purchase. When you add Purchases as a column, you can check a box for “Offline purchases.”

That new column will then appear in your reporting.

Optimization

If you want to optimize for an offline event, you can create a custom conversion for it. The easiest way to do this is from the Data Sources Overview screen when viewing your offline event set.

Click the green “Create” dropdown menu at the top right and select Custom Conversion.

The data source should be prefilled. Then select the Event. Finally, you’re required to create a rule for when these events should be included in the custom conversion. If you want it to include all, just create a rule that would automatically include them all — like a purchase value that is more than 0.

Watch Video

I also recorded a video walkthrough on this. You can watch it below…

Your Turn

Do you pass offline events using the Conversions API?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How to Sync Offline Events Using Conversions API appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

5 Most Common Attribution Mistakes Advertisers Make

Jon Loomer — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 22:27:01 +0000

Attribution may be the single most important element of advertising. It not only helps advertisers see what works and what doesn’t by assigning conversion credit to ads, but it impacts optimization and targeting. Get this wrong, and your mistakes spill down through every step of your advertising.

Last week, we covered the most common optimization mistakes that advertisers make. This week, let’s focus on attribution mistakes.

Maybe you are making some of these mistakes. It’s not too late. Make the necessary corrections.

Let’s get to the most common attribution mistakes…

What is Attribution?

First, let’s be clear about what we’re talking about.

Attribution is the ability to give credit to an ad for a conversion. While a simple concept, there are several layers to proper attribution that can impact advertising performance.

When something goes wrong with attribution, it’s due to a failure in one of these areas…

1. Setup. You’ve done everything on the back end to make sure that results are reported accurately and completely.
2. Application. You know how to apply your knowledge of attribution to different optimization strategies.
3. Interpretation. You are able to make meaning of your results.
4. Understanding. You understand how attribution works, it’s strengths, and weaknesses and how that impacts your approach.

Now let’s break down the most common mistakes.

1. Improper or Incomplete Setup of Pixel or Conversions API

Conversion attribution is impossible without first setting up a way for Meta to know how people are engaging with your business away from the Meta family of apps.

This starts with the Meta pixel. It needs to be on every page of your websites. When possible, it needs to be on other websites you don’t own where you sell products.

At one time, setting up the pixel (and events, which we’ll get to in a moment) was enough. But mostly due to privacy laws and weaker tracking, passing first-party data is critical to complete attribution. If you haven’t set up the Conversions API, you are sending incomplete data to Meta.

That could come in two forms:

1. Web API. This is the most common form of the Conversions API. By sending conversion information from the web API in addition to the pixel, you can help fill in blanks where the pixel can fail. There are multiple methods to accomplish this, but I use Stape to set up the API Gateway.

2. Offline or CRM API. If all business is done on your website, the web API may be sufficient. Otherwise, offline leads and purchases need to be passed to Meta via an offline or CRM API. This allows the possibility that you can see when your ads lead to conversions that happen away from your website. Meta can also optimize for these conversions.

2. Failure of Standard Events, Custom Events, and Custom Conversions

Of course, setting up the pixel and Conversions API is half the battle. Make sure you do that. But it’s the events themselves that define when someone performed an important action.

Events help define whether someone performed a purchase, registration, search, or other important action on your website. Custom conversions help provide granularity to your reporting, like the specific product that was purchased.

Failure in this area comes down to three primary things…

1. Misunderstanding their roles and unique purpose. Do you know the differences between standard events, custom events, and custom conversions? Most advertisers don’t, confusing custom events for custom conversions. Advertisers will attempt to use one in place of another. The reality is that you need to use all three.

2. Improper or incomplete setup. Set up standard events for all important actions when possible. Set up custom events for those unique actions that aren’t predefined. Pass the necessary details of these actions via parameters. Create custom conversions to add granularity to your reporting.

3. Over or under reporting. When results are clearly wrong, advertisers are often quick to blame Meta. But start with yourself. The pixel, Conversions API, and events all need to be set up properly to fire on the right page and at the right time. Do this incorrectly, and you may send too many or too few events, which will impact your reporting.

3. Inability to Understand Meaning of Conversion Results

One of the most fundamental failures is misunderstanding your results, how they are calculated, and the context behind different types of attribution.

By default, conversions are counted when someone clicks your ad and converts within seven days or views your ad and converts within a day (without clicking). Far too many advertisers have no idea this is the case. They assume that all reported conversions in the Results column are due to someone clicking their ad and immediately converting.

That conversion may not be immediate. It may happen later that day. It may happen seven days later. Or your customer may not have clicked at all, but they were shown your ad.

Attribution mistakes often come down to misunderstanding that either all conversions are equal or that all conversions of a type (1-day click or 1-day view) are always good or always bad.

Context matters.

If you are an experienced advertiser who appreciates the nuance of the various types of attribution, you regularly use the Compare Attribution Settings feature to see how your results break down. You’ll even add a column for 28-day click, which is otherwise buried.

How many of your conversions are view-through? Depending on what you’re promoting, a high percentage is a red flag. You may want to discount them. Or simply acknowledge that they aren’t as meaningful as the the click-through conversions.

Of course, if you’re selling a product and a high percentage of those view-through conversions are engaged-view (and your ad uses video), you may have more confidence in those numbers.

There’s also the matter of visitors performing a conversion event multiple times, which can lead to the perception of inflated results. This can be addressed with First Conversion reporting.

4. Expecting Google Analytics and Ads Manager to Report the Same

One of the advertiser’s biggest annoyances is a client who insists that Ads Manager reporting is wrong because it doesn’t match up with Google Analytics.

How do you respond?

Meta and GA4 will measure your conversions differently. And frankly, Google has less data than Meta does.

Only Meta has the knowledge that someone saw your ad without clicking prior to converting. And Meta may be better equipped to attribute a conversion to an ad when a customer switches devices or comes back days later to complete a purchase.

It doesn’t matter that you use UTM parameters. This still doesn’t solve for view-through conversions. And it’s unlikely to be enough to help GA4 properly attribute a conversion from Facebook if it happens days after the initial click.

It’s important to use both. Use GA4 with UTM parameters as a second source of information. This can also help you spot problems if you are unable to explain the disparity.

But one isn’t “right.” Neither is perfect. Embrace this.

5. Always Leaving the Attribution Setting at the Default

A big mistake is misunderstanding how the attribution setting applies both to default reporting and optimization for ad delivery.

Once again, the default attribution setting is 7-day click and 1-day view. Not only does that mean that conversions will be reported that happen within that window, but Meta will optimize to show ads to people who are likely to convert within that window as well.

This is important. If you’re optimizing for purchase, a 7-day click and 1-day view attribution setting makes sense. But it may not for any other type of conversion.

You can make the case that a view-through conversion is relevant for purchases. Someone saw your ad. They were interested. But it is a big commitment. They need to discuss with their spouse, business partner, or higher ups. They either go directly to your website or Google your product later that day and convert.

But this explanation for view-through conversions falls flat when discussing the typical lead. If something is free and easy to acquire, it makes very little sense that someone wouldn’t simply act on that ad when they see it.

