Custom Events 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.

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.

Verify Your Custom Website Events

Jon Loomer — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 14:51:41 +0000

If you use custom events, you need to read this. Go to your Events Manager, and you may see this message to “Verify your custom website event(s).”

The process isn’t difficult, but the question is… Why?

Let’s discuss…

What Are Custom Events?

First, a quick explanation. Not to be confused with custom conversions, custom events are conversion events (often on your website) that fall outside of Meta’s predefined standard events.

When someone performs these events, data is sent to Meta that can be used for ads reporting, optimization, and targeting.

Verify Your Events

As I write this, the requirement to verify custom events is rolling out. There are some minor differences in parameters during this initial rollout and what you’ll likely see after January of 2024.

That alert reads:

As part of Meta’s continuous system improvements, you must complete a one-time verification of custom website event(s) to confirm you intended to send the event to us. Unverified events will be discarded.

If you don’t see this at the top of your Events Manager, you may also see it on your Account Overview. You may also see a red notification alongside the events that need to be verified on the Overview page. If you don’t use custom events or you’ve already verified your events, you shouldn’t see the message at all.

When you click the “Verify” button, you’ll get a list of custom events to verify…

Verifying means that you intended to send a specific event to Meta. My list does include events that I don’t recognize. It’s possible they were created by my dev team or they are somehow related to GA4. And there’s also the infamous “_missing_event” event.

Instead of going through this list, it may actually make more sense to go to the bottom half of the Events Manager Overview page and filter only your custom events during the past 28 days. There should be red notifications next to the events that need to be verified.

Once you expand the event, you’ll see the “Verify Event” button.

I found that the list at the top includes a bunch of events that I don’t use anymore. They’re either old and have been replaced or I set them up as a test. There are others that I don’t recognize at all. After that, whether or not you verify will be a personal choice.

There’s also a due date. All of my custom events have a verification due date for this initial rollout of January 16 at 11pm. As far as I’ve been able to confirm so far, this is the same due date that others have as well (date and time adjusted for time zone).

Once you create new custom events after this initial phase is complete, you will have 30 days since your event was first received to verify or it will be discarded.

How Verification Works

Here is Meta’s explanation of custom event verification:

Custom website events need to be verified in Meta Events Manager within 30 days of first being received. This is a one-time verification process to confirm that you intended to send the custom website event to us and usually allows you to use your events for advertising purposes such as in ad campaigns, custom conversions, custom audiences and lift studies. You don’t need to verify standard website events.

This doesn’t make a ton of sense based on the current process, but that could be because the process is changing.

We’ve never needed to verify custom events before. They were immediately available for use in ad campaigns, custom conversions, and custom audiences (I can’t confirm about lift studies). According to the passage above, that won’t be the case.

It doesn’t look like this will be enforced until the first due dates expire. At that point, when Meta receives a new custom event, you will be required to verify it — presumably before using it in ad campaigns, custom conversions, custom audiences, and lift studies. We can assume that the event will not be selectable as a conversion event in the ad set or within either custom conversions or custom audiences.

One question I’ve had is what will happen after the due date expires. My assumption is that if it hasn’t been used during the past 30 days, it will disappear from the verification list. If you’re still sending the event, I hope that you’ll get another alert to verify it again.

Otherwise, I don’t know how else to account for Meta just saying a custom event is “discarded.” You can’t ever use it again? If you want to, you just… can’t? If that were the case, you’d have to change the name of the event and start over again (which seems unnecessary).

But Why?

I’ve gotta be honest, I’m not particularly clear about why this is necessary. What problem does it solve? Are unauthorized third parties sending rogue custom events against your pixel? If they are, what’s the damage that this could cause?

The only potential benefit that comes to mind is related to the issue of custom events not appearing as selectable metrics when using columns until you’ve used them as optimization events. I even recorded a video on this recently.

Maybe, once you verify an event, it’s immediately available within your metrics — rather than requiring you to first optimize for it. That would make sense.

Maybe this is just about cleanup. Meta wants to discard data that isn’t used or needed anymore. And by verifying, you make it clear that you actually want to use an event.

Otherwise, I’m struggling to make sense of why this is necessary. But, I do know this: Some advertisers are going to miss the memo, and they are going to be confused when reporting stops and they can’t use the events like they normally do.

Watch Video

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

Your Turn

Have you received this alert? How are you deciding which custom events to verify?

Let me know in the comment below!

The post Verify Your Custom Website Events appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Differences Between Custom Events and Custom Conversions

Jon Loomer — Thu, 05 Oct 2023 02:03:37 +0000

Meta advertisers have plenty to get confused about. But one of the most common points of confusion I see is understanding the differences between custom events and custom conversions.

This became especially obvious recently as I’ve written more about custom events. So many advertisers either think I’m discussing custom conversions or use the two terms interchangeably.

There are some similarities between the two. But there are also some very distinct differences. By the end of this post, I’ll also walk you through specific situations when you’d use each.

Let’s clear up the confusion…

An Initial Note

Whether we’re talking about custom events or custom conversions, we’re highlighting important actions performed by our customers. While these actions can technically happen away from your website, our focus today on conversions and events are those that happen there.

You will need to utilize the pixel and/or Conversions API to define these actions.

Custom Events

To understand custom events, we first need to define “standard events.” Standard events are predefined actions that occur on your website. In order to pass standard events back to Meta, you’ll need to utilize the Meta pixel or Conversions API (or both). You can then add standard events using separate event code or the Event Setup Tool.

Examples of standard events include Purchase, Lead, Search, Add to Cart, Initiate Checkout, and Complete Registration. Since Meta supports these specific events that all advertisers can use, Meta has access to global data about the people who perform those actions.

Custom events work like standard events, but they go beyond the predefined terms. You would create a custom event when a standard event doesn’t accurately reflect the action that you want to track.

You name the event and decide on the trigger action that results in that custom event. In some cases, additional programming is necessary or access to a third-party tool that utilizes built-in triggers. I use Google Tag Manager to manage my pixel, which helps me create custom events that fire based on a timer (how long someone spends on a page), scroll depth, engagement with embedded YouTube videos, and more.

Standard events are limited to the predefined events that Meta makes available. Custom events are limited only by your imagination and ability to create them.

Are they used for reporting?

Yes. I add columns to my Ads Manager reporting for my custom events.

In order for custom events to be available for this purpose, you first need to optimize for the event at least once.

Are they used for optimization?

Yes. Custom events can be useful for creative optimization options when Meta’s default optimization isn’t good enough.

An example is when your goal is to drive quality traffic to your website (without a purchase or lead as an immediate goal). If you run a Traffic campaign, your primary options are to optimize for Link Clicks or Landing Page Views.