This also applies to when optimizing for custom events based on engagement actions. These events can happen repeatedly. The result is that Meta can inflate your results by simply displaying ads to people who visit your website regularly. Even if they don’t click.

There is a solution. Edit the attribution setting in these cases to be 1-day click only. Since view-throughs won’t be counted as conversions by default, the algorithm won’t optimize for that type of conversion.

You can still see 1-day view conversions, though. They just aren’t included in the default reporting. Use the compare attribution settings feature to see them. Expect that you’ll get fewer of them when they aren’t included in the ad set attribution setting.

Watch Video

I recorded a video about this, too. Watch it below…

Your Turn

What areas of attribution do you struggle with?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post 5 Most Common Attribution Mistakes Advertisers Make appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

A Guide to Standard Events, Custom Events, and Custom Conversions

Jon Loomer — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 00:59:58 +0000

One of the most critical elements of Meta advertising is the ability to define important actions that happen on your website or your owned properties. Once defined, you can pass that information to Meta for improved attribution, reporting, optimization, and targeting. This is possible with the help of standard events, custom events, and custom conversions.

While foundational, it’s common for this topic to create confusion. I’m hoping to provide some clarity.

In this post, we’ll focus on the following:

Definitions of standard events, custom events, and custom conversions
Examples of each one
Explanations of how they are used
General tips on how they are created
When should you use each?

Let’s go…

Definitions

Let’s provide some basic definitions to help you understand what each of these are and how they’re similar and different.

1. Events: This is how we define an important action. The most common application of events is on our website, though it doesn’t have to be. Someone visited our website and performed a specific action or group of actions that are important to us. That information is shared with Meta to help enhance our advertising.

2. Standard Events: Actions that are predefined by Meta. When you use one of these predefined labels for an action, Meta has an understanding of what that means. You can pass details (parameters) about that action that are relevant to the type of event.

3. Custom Events: Actions that go outside of the predefined standard events. It’s an important action that a specific advertiser wants to track, custom to their needs. Since it is custom, the data Meta has on a custom event is limited to individual websites.

4. Custom Conversions: Map events (standard or custom) to custom conversions to provide granularity for the purpose of reporting or optimization. Custom conversions help answer a question like how many of a specific product were purchased?

Examples

Make sense? Maybe not. Let’s provide some more detail by using examples…

1. Standard Events: There are at least 17 predefined standard events. Here are a few common examples:

Purchase
Add to Cart
Initiate Checkout
Complete Registration
Lead
Search
Contact

When someone purchases a product on your website, the details of that event can be passed to Meta.

2. Custom Events: Since these aren’t predefined, there are limitless possibilities for custom events that fit priorities for each individual website. When possible, you should use standard events because Meta has global data related to those actions that can help with optimization. But, sometimes there are actions that are unique to your website. Here are a few examples of custom events that I use:

1-Minute Time on Page: Fires when someone spends at least one minute on a page
50% Scroll: Fires when someone scrolls at least 50% of the length of a page
Video Watched: Fires when someone starts an embedded YouTube video
Internal Link Click: Fires when someone clicks a link to another page of the website
Bot Click: Fires when someone clicks my bot to begin a conversation with it
Podcast Plays: Fires when someone starts the embedded podcast player that appears on some of my pages
Social Share: Fires when someone clicks one of the social share buttons

3. Custom Conversions: Custom conversions can be used with either standard or custom events (or neither). Using rules, advertisers define a very specific conversion that can be used for reporting and optimization.

Let’s say that you are running a Sales campaign that optimizes for the Purchase standard event. This could be the purchase of any product, regardless of what you are promoting. The results column will include all purchases. If you want to isolate results to the purchase of a specific product, you could create a custom conversion.

How They’re Used

Standard and custom events have the same uses, so we’ll group them together in this section.

1. Standard and custom events: Both of these can aid reporting. Create a column in Ads Manager and you can see how many of that specific event can be attributed to your ads.

Both can also be used for ad set optimization. When using the Website conversion location, you can set conversions as your performance goal. Then, set a specific conversion event for optimization. This allows you to define your goal action so that Meta can make adjustments to delivery to make sure that you get as many of those actions as possible.

And finally, you can create custom audiences based on either standard or custom events. An example would be a custom audience of all people who have completed a purchase during the past 30 days. You could then target or exclude these people in your ad set.

2. Custom Conversions: Recall that custom conversions provide granularity that standard and custom events do not by themselves. So, in addition to having a column in your reporting for all purchases (based on the standard event), you could add a column for the purchase of a specific product (the custom conversion).

And instead of optimizing for the purchase of any product (your standard event), you could optimize your ad set for the purchase of a specific product (the custom conversion). That way, the algorithm knows that only the purchases of that product count towards your goal.

Unlike standard and custom events, custom conversions cannot be used for targeting. The granularity custom conversions provide don’t add any value to custom audiences. You can create a custom audience based on a standard or custom event and add granularity by creating rules.

How They’re Created

Once again, standard and custom events follow similar rules, so we’ll group them together here.

1. Standard and custom events: The most common method of creating standard and custom events is by using code in addition to your Meta pixel. This, of course, would only apply when creating events that fire on your website.

Here’s an example of basic code for a lead…

fbq('track', 'Lead');

You can use my Pixel Event Generator tool to assist with this.

In its most basic form, you’d create a custom event by replacing “Lead” above with an event that Meta won’t recognize — something other than one of the predefined standard events.

This code will typically fire on page load or when a dynamic action (like a button click) occurs. But, there are obviously several potential layers of complexity. While standard events tend to be straightforward in terms of how and when they fire, they sometimes require more complicated solutions.

Meta does offer a no-code option for creating standard events called the Event Setup Tool in Events Manager. It doesn’t offer much customization, so it should only be used in the most basic situations.

Custom events are often much more complicated. I use Google Tag Manager to create mine, which utilizes built-in triggers to track complex actions like scroll depth, time spent, and video plays.

These events aren’t always created with code, of course. You may have a third-party solution that makes the creation of these events easy. You can also pass events via the Conversions API, which could use website, offline, or CRM events. I use Stape to set up the Conversions API Gateway for web events.

2. Custom Conversions: Much easier! The nice benefit of custom conversions is that they don’t require code and they are created within Meta’s interface.

Access custom conversions by going to your Events Manager.

Create a new custom conversion. Pick an action source of either Website or Physical Store.

You can create a custom conversion based on URL alone by leaving Event at All Website Traffic and setting a URL rule. Here’s an example where a custom conversion is defined as a visit to any page of my website that includes “custom-conversions” in the URL…

You can otherwise base it on a custom event (assuming it is found on your website)…

Or a standard event…

And then create a rule based on URL, Referring Domain, or Event Parameters.

When Should You Use Each?

For the purpose of reporting and optimization, you can use any of these three. But understand that this isn’t a matter of only using one or the other. A good strategy utilizes all three.

1. Standard Events: You should prioritize standard events. Make sure that they fire any time one of these predefined actions happens on your website. It’s typically recommended to optimize for standard events rather than custom conversions when you can since the standard event will provide greater volume.

2. Custom Events: Make a list of all important actions that happen on your website. Is there a standard event that can define them? If not, consider setting up custom events. This will allow you to gain reporting and optimization for actions that are unique to your business.

3. Custom Conversions: Create custom conversions whenever you want to gain additional insight into your reporting. If you optimize for Purchases, Meta will report on all purchases in the Results column. If you create a custom conversion for a specific product, you can view how many purchases of that product your ads drove.

It’s common for advertisers to confuse these three. I regularly see the terms custom conversions and custom events used interchangeably, but they have very unique purposes.

Prioritize using standard events. Create custom events when a standard event can’t define an important action. And use custom conversions to add granularity to reporting.

Your Turn

How do you use standard events, custom events, and custom conversions?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post A Guide to Standard Events, Custom Events, and Custom Conversions appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

What Chrome’s Elimination of Third-Party Cookies Means for Meta Advertisers

Jon Loomer — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 22:34:20 +0000

On January 4, Google began its test to phase out third-party cookies, with the completion expected in the second half of 2024. What does this development mean for Meta advertisers?

I am not a cookie expert. I wish I were. But I decided to immerse myself in as much of this cookie news as possible to help understand — both for my advertising efforts and yours — whether this is something to worry about. And if there is, what we should do about it.

There’s a lot happening here. It also appears that there is a reasonable level of unknown as well. I’ll do my best to highlight what is known while also being clear when I’m just not sure — and maybe no one’s sure — about how this will roll out or impact Meta advertisers.

In this post, we’ll cover the following:

What are cookies?
Google’s Tracking Protection and third-party cookie phaseout
Google’s replacement
What Apple and Safari have already done
How this impacts Meta advertisers
What you should do
Remaining questions
Resources

What Are Cookies?

Cookies are small pieces of data or text that are used to store information on web browsers. Their purpose ranges from helpful (keeping you logged in or personalizing your experience on a website) to sinister (digital fingerprinting). And of course, plenty of gray in between.

Also understand that there are first-party and third-party cookies. First-party cookies are stored by the website itself. Third-party cookies are stored by a separate service that tracks users across multiple websites or devices.

The focus here is on third-party cookies. First-party cookies are not currently at risk.

Google’s Tracking Protection

Google’s Tracking Protection initiative is part of their Privacy Sandbox for the Web. The long-term goal is to eliminate all third-party cookies from Chrome browsers by the end of 2024.

On January 4, 2024, Tracking Protection rolled out globally to 1% of Chrome users via desktop and Android as an initial test. While 1% may not sound like much, Gizmodo estimates this is about 30 Million people, with 60% of all internet users on Chrome.

If you are part of this test, you will see the following notification in your browser…

Tracking Protection restricts website access to third-party cookies by default, though with caveats. If Chrome detects that a website requires third-party cookies to function (difficulties loading and displaying content), you may be prompted to temporarily re-enable them.

According to Google’s public timeline, this initial 1% test will run through the first half of the year, with the complete elimination of third-party cookies happening by the end of 2024.

Google’s Replacement

Of course, Google’s not planning to completely eliminate third-party cookies without some sort of replacement. These cookies are important for advertisers and publishers, after all.

Privacy Sandbox for the Web will phase out third-party cookies by using the following (from Google):

Differential Privacy: A system for sharing information about a dataset to reveal patterns of behavior, without revealing private information about individuals or whether they belong to the dataset.

K-Anonymity: A measure of anonymity within a dataset. If you have k=1000 anonymity, you can’t be distinguished from 999 other individuals in the dataset.

On-Device Processing: Computation is performed “locally” on a device (e.g., your phone or computer) without communicating with external servers.

Essentially, the Chrome browser itself will continue to track your online behavior, but the information that it sends to Google or other parties will be anonymized and categorized, rather than hyper specific (for example, you’re interested in baseball, rather than you visited a specific website related to the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers). These cohorts can still be used for targeting (and which targeting we’re actually talking about here, Google or Meta or all targeting, is something I’m not clear about).

What Apple and Safari Have Already Done

If Google’s elimination of third-party cookies sounds a bit like deja vu for Apple users, you’d be forgiven. This is something that Apple has been doing, in one form or another, since at least 2017.

Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) blocks third-party cookies by default from Safari browsers. Of course, Safari makes up about 14% of all browsers. The inclusion of Chrome in this effort would likely be the final step to killing third-party cookies completely.

How This Impacts Meta Advertisers

The answer to this question is why you’re here, and I’d love to say I have a crystal clear directive. That may be partially because I’m not an expert on this topic, but there also seems to be quite a bit that we simply don’t know right now. This clarification is bound to come as data emerges from the initial 1% test.

What’s interesting is that almost all of the response I’ve read regarding the anticipated impact of this change was focused on targeting. I’m not sure if that’s a coincidence or if there will be less impact on attribution and optimization. Because I would assume that if third-party cookies were critical to attribution, that would be the bigger issue here.

Regardless, it would seem that the greatest risk is to anything that relies on third-party cookies. While the Meta pixel does use third-party cookies, it also uses first-party cookies by default (you can turn this off).

Whether first and third-party cookies provide something unique that the other can’t offer to the pixel is unclear. That would certainly add clarity to the impact of this roll-out.

The value of first-party data of all kinds going forward goes up. Which brings us here…

What You Should Do

As I said above, it’s not entirely clear how Chrome’s elimination of third-party cookies will impact Meta advertisers. But there are a couple of things that you should do, if you haven’t already.

1. Enable First-Party Cookies with the Meta Pixel.

Within Events Manager, go to Data Sources and then the Settings tab. There is a section for Cookie Usage.

From that screenshot above:

When first-party cookies are turned on, this provides additional data that helps Facebook deliver relevant ads to people who may be interested in your products or services.

First-party cookies should be on by default. If not, you can edit these settings to turn them on.

NOTE: There may be privacy considerations before turning on first-party cookies. Make sure to read Meta’s guidance on cookie usage here and here.

2. Connect the Conversions API.

We’ve been talking about connecting the Conversions API ever since about 2021 with Apple’s ATT tracking opt-out. It’s becoming more and more critical that you pass first-party data to Meta to be used for ads attribution and targeting. Otherwise, the accuracy gap will widen as third-party data is blocked.

You can pass server-side, first-party conversions data via the API using two different methods.

Conversions API for Web: Pass the same events that are sent from your pixel, but from a dedicated server. One popular solution is the API Gateway. I’ve set up the Gateway using Stape.

Conversions API for CRM: If conversions don’t happen online, another solution for providing a complete picture for attribution is sending the events from your CRM. A common scenario is when you have salespeople who call and close sales, which are marked via CRM tags.

It’s not clear whether these two steps are required to overcome the blockage of third-party cookies, whether they’re necessary, or whether they’ll even help. But until we know more, implementing both first-party cookies for your pixel and the Conversions API are good starts.