Unfortunately, this approach notoriously leads to low-quality results. Meta will get you lots of link clicks or landing page views, but these people rarely do anything else.

Custom events allow you to define that “something else” for the algorithm so that it is seen as the measure for success. I’ve created custom events for many actions that provide signals for deep engagement with my content. I can then create an Engagement campaign using the Website conversion location and select one of these custom events as my performance goal.

This event will then be used as the determinant metric for success, which should lead to more quality traffic than if you optimize for link clicks or landing page views.

Are they used for targeting?

Yes. You can create a website custom audience that is based on people who performed your custom event.

You can create a website custom audience to target all people who perform that custom event generally. You can also refine it by URL or parameters (if you pass them) to help focus on a specific segment of people who performed this event. Examples include people who engaged with a specific embedded YouTube video on your website or spent at least 1 minute on a specific page.

Custom Conversions

Custom conversions do not require code and are created within the Events Manager interface.

They require an active pixel on your website, though you can technically create custom conversions based on website or physical store activity.

By default, custom conversions are based on all URL traffic, and you define them with URL rules.

You can also map your custom conversion to a specific standard or custom event.

You could then create rules based on URL, referring domain, or parameters to segment people who performed that event.

Are they used for reporting?

Yes. You can add custom conversions as columns to your Ads Manager.

Are they used for optimization?

Yes. You can select custom conversions among conversion events when utilizing a Website conversion location.

Are they used for targeting?

No. You cannot create a website custom audience based on a custom conversion.

Similarities

I’d understand if you are still confused. We’ll take this slowly.

There are two primary ways that custom events and custom conversions are similar…

1. Both used for conversion reporting. You can add both custom events and custom conversions as columns to your Ads Manager.

2. Both used for conversion optimization. When using an objective (Sales, Leads, or Engagement) that utilizes the Website conversion location, you can select either custom events or custom conversions as your conversion event that determines optimization.

Differences

There are some primary differences that separate custom events and custom conversions.

1. Code vs. no-code. Custom conversions don’t require any code. You build them based on rules within the Events Manager interface. Custom events typically require extra event code that is added to your website.

2. Rules vs. custom triggers. Custom conversions are built using rules based on URL or the event fired. You’re limited to those parameters. Custom events allow you to track virtually any important action using custom triggers. I use Google Tag Manager, which has some of these triggers built-in.

3. Targeting. If you want to run ads to target people who performed your custom event — or a Lookalike Audience based on it as a source — you can do that. You can’t do either with custom conversions.

When to Use Custom Conversions vs. Custom Events

First, understand that this isn’t an either/or situation. While custom conversions are easier to set up, you wouldn’t create custom conversions instead of custom events. You should create both custom events and custom conversions. So, when are specific examples of times you should use one over the other?

We’ve already talked about targeting. Of the two, you can only use custom events as the source of a website custom audience. So, this is really a matter of optimization and reporting.

The key is that a custom event, by itself, tracks all people who perform that specific action. But there are many ways that you can segment the people who performed those actions — in particular, by URL and parameter.

You’ll recall that custom conversions can be mapped to custom events. There’s really no reason to create a custom conversion mapped to a custom event unless you segment people by URL or parameter. And that’s where the value lies.

Let’s use a specific example. You’ve created a custom event for VideoWatched, which fires when someone plays an embedded YouTube video on your website. With that custom event, parameters are passed for the title of the video and percentage watched.

You can add a column for the VideoWatched custom event, but all VideoWatched events will show up in your reporting, regardless of the specific video played or how much of a video was watched.

You could create a custom conversion that tracks views of a specific video and then add a column for it. You could also create a custom conversion that segments only those people who fired the VideoWatched event and watched at least 50% of a video. Then add a column for that, too, to highlight the high-quality views.

Same goes for optimization. Let’s use the 50% VideoWatched example here, too. You could choose to use VideoWatched as your optimization event, and that may work just fine. But if you use the custom conversion that requires people to watch at least 50% of your video, the algorithm may be more focused on accomplishing that goal.

Also keep in mind that a custom conversion can be mapped to standard events for this same purpose. You’d use the standard event to report on or optimize based on all Purchases, for example, but the custom conversion could isolate the purchase of a specific product — or purchases over a certain dollar amount.

Master Custom Events

Custom events are one of my absolutely favorite advertising tools. I tracked 18 custom events on my website during the past month. Needless to say, it’s something I’m passionate about!

If you want to take your usage of custom events to the next level, sign up for my Custom Event Mastery training course. There are 24 lessons in all, and I’ll walk through how to create specific custom events as well as how to leverage them.

Your Turn

How do you use custom events and custom conversions?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Differences Between Custom Events and Custom Conversions appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Hidden Advantages of Custom Events to Meta Advertisers

Jon Loomer — Tue, 26 Sep 2023 02:03:18 +0000

I’ve used custom events for years now, and it’s always felt like a secret underworld of Meta advertising. It’s as if custom events are seen as being too complicated to even bother, if advertisers know about them at all. But the advantages are undeniable.

In this post, you’ll learn:

What custom events are
How I add custom events
Examples of custom events
Benefits of custom events

Buckle up, this is a good one…

What Are Custom Events?

The best way to explain custom events is by defining some basic Meta ads conversion terminology.

1. Events. Events (or conversion events) are important actions that happen on your website, in your store, or in your CRM. You send event information with your pixel data to Meta, for example, and highlight events to signify, “HEY! This is an important thing that I care about.”

NOTE: We’ll focus on the pixel applications of custom events in this post.

2. Standard Events. Standard events are the predefined actions that fit within a universal category. Examples include Purchase, Lead, Search, and Complete Registration. Meta has lots of data on these actions because advertisers around the world use standard events to define important actions.

3. Custom Events. Custom events are important actions that fall outside of Meta’s predefined standard event categories. We’ll get to examples of these in a moment, but you define and name them yourself. It could be an action like scrolling down a page, engaging with a specific piece of media, or clicking on a certain image or button.

4. Custom Conversions are NOT Custom Events. Typical confusion arrises here because advertisers often look at custom conversions and custom events as being interchangeable. While they both signify a conversion of some kind, the similarities stop there. Custom conversions are created within the Events Manager interface using rules. Custom events typically require additional code with your pixel.

How I Add Them

There are many different ways that you can send conversion events to Meta, whether it be via the pixel or API. But I use Google Tag Manager to manage my pixel and create these events.

The process for adding standard and custom events using Google Tag Manager is mostly the same. You create a tag that includes the unique script for the event and you add a trigger that defines when this event will fire.