I don’t want to minimize the impact of the elimination of third-party cookies on Meta advertisers. At the same time, I’ve yet to see anything definitive that has me particularly concerned.

We’ve already seen the elimination of third-party cookies with Safari. You can turn on first-party cookies with the pixel and pass first-party data with the Conversions API.

Maybe changes will need to be made to the Conversions API and the data passed with the Meta pixel. Maybe publishers will be required to make adjustments to their websites. We’ll undoubtedly know more in the coming months.

But for now, those truly at risk are those who haven’t implemented first-party cookies with the pixel or the Conversions API.

Remaining Questions

As I’ve mentioned a few times, it’s still not clear to me how much these changes will impact Meta advertisers. It’s possible, if not likely, that there is an impact.

Here are some of the questions I’m left with, some which were mentioned throughout the post above…

1. What is the direct impact of eliminating third-party cookies to Meta advertising? The answer is surely found with clarity regarding how Meta is using third-party cookies now.

2. Does turning on first-party cookies for the Meta pixel solve for data that is otherwise lost from third-party cookies? Meta isn’t clear regarding how first vs. third-party cookies are used related to the pixel.

3. Does implementing the Conversions API solve for data that is otherwise lost due to browser cookies being blocked?

4. Will Meta need to make changes to the pixel and/or API related to these updates? Google has their own Attribution Reporting API. There’s also the matter of cohorts and topics for defining online behavior. Will these be used for Meta advertising, too?

5. Will the elimination of third-party cookies impact targeting, optimization, and attribution? Almost everything I’ve read has been focused on targeting. But maybe the reporters assumed that targeting is what matters most.

Resources

I dug through a long list of articles to assemble this blog post. Here’s a collection of resources that you could read to provide additional background.

Watch Video

I also recorded a video to walk through this. Watch it below…

Your Turn

If you’ve read any definitive details (from respected and dependable experts) that help clarify areas where I’m unsure, please provide a link to that information.

How are you preparing for the elimination of third-party cookies?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post What Chrome’s Elimination of Third-Party Cookies Means for Meta Advertisers appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Set Up Meta Conversions API Gateway Using Stape

Jon Loomer — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 16:01:16 +0000

If you run Meta ads that drive people to your website to perform a conversion, you must set up the Conversions API. It allows you to send conversions from your server to Meta, in addition to the conversions sent with the browser pixel (read more about Conversions API here).

There are nearly limitless ways to set up the Conversions API. In some cases, it’s as easy as checking a box. In others, it’s complicated and expensive.

I originally set up the API using the Conversions API Gateway. While it is powerful and dependable, it requires an Amazon server, which can cost upwards of $100 per month. I didn’t think I needed the power this server provided to validate the fee.

I abandoned API Gateway, but I struggled to find a satisfactory replacement. I experimented with Zaraz, but deduplication was an obstacle. I even used the Facebook Pixel Plugin as a stop-gap solution.

I missed an option that was right in front of me the entire time. You can set up the API Gateway using Stape without setting up your own Amazon server.

It gets better. Stape only costs $10 per month for a single pixel, and the setup is so insanely simple that I’m embarrassed it took me this long to do it.

I’m going to lay out every step below in detail. But the truth is that it’s as simple as this:

Sign up for Stape
Click link to accept invitation to set up API Gateway
Create a password for API Gateway
Go through the Meta authorization steps (select your pixel)
Wait up to 30 minutes for data to appear

That’s seriously it. But, let’s provide all of the details including screenshots so that it’s impossible for you to mess it up…

Sign Up for Stape

Go here to sign up for your API Gateway through Stape.

[NOTE: I get nothing for this. I don’t know Stape. I don’t have any type of relationship or agreement with Stape. I’m just sharing this with you because I think it’s valuable.]

Provide the information requested above:

Email
API Gateway Name (whatever you want)
Server location (your country)

Check the box to agree to terms and click “Create.”

2. Set a Stape Password

You’ll receive an email from Stape that looks like this…

Your login is included in the email. Click the button to “Set Password.” It will open a page that looks like this…

Provide your new password twice and click “Save Password.”

3. Select a Stape Subscription

Next, log in and you’ll see your subscription options…

I use the $10 per pixel option. But you can also go with a 7-day trial to test this out before you pay a dollar. You will need to provide a credit card, even if you go with the trial.

Once you’re set up, you’ll see this…

4. Accept API Gateway Invitation

You could simply click that green button at the top of the screen from the previous image that reads “Finish CAPIG Setup.” You will otherwise receive an email invitation from API Gateway that looks like this…

Whether you click the green button or the “Accept Invitation” link in the email, you’ll be directed to the API Gateway login.

Use the same email address as you use with Stape (I haven’t tested this, but that’s what Stape says to do) and set your API Gateway password.

You’ll get a confirmation message that you’re set up and ready to go.

Then log in with your email and password.

5. Add Data Source from API Gateway

You are now in your API Gateway Dashboard! But there won’t be anything there. While in Overview, you’ll see Connected Data Sources at the top.

Click the blue button for “Add data source.”

6. Go Through Meta Authorization Process

You’ll now see the following dialog to connect to Meta.

Click “Get Started.” Then you’ll see this and click “Next.”

Click “Next” again…

Select your Business Manager and click “Next.”

Select your pixel and click “Next.”

You’ll probably want to turn on Advanced Matching (it’s optional) and you can select which parameters to send. Then click “Next.”

Accept these options and click “Next.”

Woo hoo! You’re (almost) all set. Click “Done.”

Finally, check the box to share your user token and click “Confirm.”

7. Wait for Data

You’re not going to see any data at first. It doesn’t matter how much refreshing you do on your website. You might even assume you set it up incorrectly. As long as some pages are loading on your website, just wait.

It can take up to 30 minutes. Eventually, you’ll see at the top that your events are firing.

Scroll down the page and you’ll see the actual events firing.

Verification and Deduplication

If you see events firing in your API Gateway, you should be good to go. But, you can also check the Overview page of your Events Manager.

You may want to wait a day on this one. You can view data from “Today” but the reporting can be quite delayed.

You should see “Multiple” under the Integration column (meaning browser pixel and API). If you expand any event, you should see separate lines for each.

What’s cool about the image above is that you can see the moment I switched to API Gateway. I was passing API events before, but they clearly weren’t as complete as they are now.

Oh, finally, you probably want to know about deduplication. You’re in luck. There’s absolutely nothing that you need to do. These events will automatically be deduplicated.

I know. Such a relief. Deduplication can be an absolute monster.

But that’s it! Conversions API is now set up and should run smoothly. Feel free to bookmark the page for the API Gateway just in case you need to check on it later.

Watch Video Tutorial

I also recorded this step-by-step video tutorial in case you need it. Watch it below…

Your Turn

Have you set up the Conversions API? How did you do it?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Set Up Meta Conversions API Gateway Using Stape appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Meta Conversion Events, Deduplication, and Conflicting Reporting

Jon Loomer — Mon, 24 Jul 2023 18:19:50 +0000

If you dig into your Meta conversion events, you are likely to notice a problem: Conversion event data doesn’t match up. Why?