Here’s a simple example of a Complete Registration standard event tag in GTM (without parameters to keep it simple)…

And here’s a simple example of a custom event tag for a 2-minute visit…

We define what the tag is that is sent to Meta. In one case, I used a predefined label (Complete Registration). In the other, I used my own.

Examples

There are endless possible examples of custom events because they are whatever it is you define them to be.

Consider this: You’re looking over a potential customer’s shoulder while they visit your website. What are the things you hope they’ll do that fall outside of the standard event definitions?

Yes, you want people to complete a purchase or fill out your form. Dig deeper. What else is important to you?

As a blogger, there’s a long list of actions that I care about that signify quality engagement. Here are some examples…

1. 1-Minute Time on Page. One signal that you’re deeply engaged with my content is the amount of time you spend on a page. I fire events at 1, 2, and 3 minutes.

2. 50% Scroll Depth. You could spend 3 minutes on a page, but it doesn’t mean anything without scrolling. I have an event that fires once you’ve scrolled halfway down a page, but it could be based on another percentage or a specific number of pixels.

3. Embedded YouTube Video Play. One of my favorites. I embed videos at the bottom of many of my blog posts (including this one!), and an event fires when they’re played. This is possible (and easy) because both Google Tag Manager and YouTube are Google products. You can pass the title of the video and amount of time watched using parameters.

4. Internal Link Clicks. Another signal of engagement is someone who views multiple pages of my website while visiting.

5. External Link Clicks. I also include external URLs, where appropriate. But this may be especially useful if you link out to a third-party website for a product that you sell.

6. Referral. I’ve created referral events that fire if someone comes from Google or a Meta property. I’ve found that Google visitors have value since they are often looking for an answer to their question. The Meta referrals are useful because I can compare these events to the reported Outbound Clicks in Ads Manager.

7. Start Embedded Audio Player. I don’t do this as often these days, but I have an embedded audio player at the top of many of my blog posts to play a related podcast episode or audio version of the post. It’s another great signal of deep engagement.

8. Social Share. Ads Manager will tell us how many times our ad was shared to Facebook or Instagram, but I have social share buttons that go other places as well. When people click those buttons, an event is fired.

9. Comments Visibility. This could be seen as an extension of the scroll event. If you scroll so far that the comments are visible, you are (probably) deeply engaged.

10. Combo Event. You can also combine multiple events into a single combo event that only fires when all of those things happen. The classic example is if someone spends one minute AND scrolls at least halfway down a page. But I also have a custom event for anyone who spends 3 minutes, scrolls, and clicks an internal link.

Benefits

Okay, great. We created these events. Now what?

There are three primary things that we can do with this…

1. Enhanced Reporting. One of my favorite things about custom events is the added context that they can provide to reporting. Ads Manager tells us the number of clicks and conversions, but what do you do with this information when you aren’t getting the purchases or leads you were wanting?

Custom events can help verify whether people go to your landing page and are disinterested and leave or if they actually hang around and do other things — even if they didn’t buy.

2. Enhanced Optimization. If you’re a content creator who wants to send quality traffic to your blog posts, you know how challenging that is with Meta ads. If you run Traffic campaigns optimized for link clicks or landing page views, you can bet you’ll get lots of low-quality traffic.

The reason is that Meta thinks that you only care about the traffic. But if you define the event you want, the algorithm can do a better job of sending the actions that make you happy.

3. Enhanced Targeting. Broad targeting is all the rage now, but there’s still room for some remarketing. You can create website custom audiences based on custom events.

You could then either target those people or use it as the starter when using Advantage Custom Audience or Advantage+ Audience.

Get Started

If you want to take custom events further, I have some great resources for you.

1. Custom Event Mastery Training. It’s 24 lessons in all and includes the step-by-step instructions for creating many of the events mentioned in this post as well as how you’d leverage them.

2. Intro to Custom Events. If you want to go slowly, you can subscribe to the first four lessons for free, which walk you through how to get Google Tag Manager set up to use your pixel.

Watch Video

I recorded a video about creating custom events for quality traffic, too. And if you watch the video, a custom event will fire!

Your Turn

Are you using custom events? What are some creative ways you’re using them?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Hidden Advantages of Custom Events to Meta Advertisers appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

How to Test Meta Conversion Events

Jon Loomer — Thu, 21 Sep 2023 03:05:20 +0000

One of the primary reasons for bad reporting in Meta Ads Manager is conversion events that were set up improperly. This includes standard events, custom events, and custom conversions.

You should test your events before relying on them in your Ads Manager reporting. If you don’t, this is one of the first steps you should take when you run into questionable results.

Why isn’t Ads Manager reporting your conversions? Are the numbers inflated? Is the wrong event reported? Confirm the answers to these questions by testing your events.

Here’s how to approach this…

What to Look For

When testing events, there are several things to look for…

1. Is the event firing? When someone completes a conversion, does the expected event fire?

2. Is the event firing on the wrong page? Oftentimes we’ll see the final step of a conversion flow fire on the wrong page. For example, Purchase or CompleteRegistration fires when the initial button is pushed.

3. Is the event firing multiple times? This isn’t a problem if you perform an event multiple times, obviously. But do you see an event duplicated? Is it the same event or do you have multiple events set up under the same name?

4. Are parameters set up properly? Passing parameters (details of a conversion) can be tricky, so it’s nice to get confirmation that this information is passed correctly.

Go to Test Events

Within Events Manager, go to Data Sources and then select your pixel.

Now, go to Test Events within the horizontal menu.

You can test website or CRM events. For the purpose of this tutorial, we’re going to test website events.

We’re able to test either server or browser events. For now, let’s test the browser (website) events.

Enter the URL of a page where this event will occur and click “Open Website.”

Go ahead and perform the action or actions that should fire the events you are testing. You should see the standard events, custom events, automatic events, and custom conversions appear in real time in Events Manager as they happen.

You can choose which types of events and activity details appear from the dropdown on the right.

If you ever want to start over, you can click to clear activity.

You can expand an event to get additional details of the information that was passed. This is especially helpful if you pass parameters with an event.

This is useful if you ever create custom conversions or website custom audiences and need to manually enter parameters when creating rules.

Other Testing Considerations

There are other ways to test your events, as well. I’ve used the Facebook Pixel Helper Chrome extension in the past, and it’s generally good for easily troubleshooting while I’m on a page. But I’ve found it’s less dependable than testing within Events Manager.

You should also consider options to test prior to publishing changes, if possible. How that is done will depend upon how you manage your pixel. But Google Tag Manager allows you to preview how tags (your events) fire before publishing your changes. The Events Manager testing option won’t work for a page that hasn’t been published, of course.

You want to catch problems as quickly as possible because changes to your events won’t be corrected historically — only going forward. If you place an event on an incorrect page and get overcounting, that tabulation will continue to exist in your history.

Likewise, if you change the name of an event, the old name will continue to appear in your history and across many of Meta’s dashboards, at least for a period of time.

Watch Video

I recorded a video about testing your events, too…

Your Turn

How do you test your Meta conversion events?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How to Test Meta Conversion Events 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.

Meta Ads Attribution Setting: A Complete Guide

Jon Loomer — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 15:38:56 +0000

Attribution is the process of giving credit to an ad for a conversion. It’s the foundation for the ultimate determinant of performance. As a result, you must understand the Meta ads Attribution Setting.

It’s not nearly as straight-forward as many expect it to be. Not only is it variable (you can change how attribution is defined), it controls more than just reporting.

If you’re confused, don’t worry. By the end of this post, it will all make sense…

Conversions

Attribution will only matter if you’re optimizing for any type of conversion that happens away from Facebook. Typically, this might be for a purchase or lead, but it can be for any conversion defined with a standard event, custom event, or custom conversion.

Usually, these conversions happen on a website. Someone visits a product landing page (View Content), adds a product to their cart (Add to Cart), begins entering their payment information (Initiate Checkout), and completes the purchase (Purchase). Or maybe they registered for your newsletter (Complete Registration) or provided contact details to learn more about your product (Lead).

The Attribution Setting does not apply to actions that occur within the Meta family of apps (clicks, Messenger conversations, Instant Form completions, comments, on-Facebook video views, and more).

Campaign Objective

Since a website conversion needs to occur in order for the Attribution Setting to apply, there are only certain campaign objectives that will make this possible.

Only the following three objectives can lead to a website conversion:

Engagement
Leads
Sales

When using the Engagement objective, you would need to select Website as your conversion location, then “Maximum number of conversions” as your performance goal.

The Leads objective applies as well, but only if you select Website as your conversion location and, again, conversions as your goal.

Not surprisingly, the Attribution Setting applies to the Sales objective, but only when Website is your conversion location.

You may expect that the Attribution Setting would apply to the Traffic objective, but it doesn’t since you aren’t able to set a standard event, custom event, or custom conversion as your performance goal.

Ad Set Optimization

Now we have that out of the way, click the See More Options link beneath your performance goal.

You will now see the Attribution Setting…

The default setting, as you can see above, is 7-day click and 1-day view. The first thing to understand is that this setting defines a conversion as one that happens within seven days of clicking on your ad or one day of viewing (and not clicking).

Meta knows who is served your ad. Meta knows who clicks it. Because of the Meta pixel, events, and Conversions API, Meta also knows (mostly) who ultimately converted.

The default Attribution Setting of 7-day click and 1-day view means two things:

Meta will optimize to get you the most conversions within 7 days of clicking and 1-days of viewing as possible
Your results will be reported if they happened within this window

Edit the Attribution Setting

If you click the Edit link, you can also change the Attribution Setting…

As you can see in the image above, you have the following windows that can be adjusted:

Click-Through Window
View-Through Window
Engaged-View Window (For Video Only)

Each window can be adjusted individually.

Click-Through offers the options of 1-day or 7-days.

View-Through offers 1-day or none.

And Engaged-View offers 1-day or none. But note that you can only select 1-day for Engaged View if View-Through is also set to 1-day.

Remember: This will change both how your ad set is optimized for delivery (who will see your ad within your designated audience) and how conversions are reported.

I get that the inclination will be to stick with 7-day click and 1-day view. In theory, that should result in more conversions reported than the other options. But, there are reasons to consider the other options.

If the action you’re optimizing for often happens quickly because it’s free or may be an event defined by a type of website engagement, 1-day click may make sense. This will also prevent you from getting inflated numbers if people return to make take that action multiple times (particularly related to the engagement action).

If the action is a purchase, 7-day click and 1-day view will usually make the most sense. It may take time to make this decision. And the ad may inspire a search that leads to a conversion, even if they never clicked your ad.

You may also consider eliminating the 1-day view if you feel it will unnaturally inflate your results. This can especially be the case if you’re remarketing to people who get your emails or who already visit your website.

And finally, consider including 1-Day Engaged-View whenever promoting a video with a CTA button to a product page. This will help isolate people who watch at least 10 seconds of your skippable video before converting within a day (without clicking).

Base Reporting

It’s critical to remember that the Attribution Setting you use determines how results are reported. There will typically be a column next to Results to remind you what Attribution Setting was used.

Here’s an example where the Attribution Setting was 1-day click…

Compare Attribution Settings

I understand why it may be difficult to go with a 1-day click Attribution Setting and trust that it will give you better results than sticking with 7-day click and 1-day view. Luckily, you can always see how many conversions happened within the other windows.

Of course, many advertisers don’t know this exists. It was even originally taken away due to iOS changes (and then returned).

Click the Columns dropdown menu in Ads Manager and select Compare Attribution Settings.

Here’s the beautiful part: Not only can you select from 1-day click, 7-day click, 1-day view, and 1-day engaged-view, but you can add a column for 28-day click.

Click “Third-Party Reporting” for two more options: View and Click from SKAdNetwork. These are for app ads.

You can then see how your conversions are reported across different windows.

The first column is for how the conversions were reported based on the Attribution Setting. The remaining columns are those you have added from Compare Attribution Settings.

Watch Video

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

Your Turn

I hope this gives you a much better understanding of the Attribution Setting and how you can benefit from it. How do you use it?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Meta Ads Attribution Setting: A Complete Guide 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.

9 Custom Events That Fire on My Website

Jon Loomer — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 18:05:13 +0000

You should use Meta events to track important actions that happen on your website. While there are standard events for your typical transactions (purchase, lead, contact), I also use nine custom events that fire when important engagement occurs.

These events benefit Meta advertising. You can use them to add granularity to reporting, optimization, and even targeting.

My website prioritizes my blog. When advertising, my goal isn’t always a sale or lead — particularly when promoting my blog posts. In that case, I don’t just want empty clicks. It’s important that I’m driving quality traffic.

That’s where these custom events come into play. By using these events in my reporting, I can confirm whether my ads are leading to these critical actions.

The custom events you use will depend upon the actions you deem important. Make a list of those actions and figure out whether there is a standard event that can track them. If not, that’s when you can look to custom events.

I use Google Tag Manager to manage my pixel and create these events. I won’t provide a tutorial for creating all of these events here. But where possible, I’ll link to a tutorial I’ve already written about that particular event.