I’m not talking about your event data matching up with Google Analytics or other third-party reporting tools (these things will never match up). I’m talking about Meta’s own conversion event data not matching up.

You may be surprised to know that this isn’t a bug or a problem. There is a reason for it. And once you understand that reason, your data will make a lot more sense.

Let’s clear this up…

The Conversion Data

First, let’s establish the various pools of conversion data that we’re concerned about here.

1. Standard and custom event data within the Data Sources section of Events Manager
2. Custom conversion mapped to that standard or custom event
3. Ads Manager conversion reporting

These three will almost never match up. For the most astute, it may be obvious why #3 doesn’t match up with #1 or #2.

But, do you understand why the first two won’t match up? The assumption tends to be that Events Manager is over-counting or the custom conversion is restricted by a rule.

That’s not the case…

About Event Deduplication

The primary reason for discrepancies between these three groups is right here: Event deduplication. But it’s not what most people think.

There are actually two different types of deduplication.

1. Browser vs. API Event Deduplication.

In this case, you pass events to Meta from both your browser (using the Meta pixel) and Conversions API. But when you do this, the same event will often get passed from both sources. Instead of counting that event twice, Meta will need to match them up to the same user and deduplicate the events.

This is what most advertisers think of when they hear about event deduplication. But there’s another…

2. Multiple Times From the Same Person.

Meta will also deduplicate events in another scenario.

The above passage comes from Meta’s documentation.

Let’s assume your pixel has sent multiple purchase events from the same person during a short period of time. This might happen if a user refreshes a confirmation page. Or it could happen if you use engagement-based events that can happen multiple times.

In some places, you will see raw event totals prior to deduplication. In others, the data will be cleaned up.

Now, let’s get to what you should expect to see in each of the three locations…

Events Manager Data

The events data that you see in Events Manager is before processing and deduplication of events. It’s the raw total.

In the example above, the event is passed using both the pixel and API. The 80.2k number is likely closer to 40k after deduplicating the browser vs. API events. But it could be even lower than that (it will be) after removing the second form of deduplicated events.

Custom Conversion Mapped to an Event

I created a custom conversion mapped to that same event shown in Events Manager.

Remember that the original number prior to deduplication of any kind was 80.2k. Here, the total number of events is only 18.8k. Why?

You may guess that it’s due to the rule you need to create with custom conversions. It’s not. The rule used will pick up every event fired on the website.

It’s entirely due to deduplication. We can make a couple of logical assumptions…

1. After deduplicating browser and API events, the event total dropped from 80.2k to 40.1k (or so).
2. After deduplicating multiple events from the same user during a short period of time, the event total dropped from 40.1k to 18.8k.

You’re not going to typically see this rate of drop-off due to a user repeatedly performing the same event during a short period of time. But this event is unique in that it can happen many times (and often will).

Ads Manager Reporting

Finally, we have Ads Manager reporting. When you add a column to your report for a specific event, it is very unlikely to match up to Events Manager data or custom conversion data.

The primary reason that it won’t match up with either is that Ads Manager reporting is only for those events that can be attributed to your ads. That’s most obvious.

But even if you are positive that your ads drove 100% of your conversions and they all happened within the Attribution Setting, Ads Manager reporting will be less than Events Manager because it’s after deduplication.

Ads Manager reporting and custom conversion reporting could conceivably be the same if all conversions came from your ads within the Attribution window since both numbers will be after deduplication.

Watch Video

I recorded a video about this, too…

Your Turn

What inconsistencies do you see with your data?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Meta Conversion Events, Deduplication, and Conflicting Reporting appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Testing Zaraz to Set Up Facebook Conversions API

Jon Loomer — Thu, 06 Apr 2023 04:16:59 +0000

I’ve been in search of a Facebook Conversions API alternative to the API Gateway that works seamlessly with Google Tag Manager. I may have found it in Zaraz.

To be clear, the API Gateway works great. But I’ve heard consistently that its AWS hosting prices many small businesses out. Truthfully, I’d love to find a more affordable option myself if it’s available.

Zaraz appears to fit the bill in every way for me. Not only does it utilize triggers in many of the same ways as Google Tag Manager, but it may not cost a thing.

I’m still testing. We’re in the process of figuring out deduplication. But let me explain what excites me about Zaraz…

What is Zaraz?

Zaraz is a third-party tool manager built by Cloudflare. I’m not going to try to explain the technical capabilities of the tool because that’s not my expertise.

What I do know is that among its capabilities is sending web events for Facebook Conversions API. And not only is it built by Cloudflare, but it’s built into it.

In other words, if you already pay for Cloudflare for caching (like I do), you can set up the Conversions API without spending another penny.

Something I didn’t immediately understand is that Zaraz isn’t a replacement for Google Tag Manager’s client-side events. Zaraz will only send the server-side events.

We’ll need to address that later.

Triggers

One of the powers of Zaraz is the triggers. If you’ve created custom events with Google Tag Manager before (one of my absolute favorite things), you’ll be right at home here.

In fact, it’s infinitely easier with Zaraz. Zaraz triggers are based on rules.

Much of this requires some knowledge of CSS. I’m going to skip that and go straight to the easy and powerful stuff.

You can create triggers using a timer. For example, you can have a trigger fire once a visitor has spent 60 seconds on a page.

Or you can create a trigger using scroll depth. For example, fire a trigger when a visitor scrolls at least halfway down a page.

These are two triggers that I use for my “quality traffic” custom events that are set up in Google Tag Manager.

Here’s an example of the scroll depth trigger with Google Tag Manager…

And a timer in GTM…

Events

Once you have your triggers, you can create events in Zaraz. No coding is necessary.

Here’s what it looks like to create an event for a 3 Minute visit on a page that fires when the 3 Minute trigger happens.

That’s it. So incredibly simple.

Testing

I want to make this point quickly because I don’t want anyone to be confused like I was. When you test these events, they will not appear in the Facebook Pixel Helper.

Some people may know that. I took it for granted because when I used the API Gateway, all of the same events were being sent both client-side and server-side. So, I didn’t realize that only the client-side events appeared.

To test server-side events, you’ll need to go to the Testing area of Events Manager.

Deduplication

As mentioned at the top, events created with Zaraz will only be server-side (API). You will need another method for managing client-side to fire pixel events. I use Google Tag Manager.

Since events will fire from both locations independently, we are presented with an issue. If a 50% scroll depth event fires from Zaraz and from Google Tag Manager for the same scroll from the same user, how does Facebook know that it’s the same event?

First, you could theoretically run most of your events server-side and only use Google Tag Manager for events that Zaraz can’t create. I wouldn’t consider myself an expert on this, but my understanding is that Zaraz can’t replicate events I’ve created in Google Tag Manager for plays of my podcast player or embedded YouTube videos.

That’s not necessarily the best practice, though. If possible, you want to send the event both server-side and client-side and then deduplicate them.