While reading and engaging with this post, you can bet these events will be firing…

1. 1 Minute Time on Page

A very basic signal of whether a visitor is actively engaged on your website is the amount of time that they spend on a page. Did they immediately abandon after arriving? Or did they stick around?

This is why I have a custom event that fires once a visitor has lingered on a page for one minute.

Tutorial for this event:

Create a Meta Pixel Event that Fires After Viewing a Page for 60 Seconds

2. 2 Minutes Time on Page

A one-minute visit is great, but it’s also not indicative of someone who got what they wanted and read an entire post. This is why I also have an event that fires at two minutes.

There are actually a couple of ways to set this up.

1. Use intervals. In this case, you could set up the 1-minute event fire in multiple intervals. I’ve done it this way in the past.

2. Create a separate event. You’ll set it up in the same way as the 1-minute event, but you’ll need to change the timer.

I’ve chosen to move to the second option because I will later combine it with a second event to create a new event. I could be wrong, but I don’t think I’d be able to do that if one event generated both the 1 and 2-minute fires.

3. Scroll Depth 50%

Of course, you could argue that even a two-minute visit may not be indicative of an engaged user. In theory, someone could click a referring link and land at the top of a page, only to walk away while the timer ticks away and events fire.

Another sign of an engaged user is scroll depth. Did the visitor scroll through the page? You can create a custom event that triggers off of the vertical scroll depth.

One consideration here is the amount of content that may appear below the body of your content. You may assume that you want a 100% scroll, but that will be incredibly rare — even for people who read an entire post.

What do you have below your blog posts? Is there a footer? Cross-promotion? A comment section? It’s possible that, especially due to comments, the amount of content below your post will be variable.

Because of this, I’ve decided to settle on a 50% scroll to be safe, but feel free to experiment with this.

Tutorial for this event:

Create a Meta Pixel Event that Fires After Scrolling 70% Down a Page

4. 1 Minute AND 50% Scroll

There are weaknesses in both the timer and vertical scroll depth approaches. Just as you could spend two minutes at the top of a post without reading, you could also scroll quickly without reading. Wouldn’t it be great if you could combine the two events?

You can! This event won’t fire unless a visitor spends at least one minute AND scrolls 50% down a page.

This is a clearer indicator of a quality visitor.

Tutorial for this event:

Create a Meta Custom Event That Combines Time Spent and Scroll Depth

5. 2 Minutes AND 50% Scroll

You had to know this was coming. What’s better than a visitor spending a minute and scrolling halfway down a page? Scrolling while spending two minutes on the page!

You could do this all day, of course. Feel free to experiment with increasing the time to three, four, or even five minutes. Of course, it will be helpful if you get good traffic if you want to do that.

A question that might come up: Why bother with the first four events at all when you can use this one?

It’s all about volume. It would be nice if we could get a lot of this event. But when we’re not, it’s helpful to see how close we’re getting based on time and scroll.

6. Podcast Play

I use an audio player to showcase related podcast episodes, typically at the top of my blog posts. Since this blog post doesn’t have such a related podcast, I’ll embed my player with an unrelated episode here…

When someone clicks play on my player, it fires an event. This is yet another sign of an engaged visitor.

I don’t have a tutorial for this one because I couldn’t tell you how to do it. I had to ask my tech team to do it, and it requires additional coding and brainiac stuff.

Above is what the trigger looks like, but keep in mind that the execution will depend upon the audio player you have. You probably won’t be able to copy what I do, but it’s something to consider getting done if you use an audio player on your website.

7. Shared Post

Like most blogs, I include social sharing buttons to help encourage sharing my content to different social networks. If someone clicks to share, that would be a really good sign.

I set this up myself, and I’m sure it could be done more intelligently. I have multiple triggers set up for simple clicks on the share buttons.

Of course, this doesn’t verify that someone completed the share, only that the share window was opened. But it’s something I track.

8. Internal Link Clicks

Another sign of an engaged visitor is someone who views multiple pages. You could create an event that fires based on the number of pages viewed. But, I did something that is a little more primitive (and should be just as useful).

This event triggers if someone clicks a link that includes “jonloomer.com” in the URL.

You could certainly have this fire on all link clicks, but I’m valuing keeping people on my website.

9. Video Watched

One more! I also often embed videos within my blog posts. It’s helpful to know if people are playing these videos, which is another sign of engagement.

While I’m sure there would be ways to execute these events regardless of the video player (and source platform), Google Tag Manager has a built-in trigger for YouTube videos.

Not all of my embedded videos are from YouTube, but this actually has inspired me to embed YouTube videos when possible, rather than TikTok or Instagram.

Tutorial for this event:

Create a Custom Facebook Event for a Watched YouTube Video in Google Tag Manager

Reporting, Optimization, and Targeting

As mentioned at the top, there’s a purpose to firing these events. The primary reason is reporting. I add columns for these events in Ads Manager so that I can see when my ads are leading to these actions.

We can also optimize for these events, rather than the standard link click or Landing Page View.

And finally, you can create a website custom audience based on your events and target people who perform these actions.

These are topics for separate blog posts!

Watch Video

I recorded a video about this, too. Watch it below (and yes, it will fire an event when you play it)…

Your Turn

These are the custom events that fire on this website. What do you use?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post 9 Custom Events That Fire on My Website appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Quality Traffic Test #2: The Impact of Meta Ads Placement

Jon Loomer — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 17:36:44 +0000

Last week, I wrote about a Meta ads test that I ran to compare traffic quality results based on three different optimizations. While I was confident in the results, some people questioned whether they were misleading because I used all placements.

I saw it as an opportunity to run another test. And after this one, I plan to run a third.

The short summary: The second test validates the results of the first. But it was still useful to run and see what would happen.

So let’s discuss what I did and found out…

Overview of Test #1

Before we get to the second test, a quick refresher is in order. For the first test, I created a campaign that compared the results generated by three different ad sets, each optimized differently:

Link Clicks
Landing Page Views
Quality Visitor Custom Event (I wrote about how I created this event here)

The targeting for each was completely broad, using only countries (US, UK, Canada, and Australia). I was promoting a blog post, and the goal was to drive the most Quality Visitors.

The Quality Visitor custom event fires when someone spends at least 2 minutes and scrolls 70% or more on a page. Because I was promoting a blog post, I wasn’t looking for purchases or leads, but it was important that the ads drove engaged readers.

The test ran in two parts, one when delivery was controlled by an A/B split test and one when it wasn’t. While the A/B split test was more expensive overall, the results were consistent regardless.

As you can see in the results above, optimizing for Link Clicks or Landing Page Views led to empty clicks. Very few of those clicks resulted in people spending two minutes and scrolling 70%. Of course, optimizing for that Quality Visitor event drove far more of those actions. It wasn’t close.

While it wasn’t the goal, I should note that only the Quality Visitor ad set drove newsletter registrations (it resulted in 5).

Not surprisingly, most of the clicks from the Link Click and Landing Page View ad sets were sent through the Audience Network placement, which can be problematic.

It was suggested the results may have been different if the focus were on only “high-performing” placements.

That led to Test #2.

Test #2 Setup

I have to mention that I thought the need to remove Audience Network kind of misses the point. The fact that most of the clicks go through Audience Network when optimizing for Link Clicks and Landing Page Views is proof, in my mind, that only the click matters with these optimizations. Any quality action is incidental.

Even if you focus entirely on “high-quality” placements, the algorithm still approaches it the same when optimizing for Link Clicks and Landing Page Views. The focus is on cheap clicks and nothing else. While there may be more quality visitors due to the placement, the algorithm won’t care.

But let’s see if that theory pans out…

I set up the test for the second campaign mostly as I set up the first. The first difference is that I didn’t bother with the A/B test this time. All that did was raise the price for each ad set.

Of course, the other difference is related to placement. This time, I would only use News Feed.

Everything else would remain the same:

One ad set optimized for Link Clicks, one for Landing Page Views, one for Quality Visitor Custom Event
No custom audiences, lookalike audiences, or detailed targeting
Only targeting used is by country (US, UK, Canada, Australia)
Exclude people who already read the blog post
Only news feed

I would spend about $100 per ad set. While that’s a small sample, it’s still enough to generate meaningful results when you can get a decent volume of clicks.

Test #2 Results

Here are the results from the second test.

A few observations…

1. CPM is at least 2X higher across the board. This is not surprising since I was forcing the algorithm to only use News Feed, which is the most expensive placement.

2. CTR calmed down quite a bit. Again, not surprising when you toss out Audience Network. One interesting difference is that the CTR for the Quality Visitors optimization was actually better than the Landing Page Views optimization. I have doubts that this is meaningful but still interesting.

3. The Cost Per Link Click went up 3-4 times. One crazy thing is that CPC is the same for Landing Page View and Quality Visitor optimization.

4. Cost Per Quality Visitor clearly best for Quality Visitor optimization. I’m not surprised by this, but it’s still good to get confirmation. The costs when optimizing for Link Clicks and Landing Page Views did come down, but it’s still not close.

Also, a side note on incidental newsletter registrations. While purchases and leads weren’t the goals, the assumption is that a quality visitor is more likely to subscribe to my newsletter. As I mentioned earlier, that happened 5 times when optimizing for Quality Visitors in the first test, while it never happened when optimizing for Link Clicks or Landing Page Views.

In this second test, there were only two newsletter registrations, but they were again both when optimizing for Quality Visitors.

1-Day Click

Something I also wanted to look at was 1-day click attribution results. The reason is that it’s entirely possible that these results are inflated by incidental remarketing to people who would be coming to my website anyway.

Since the Quality Visitor metric isn’t unique, I also want to eliminate people coming back multiple times during the next 7 days. So, let’s focus only on 1-day click — or people who clicked the ad and performed this action within a day.

As you can see, the costs do go up some, but they actually go up for all three ad sets. The results remain clearly the best when optimizing for Quality Visitors. This is the best way to actually get Quality Visitors.

I’m not surprised by that. You shouldn’t be either. But it’s nice to see the confirmation.

New Questions

While I feel really good about optimizing for Quality Visitors for the purpose of driving highly-engaged readers, I can’t help but ask a couple more questions that I want to get answered.

1. How much of this is remarketing? Even though the targeting was broad, it’s entirely possible that the algorithm starts with my website visitors since they are most likely to perform this action.

2. Will results be impacted by using a 1-Day Click Attribution Setting? I wasn’t able to use a 1-Day Click Attribution Setting in the first tests because the Link Clicks and Landing Page Views optimization don’t allow that change to be made. But if I’m only running ad sets optimized for conversions (Quality Visitors), this will be possible.

The Next Test

So now, let’s run a new test based on these questions. I think it’s safe to throw out optimizations for Link Clicks and Landing Page Views. Those options clearly will not result in driving quality traffic.

This time, I want to test two different ad sets, both optimized for a Quality Visitor using a 1-Day Click Attribution Setting. This is something that could backfire, though. If I’m not getting results with the 1-Day Click Attribution Setting within a couple of days, I’ll reassess and may look to start over.

The difference in the two ad sets will be the targeting:

Completely Broad in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia
Completely Broad in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia, but EXCLUDING All Website Visitors (180 Days)

By excluding my website visitors in the second ad set — even those who haven’t fired the Quality Visitor event before — we’re going to get a much better sense of whom the algorithm is targeting with this type of optimization. There are a couple of potential scenarios:

1. The ad set that excludes my website visitors completely bombs. This would be evidence that even though I used broad targeting, it was mostly remarketing to my current audience.

2. The ad set that excludes my website visitors doesn’t bomb. If this is the case, it’s evidence that at least some (maybe more) of the Quality Visitors are from a cold audience, which would be pretty fascinating.

I don’t think either scenario is necessarily “good” or “bad.” Sure, it would be pretty cool to find out that the algorithm can find people who have never been to my website and who are likely to be quality visitors. It shows that the algorithm truly learns, even from a custom event that very few websites use.

But the main thing is that it would be nice to know one way or the other. Because if it turns out that it’s basically just going after my audience, it’s evidence that running remarketing campaigns the way we have in the past may no longer be necessary. Barring some exceptions (abandoned cart), the remarketing may be driven primarily by the optimization, not the audience.

I’m looking forward to finding out! Stay tuned.

Your Turn

What are your reactions to the latest test results?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Quality Traffic Test #2: The Impact of Meta Ads Placement appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Split Test: Which Optimization Leads to the Most High-Quality Traffic?

Jon Loomer — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 04:05:31 +0000

One of my biggest battles with Facebook ads over the years has been driving high-quality traffic when promoting a blog post. I don’t want empty clicks. I want people who spend more time and are likely to perform other actions.

Look, I get it. The vast majority of advertisers are trying to get sales or leads from their ads. And while I do that, too, my blog is also important. I want to drive traffic to it, but it can’t just be any old traffic.

We know that there’s a huge hole in Facebook ads optimization if you optimize for surface-level metrics. If you tell Facebook that you want link clicks, you’re going to get lots of them — but probably not the ones you want.

You see, the ads algorithm doesn’t care about quality. It just cares whether you get the thing you asked for at the lowest cost. And you may get lots of clicks or video views, for example, if weaknesses in certain placements are exploited.