I have Joel Hughes and his team from Glass Mountains helping me with that part of it (strong recommendation if you need their help). The solution appears to be related to an external_id and other technical stuff that is way over my pay grade.

Once I get that sorted out, I will provide details on how deduplication was accomplished so that you can do it, too.

Watch Video

I recorded a video about this, too. Check it out below…

Your Turn

Have you experimented with Zaraz? What do you think?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Testing Zaraz to Set Up Facebook Conversions API appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

How to Set Up Conversions API with Facebook for WordPress Plugin

Jon Loomer — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 20:57:09 +0000

The easiest way to set up Conversions API is with the Facebook for WordPress plugin. And it also just happens to be free.

(If you need background on the Conversions API and why you need to set it up, make sure to check out this explainer.)

These are two major barriers for any publisher wanting to set up the Conversions API. Many of the options come with a monthly cost (like the API Gateway). Setting it up manually or with Google Tag Manager is also technical and complicated (at least if you’re not super technical yourself).

The truth is that I attempted to use the Facebook for WordPress plugin originally, and let’s get this out of the way first. It’s not a very good plugin. It’s clunky. It has very little value, and you are unlikely to use it for what Facebook seems to want you to use it for (apparently monitoring and setting up Facebook ad campaigns from your website??).

And actually, one reason that I originally abandoned the plugin is that I didn’t even realize it was connecting the API when it was. It’s just not the cleanest piece of design, but that doesn’t really matter.

If all you want is a simple solution that doesn’t cost anything, you are in luck.

Set Up the Plugin

First, go to your Events Manager. After selecting your pixel as the data source, go to the Settings.

Select the option to Choose a Partner.

Select WordPress. You will then be taken through the steps of the install.

Go to the Plugins menu of your WordPress website and click to “Add New.” Search “Facebook for WordPress” (you can also download it here). Then install and activate the plugin.

After activated, head over to the plugin’s settings and click “Get Started.”

You’ll need to log into your Facebook account.

You’ll then need to select your Business Manager, Facebook Page, Instagram Profile, Ad Account, and pixel.

I keep “Manager Your Business” on, but I’m not sure whether turning it off would impact access to connecting the API.

Here’s the important part. You may need to refresh your WordPress page to see this…

The token is what’s used for the API. You’ll want to check this box.

After you confirm, go ahead and refresh the page again (yeah, not particularly dynamic). You should then see a box checked that you’re sending web events using the Conversions API.

You’re done!

What Will Happen Now?

Yes, that’s it. You don’t need to set up new events. Facebook will merely use your current pixel and any events you’ve set up and also send events via a server.

In other words, I hope you’ve already set up standard and custom events to track important actions on your website. Connecting the API will then piggyback off of those events.

Facebook will then receive two sets of events from you: 1) from your browser and 2) from your server. Facebook will then deduplicate those events so that nothing is counted twice.

Confirm It’s Working

You’ll need to resist the urge to immediately check on whether events are sent using the API. It may not show up for a few hours. I’d wait a day. And, of course, what you see may depend upon the amount of traffic you get and the events you’ve set up.

Then go to your Events Manager again and select the pixel as your event source. The column for Connection Method should include both Browser and Server.

If you only see Browser, it could be because that event has not happened yet since you connected the API.

Once you see the Server is sending events, that’s it! There’s really nothing left for you to do.

Your Turn

There may be some advantages for using the more technically sophisticated (and expensive) options, but this is a simple and free approach that will get you off the ground.

Have any questions? Let me know in the comments below!

The post How to Set Up Conversions API with Facebook for WordPress Plugin appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Create a Facebook Ads Audience Based on Event Frequency

Jon Loomer — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 19:00:56 +0000

You may want to target your most valuable website visitors with Facebook ads. One way to do this is by creating an audience based on event frequency.

While targeting the broadest audience possible is popular these days, there are absolutely times to consider targeting a smaller, more valuable audience, too. When you do, this is the type of targeting that you should use.

In this post, we’ll walk through how to isolate your audience based on the frequency of events executed. But, I’ll also give you the tools to dig deeper and create audiences based on event parameters.

Create a Website Custom Audience

To isolate those most valuable website visitors, of course, you’ll need to create a Website Custom Audience.

For the source, select your pixel…

While the pixel has become less reliable over the years due to iOS 14+ and browser restrictions, this should also capture web events fired from the API. Facebook isn’t perfectly clear on this point, but it would be consistent. When you set up the API for web events, you need to first select the pixel that those events are based on. And there’s no way — that I’m aware of, at least — to create an audience based only on API web events.

Select an Event

Next, select an event under “From your Events.”

If you want to create an audience of frequent website visitors, you can select the PageView event.

Other events advertisers are most likely to use would be the Purchase or CompleteRegistration events. What you use here depends on what type of audience you’re trying to create.

We’ll walk through a few examples during this post.

Set a Frequency for PageView Event

Before we get to this, you would set a retention. I’d recommend using the largest retention possible for most advertisers since this is going to shrink your audience. In that case, use 180 days (but feel free to use whatever works for you).

After setting the retention, click the “Refine by” drop-down menu. If you’re creating an audience based on the PageView event, select “Frequency” (options will look different for other events and we’ll get to that next).

The default set-up here is a frequency greater than or equal to 2.

This is a really good place to start as it will eliminate people who viewed only one page of your website. Feel free to increase the number, but know that the audience size will shrink with each increase.

A key point to understand is that this measures the number of times the PageView event fired. So, technically, it could be the same page multiple times or several unique pages.

Set a Frequency for Other Events

You could also create an audience based on the frequency of purchases, searches, registrations, or other events. When creating an audience based on one of these events, you’ll see options for “URL/Parameter” and “Aggregated Value.”

Select the “Aggregated Value” option and the default option will be “Frequency.”

Parameters and Other Examples

You can also get way into the weeds on various audiences you can create based on some of your events using parameters, whether it’s for standard or custom events.

I go into additional detail in a recent blog post covering the 10 website custom audience strategies that I use. Take a look!

Your Turn

Do you have other examples of ways that you’ve used this type of targeting?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Create a Facebook Ads Audience Based on Event Frequency appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Custom Facebook Web Events That I Use

Jon Loomer — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 19:00:14 +0000

If you’re serious about ads measurement and retargeting, you need to use custom Facebook web events. In this post, I’ll give you the specific custom web events I use and why. I hope that this may give you some ideas for what you can do, too.

Note that I’m being careful to say “custom web events” rather than “custom pixel events.” What I’m describing will apply to all web events, using the pixel or Conversions API.

Web events are actions that Facebook tracks so that you can see them in your reporting, optimize for the action, or even target the people who performed them.

While you’ve likely heard of Facebook web events before, they can be either “standard” or “custom.”

Standard Events

If you have Facebook events firing on your website, it’s likely that you use standard events. These are the web actions that fit nicely in a box that Facebook makes available to everyone. Examples include Purchase, CompleteRegistration, ViewContent, Search, AddToCart, Lead, Contact, and more.

Whenever possible, you should use standard events that represent actions taken on your website. This will help you measure when people you target purchase a product, register for a free thing, or something else that fits within such events.

The advantage of standard events is that if you optimize for a Purchase event, for example, Facebook can find people who have fired that same event but on other websites.

My website utilizes the following standard events:

Purchase
CompleteRegistration
Search
ViewContent

I use InitiateCheckout in some cases, but not consistently across all products.

What Are Custom Events?

In some cases, though, you may want to track, optimize for, or target people based on a completely different event. This is where custom events come into play.

While standard events are typically very easy to set up and often fire due to a page loading or button clicked, custom events can be a bit more complicated. They often need hooks into triggers like media players, timers, scroll, or more that can indicate your desired event has occurred.

I should note that I use Google Tag Manager to manage my events. I’d like to say that there’s one, uniform (and easy) way to set up these events, but it’s going to depend on the platform you use. In some cases, it becomes very technical, and additional coding is required (coding that is above my pay grade).

Let’s go through the various custom events that you can find on my website…

Custom Web Events for Quality Traffic

My website is central to my business and funnel. I publish content to attract people into my funnel with the hopes of getting people added to my email list who will eventually buy from me.

As a result, I care about the quality of traffic that comes here. I have several events firing that help me understand whether paid traffic was actually quality or empty clicks. Not only can I view these events in my reporting, but I can then target these people who are more likely to be highly engaged.

1. Time on Page: This event utilizes a timer trigger in Google Tag Manager. I’ve used variations of this during the past couple of years, but now I have it fire when a user spends one minute and then two minutes on a page. I initially had it set up to fire in 30-second intervals. You can read my blog post for details about how this works.

2. Scroll Depth: This is another event that utilizes a built-in trigger in Google Tag Manager, this time for scroll depth. You can customize how deep on a page someone needs to scroll before firing an event, and you can technically have it fire multiple times. Once again, I’ve used variations of this, but I now have it fire only when someone scrolls at least 70% within a page. This blog post explains how it works.

3. Time + Scroll: I call this the “Quality Visitor” event. While it’s nice to spend two minutes or scroll 70% on a page, I’ve also created an event that requires that you do both before it fires. I originally had it fire at one minute, but I’ve realized that two minutes is more indicative of a quality visit. Read here about creating this “ultimate” event for traffic quality.

4. Page Views Per Session: This was inspired by an experiment I ran optimizing for scroll depth while targeting a cold audience was failing to provide any type of conversion (even Search or CompleteRegistration). Another signal that could indicate a quality visit is viewing multiple pages during a single session. I create a custom conversion to isolate those who fire this event at least two times in a session.

5. Page Views Per User: While the above event is good for isolating quality visits, I can also isolate quality visitors who fire the Page Views Per User event multiple times, even if not during the same session. This, too, requires a custom conversion to focus on the number of times this fires.

Custom Web Event for Video Watched

I haven’t embedded YouTube videos often on my website, but when I do I have an event that fires when people play that video. Since GTM and YouTube are both Google products, there’s a trigger available for YouTube video plays. I fire an event when someone starts a video, watches 50%, and finishes the video.

You can read my blog post on how to set these events up in Google Tag Manager here.

I’m actually looking into adding an event for Vimeo videos as well since I use Vimeo quite a bit. This is a resource I’m looking at to get that done.

Custom Web Event for Audio Player Clicked

You may know that I recommitted to my podcast in November of last year, which makes this new event so important.

I have an audio player embedded at the top of many blog posts (this is becoming a more consistent part of my strategy), and I also have players embedded across the Pubcast section of my website. I started to realize how important it was for me to know when people click to play those episodes, both for Ads Manager results and remarketing possibilities.

Well, the solution is very technical (a member of my time applied it and tried to explain what he did, but it’s way over my head!). But, it fires every time someone starts an audio player.

Test It!

I encourage you to test these events out yourself. If you use a Chrome browser, add the Facebook Pixel Helper plugin. Then, perform some of the events I describe above based on time spent, scroll depth, audio players played, or any of the others. As you perform those events, you’ll see them appear within the Helper plugin.

What Should You Do?

I wouldn’t recommend you necessarily create the same events I do. The events you use will depend upon what’s important to your business.

Ask yourself:

What is important to you?
What actions are people performing on your website that you aren’t tracking?
What would be valuable to track in your Ads Manager reports?
What would be valuable to TARGET based on these actions?

If you use Google Tag Manager, here’s a resource that I used to get started.

Watch the Video

Your Turn

What custom Facebook web events do you use?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Custom Facebook Web Events That I Use appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Importance of the Facebook Conversions API

Jon Loomer — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 19:00:18 +0000

The Facebook Conversions API has been a popular topic for the past year or so. While most marketers understand that they need it, most misunderstand the reason why.

Let’s clear up the following:

What the Facebook Conversions API is
Why it’s important
Whether it’s helpful for iOS 14 data loss
How to get it set up

Let’s go…

What is the Facebook Conversions API?

Look, as much as I’d like to be, I’m not a super nerdy, techy, programmer guy. I’m going to explain this in only the most basic terms — mainly because I understand it in the most basic terms.

The Conversions API creates a direct connection between your data and Facebook. This helps provide a conversions source in addition to the pixel and offline methods.

Consider the API something of a backup plan for sending web events. Those web events can be used for conversion attribution and reporting, optimization, and targeting.

Why the API is Important

The Facebook pixel was one of the most impactful developments of the past decade for advertisers. It’s certainly been huge for my advertising.

The problem is that the pixel is getting less and less reliable. Its ability to send event data to Facebook is interrupted by cookie blockers, loading errors, and connection problems.

It doesn’t mean that you should use the Conversions API instead of the Facebook pixel. If you use them both, you’re more likely to send Facebook a complete set of data. If Facebook doesn’t have the complete picture, it will negatively impact the platform’s impression of performance.

Consider this: If Facebook doesn’t have all of the event data, it may make it more difficult for your ad set to exit the learning phase. It may lead Facebook to incorrectly favor one ad set over another or one ad over another. Accurate attribution is important.

Adding the API leads to improved reporting, more complete custom audiences, and better optimization. And given the trend of ad blocking and browser privacy changes, we can expect the pixel to get less useful in the future — making the API even more important.

The API, iOS 14 and Data Loss

The Facebook Conversions API started getting more popular once changes related to iOS 14 were first announced. And Facebook confused matters more by recommending the API during this time.

The problem is, though, that the Facebook Conversions API has to follow the same rules for web events that the pixel does for sending data. If someone opts out of tracking, the API will be impacted in the same ways the pixel is.

Again, though, that doesn’t mean the API isn’t important. If you’re getting fewer conversions reported due to iOS 14, that just makes it more important that Facebook gets as many of the events that it can to report on what it can.

It won’t solve problems related to iOS 14, but the Facebook Conversions API will help improve your reporting that is unaffected by iOS 14.

How to Set it Up

Of course, there isn’t a single method for setting up the Facebook Conversions API. And in most cases, it’s not a simple task (there are exceptions!). It depends largely upon how you’re managing your pixel right now.