Needless to say, I’ve used a different route to drive quality traffic to my blog posts during the past few years. Still, I wasn’t fully confident that it was doing what I wanted it to do. I just knew it had to be better than the alternative.

A split test was in order.

Let’s take a look at the split test that I ran and what we can learn from it…

Which Optimization is Best?

If you set up a Traffic campaign, there are two primary ways that you can optimize: Link Clicks or Landing Page Views.

Depending on your choice, Facebook will optimize the delivery of your ads to get you the most link clicks or landing page views at the lowest possible cost. What’s the difference?

Link Clicks are the “number of clicks on links within the ad that led to advertiser-specified destinations, on or off Meta technologies.”

Landing Page Views are the “number of times that a person clicked on an ad link and successfully loaded the destination web page.”

It may sound like semantics, but a Landing Page View actually requires the landing page (and Meta pixel) to load. The Link Click does not. So, the Landing Page View is slightly better.

Slightly. Neither is the definition of a quality website visit.

That’s why three years ago, I created a series of custom events that fire on my website when people perform certain actions that might signify a quality website visit. For example, I’ve created events that fire when a visitor scrolls down a page or spends a designated amount of time on a page of my website.

Even better? I created an event that requires you to spend two minutes AND scroll at least 70% down a page.

The Split Test

I created a campaign with three ad sets that were identical in every way except for one thing: Optimization. One ad set optimized for Link Clicks, one for Landing Page Views, and one for the Quality Visitor event that I created.

All three ad sets would use the broadest of targeting. I selected the US, UK, Cananda, and Australia, but no custom audiences, lookalike audiences, or detailed targeting were provided. I excluded anyone who already read the blog post that I was promoting.

Each ad set would utilize Advantage+ Placements, so all placements were available.

In each case, the ad would promote a popular blog post related to using ChatGPT to create a Facebook ads strategy.

Once the campaign was started, I went into Experiments to set up a new test.

The key metric to determine a winner, of course, would be the Quality Visitor event.

While you might assume that the ad set optimized for Quality Visitors will result in the most Quality Visitors, who knows? It’s always possible it won’t go that direction.

Since I set up the split test this way, the ad sets were able to continue delivering even after the test ended. When the test is ongoing, there isn’t any overlap. A targeted person can only see an ad from one of the three ad sets. When the test is complete, that’s no longer the case.

Theoretically, you can get better results when you’re not constrained by a split test. So, that’s one reason I wanted to keep the ad sets going a little bit longer, even after a winner was found.

I didn’t spend a crazy amount of money on this test, but that also wasn’t necessary. We’re talking about actions that don’t cost a whole lot to get, particularly Link Clicks and Landing Page Views (Quality Visitors will presumably cost more).

I spent about $300 on this test, though I haven’t stopped it yet either. I’m confident that the results I’m going to share won’t change enough to impact what is uncovered.

The Results

Here are the primary metrics that we’ll want to look at:

CPM
CTR
CPC (Cost Per Link Click)
Cost Per Landing Page View
Cost Per Quality Visitor (2 Minutes + 70% Scroll)

I included CPM because the cost to reach people can do crazy things if it’s drastically different between ad sets. I also included CTR to give you an idea of engagement rate and whether it matters.

First, here are the results during the split test when the target audience was constrained…

The CTR was about 3X higher when optimizing for Link Clicks or Landing Page Views. The CPC was lowest when optimizing for Link Clicks, twice as much when optimizing for Landing Page Views, and about 5X higher when optimizing for a Quality Visitor. The Cost Per Landing Page View followed a similar pattern.

So, we can get significantly more volume of visitors by optimizing for Link Clicks or Landing Page Views than we can by optimizing for a Quality Visitor. But does optimizing for Quality Visitors lead to more Quality Visitors?

Yep. And it’s not close.

Even though this test resulted in a far higher cost than I usually want to see per Quality Visitor, that cost was about 1/4th of what it was when optimizing for a Landing Page View. And optimizing for Link Clicks, while bringing in volume, resulted in practically no quality visits at all.

That was during the test. Here’s the period of time after the test…

Everything stayed in line. Optimizing for Link Clicks resulted in lots of Link Clicks, but very little quality. Optimizing for Landing Page Views was very similar, but slightly more expensive and with a little bit more quality.

This time, optimizing for Quality Visitors resulted in a Cost Per Quality Visitor that I’m used to — just over $1. I should also point out that this happened while the CPM was the highest when optimizing for a Quality Visitor (more than twice as high as when optimizing for Link Clicks).

I also shouldn’t ignore an important side effect of driving quality traffic: Other actions. The ad set that optimized for Quality Visitors also resulted in five registrations, while the other two ad sets netted zero.

The Issue with Placements

Remember when I said at the top that optimization for Link Clicks and Landing Page Views can be problematic because it often takes advantage of weaknesses in placements? Wow. We have some evidence of that here.

The Audience Network placement is notorious for empty clicks, whether they are due to accidental clicks, bot clicks, or outright click fraud. If we use Breakdowns, we can see distribution by placement. And it’s really something.

When optimizing for Link Clicks, a staggering 99% of those Link Clicks came from Audience Network.

When optimizing for Landing Page Views, 96% of those Landing Page Views came from Audience Network.

When optimizing for Quality Visitors, 0 of those Quality Visitors came from Audience Network. Instead, 98% came from News Feed (most from mobile).

If this isn’t enough to convince you that Audience Network is problematic when optimizing for traffic actions, only 3 of the 607 people driven to my website from one of these ad sets from Audience Network resulted in a Quality Visitor.

Need the final dagger? When optimizing for Quality Visitors, Facebook knew that Audience Network wouldn’t work. Not a single penny was spent there when the algorithm knew that a Quality Visitor mattered.

The Verdict

This is really good validation. While I’ve optimized for Quality Visitors (and other custom events) for the past three years, I’ve long heard whispers that the algorithm doesn’t actually learn from custom events. I still did it because it couldn’t be worse than optimizing for Link Clicks and Landing Page Views.

When Bram Van der Hallen wrote his blog post about optimizing for custom events for traffic, I told him about my concerns. Well, I’m glad Bram wrote that post because even though I had my doubts, I kept at it and started testing it more.

Yes. This really does work.

If you want to run ads that promote a blog post, you should care about quality website traffic. Do not optimize for Link Clicks or Landing Page Views. Create custom events that fire when actions happen that signify quality traffic activity and optimize for them.

In case you’re wondering, I have a whole lot of custom events on this website that fire. Not only do I have events for scroll and time spent, but I also have events that fire if you click to share, play the podcast player, or watch an embedded YouTube video.