Within the Events Manager for your pixel, scroll down to Conversions API.

Click to choose a partner. There are several potential integration partners that you can pick from.

Depending on the partner, the instructions for setting up the API will be different. In some cases, it may be just a matter of a few clicks (the rumor is that Shopify and WooCommerce are very easy). In others, it may require some technical assistance.

I used the Conversions API Gateway to set it up. I wouldn’t say it was easy, but it was finally a solution that allowed me to get the process completed. For the longest time, I ran into hurdles.

Read my tutorial on how I set up the Conversions API Gateway.

Other Uses of the API

Beyond sending web events, you can also send offline events or integrate your CRM. The CRM integration, at least for now, is being used by Facebook for Conversion Lead optimization when running Facebook lead ads. I’ll cover that in more detail later.

Watch Video

Your Turn

Do you have the Conversions API set up? What method did you use? Are you seeing an improvement in performance as a result?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Importance of the Facebook Conversions API appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

How to Set Up Facebook Conversions API Using Conversions API Gateway

Jon Loomer — Wed, 24 Nov 2021 19:09:32 +0000

The Facebook Conversions API allows marketers to send a direct connection of conversion data from their business (website and offline conversion events) to Facebook. This data combines with Facebook pixel data to improve conversion tracking, optimization, and targeting capabilities. You can set this up using the Conversions API Gateway.

The truth is that every online business is set up differently. If you want to select from current Facebook Conversion API partners, you get 11 options.

And if you use a third-party tool to manage your Facebook pixel, they may also provide a Conversions API solution.

But considering the limitless options that make the set-up process so confusing for businesses everywhere, there’s one solution that should work for most businesses: The Conversions API Gateway.

Facebook says the Conversions API Gateway may be for you if:

You’re already using the Facebook pixel.
You’re not sending the web events using the Conversions API yet.
Your monthly expense to optimize for web events is more than $2K.
You’re not working with an eCommerce partner such as Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and others.

I can tell you it is for me. I spent months trying to find a reliable solution without success. The Conversions API Gateway ~~is relatively easy~~ ~~is straightforward~~ won’t make you want to break things. It’s not an easy, out-of-the-box, low-tech option. But, you can do it.

I’m going to show you how…

My Situation

I use Google Tag Manager to manage my Facebook pixel. There is now a GTM-specific solution for the Conversions API, but we actually found that more confusing. And I wanted to use a solution that would help more people, not just those using GTM.

The nice thing about the API Gateway is that you don’t need to create new events specifically for it. The Gateway automatically detects the events that you are already using for your pixel. Other solutions I tried wouldn’t recognize the events I created from a different tool, and I had to recreate them as a result (often leading to duplication issues).

Let’s get to it…

Create an AWS Account

My mistake when setting this up for the first time was that I followed instructions that assumed I already had an AWS account. I did not.

If you already have an AWS account, you’re golden. If you don’t, go here.

You set up an account for free. Monthly costs will apply based on usage levels. If you really want to crunch the expected costs, you can use the AWS calculator.

It’s not going to cost much for most businesses. If it does, you can probably afford the added costs.

Get Started

From your Events Manager, select the pixel that is associated with the business you want to connect to the Conversions API. Then go to the Settings tab and click “Choose a Partner” under Conversions API.

Select Conversions API Gateway.

Next, you’ll get a screen that looks like this…

Under “Enter a domain,” enter all of the domains of your business’s website. This should include all variations and subdomains. Whether or not you use “www” matters here. Go to your homepage and copy the URL to confirm.

Next, you’ll need to provide a subdomain to act as the web address of the server.

If you aren’t technical, this isn’t as scary as it sounds. This page doesn’t exist yet. We’ll get to that. It could be something like capi.mydomain.com.

Now, you’ll need to choose a deployment method.

I’m not really sure what the invitation code is. So, if you have one, enter that. If you’re like the rest of us, choose the option for selecting a hosting region.

The region you select should be whatever is closest to you. It’s not as complicated as it may seem.

Click “Begin deployment.”

AWS Stack Configuration

You should now be redirected to AWS. This is why it’s important to create your AWS account first. It assumes you have one.

After you log in, set an API admin email and password. You can change the Stack Name if you want, but don’t mess with anything else. You should be fine with the t3.large Instance Type.

Click “Create Stack” to start the good stuff.

Stack creation might take five minutes or so.

The Outputs tab will be blank before it’s done.

Once complete, you’ll get CallToAction and ConversionsAPIGatewayInstanceURL keys on the Outputs tab (we’ll use these soon). You’ll also get a Create Complete status on the Stack Info tab.

Set Up your DNS

What this step looks like will depend upon your DNS provider.

Back on the Outputs tab of your AWS stack, refer to the CallToAction line. Under the “Value” column, there should be the following instructions:

“On your DNS provider, create an A record to associate [your subdomain] with XX.XX.XXX.XXX.”

You’ll need to grab that IP address and update the A record in your DNS. Also, add the subdomain you’ve defined as your Conversions API Gateway Endpoint.

There are lots of options for DNS management, so refer to your provider. Here are a few options:

Finish Up in Events Manager

Once you’re done updating the DNS, you’ll need to head back to Events Manager. You may recall that we were still in the middle of set-up within Events Manager when we began deployment at the end of the “Get Started” step. Head back there and click “Next.”

If the DNS was set up correctly, you’ll see that on the next screen.

If not, you may just need to wait a bit longer. If necessary, check with your DNS provider.

Once Facebook confirms it’s been set up successfully, click “Next.”

To finish your setup, click the green “Go to console” button.

Open the Conversions API Gateway Admin UI Site

Facebook should redirect you to your previously created subdomain (it may have been something like capi.mydomain.com).

If provisioning is finsihed, you should see a login screen like this…

If this page doesn’t appear, the provisioning may not be completed (see the next step below). Otherwise, log in with the email and password you established in the AWS Stack Configuration step.

You probably won’t see any data when you access this site for the first time. It may take up to a couple of hours to build. Eventually, it should look something like this…

You should start seeing your API events populate. You’ll only see those events that have occurred since the connection was provisioned.

Complete Provisioning

You can check on the progress of provisioning by heading back to the Output tab in your AWS stack. In the ConversionsApiGatewayInstanceURL row, there is a URL within the Value column. Click that (you may want to open a new tab/window so you aren’t redirected from AWS).

It will look like this…

Facebook says it should take about 15 minutes for the provisioning to complete. However, I’ve seen it take hours. In my experience, Facebook will detect the DNS update, but the provisioning remains ongoing and unfished for a while longer. This may be because I am located on the other side of the ocean from where the people are who update the DNS (I’m no expert on this).

When it’s done, you’ll get a “provisioning finished” message.

Events Manager Reporting

Once data has come in for a while from the API, you should start to see it reflected in Events Manager.

The Connection Method should include Browser • Server instead of Browser only.

If that info is coming in, you’re good to go!

Your Turn

Have you set up your Facebook Conversions API yet? What method did you use?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How to Set Up Facebook Conversions API Using Conversions API Gateway appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.