Watch Video

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

Your Turn

Have you tested out optimizing for quality traffic? What have you seen?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Split Test: Which Optimization Leads to the Most High-Quality Traffic? appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Create a Meta Custom Event That Combines Time Spent and Scroll Depth

Jon Loomer — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 17:15:30 +0000

Quality traffic with Facebook ads is the Holy Grail. I’m not going to go into it here, but Meta’s ignorance of quality traffic activity is maddening. But I have a solution for you: A custom event that combines time spent and scroll depth.

I actually wrote about this three years ago, but hoo boy. I seriously overcomplicated that tutorial. We can do this in far fewer steps.

While there are likely manual solutions and other tools that help you accomplish something similar, I’m using Google Tag Manager to manage my pixel. This post assumes that you are doing the same.

After this tutorial, we’ll talk about what you can actually do with this once you have it set up.

Let’s go…

First, Do This…

As mentioned, this post assumes you are using Google Tag Manager to manage your pixel. I assume that you already have a tag created for the base pixel code. I also assume that you’ve already created tags for both the 60-second view and 70% scroll events.

If you haven’t done these things yet, you’re in luck. I have some rather simple instructions below. Read them first.

Create a Quality Visitor Event

If you’ve already completed the steps above, the most difficult tasks are finished. The rest is easy.

Create a tag in Google Tag Manager. Once again, we’ll use the Custom HTML tag type.

Add the following code:

We could add parameters, but we’re not going to bother. We’re keeping it simple.

Make sure to turn on Tag Sequencing so that the base pixel code tag fires first.

Now click to configure your trigger and create a new trigger. We’re going to use the Trigger Group trigger type.

You’ll want to configure your trigger so that requires both the 60-second event and the 70% scroll event to fire prior to this event firing.

The final product looks like this…

You may want to test it using the Preview tool in Google Tag Manager. Otherwise, publish it and you’re ready to go.

Create a Custom Conversion

We’ve discussed this in the other two blog posts, but there’s a bug that doesn’t allow you to add columns to your Ads Manager for all custom events. The easy solution is to create a custom conversion that maps to that custom event.

The way I do it so that it includes all pages where this event is fired looks like this…

If you can, add it as one of your eight ranked events in Aggregated Event Measurement.

I consider this event pretty important, so I rank it after Complete Registration.

Use for Reporting

I add the Quality Visitor event along with the Scroll and Time on Page events as columns to my Ads Manager. This is a really good way to measure the quality of your traffic.

Compare these numbers to your link clicks, outbound clicks, and landing page views.

Also note that I compared attribution to isolate 1-day click. Otherwise, these numbers include events fired for up to seven days after clicking or one day after viewing.

In the example above, we have 182 1-day click Quality Visitors compared to 801 landing page views (23%). Considering my Quality Visitor requires a 2-minute visit, that feels pretty solid.

This would be something to look at very closely if you ever optimize for link clicks or landing page views because the quality is often low.

Optimization

If you ever run ads to promote blog posts, you should optimize for this event. While it would be nice if Facebook had a “Quality Traffic” optimization option built-in, this still can’t be worse than optimizing for link clicks or landing page views.

To do that, create an Engagement campaign.

Select “Website” as your conversion location within the ad set.

And then select “Maximum number of conversions” as your Performance Goal and then your pixel and the Quality Visitor conversion event.

I’m actually running a split test right now to compare the results between optimizing for Quality Visitor or landing page views. I admit I don’t understand why I hadn’t done that before.

Targeting

If you run any remarketing ads, one group of people to consider targeting would be those who are most engaged. Those who trigger the Quality Visitor event would be a solid differentiator within your total website visitors pool.

Your audience would look like this…

Whether you refine the audience by page or alter the time window is up to you.

Watch Video

I recorded a quick video on this, too. Check it out…

Your Turn

Do you use custom events in this way? Are there any others that you create?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Create a Meta Custom Event That Combines Time Spent and Scroll Depth appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Create a Meta Pixel Event that Fires After Scrolling 70% Down a Page

Jon Loomer — Tue, 14 Feb 2023 00:48:25 +0000

Last week, I wrote about how to create a custom event that fires when someone views a page of your website for 60 seconds. Now let’s create an event based on scroll depth.

This is all about finding a way to show Facebook what a quality website visitor is. You can use this for reporting, optimization, and targeting.

The 60-second visit is pretty solid, but it has a weakness: What if someone sits at the top of the page for 60 seconds? That is clearly not a quality visit.

That’s why you should also consider scroll depth. Someone who scrolls through much of your post is likely a quality visitor.

Like with the time on page event, I originally wrote about this three years ago but made it way more complicated than it needed to be.

So today, we’re going to make this super easy. From there, you can add complexity if you want.

Your Base Pixel Code

We’re doing this in Google Tag Manager. If you aren’t already using GTM to manage your pixel, you’ll need to first create a tag that fires the base pixel code by itself.

You’ll do this — and create your events — by creating a new tag. Use the Custom HTML tag type and paste your base pixel code.

After naming it, you’ll need to configure the triggering. Use the Page View trigger and have it fire on all pages.

What is Quality Scroll Depth?

Before we create this event, we should discuss what quality scroll depth looks like. The assumption is that you’ll want to use 100% or something close to it. But, that may not be ideal.

A typical blog post may actually have a lot of content that people don’t read after the article itself. You may have comments, a footer, and maybe some other widgets and ads. The amount of scroll may be variable depending on the length of your article and the amount of comments you have.

So, keep this in mind. It’s possible that 70% is too high a barrier that may not be reached even when people read an entire article. While I use 70% in this example, it could just as easily be 50% or something else.

Scroll Depth – 70% Event

Now let’s create this bad boy.

Create a new tag and name it. I’d name it “Facebook – 70% Scroll,” but name it whatever you want.

You’ll use the Custom HTML tag type again, and use the following code:

The name you use in the code is what appears in your Events Manager, so keep that in mind.

Don’t forget to turn on Tag Sequencing to have the base pixel code tag fire first. This is within the Advanced Settings under the Custom HTML.

Below that, click to configure your trigger and then click the “+” to create a new one. Select the “Scroll Depth” trigger type.

Check “Vertical Scroll Depths” and enter “70” (or whatever percentage that you want). Note that you could have tracked by pixels instead of a percentage.

The trigger will look like this…

When you’re done, your tag will look lik this…

Use the Preview feature to test it out if you need to. Then publish your new tag and trigger.

Use for Reporting

This will be great for providing more context of your results in Ads Manager. While you might be able to simply add a column for your custom event to your report, there seems to be a bug that doesn’t always make this possible.

If that’s the case for you, create a custom conversion that maps to the custom event.

Now you should be able to add your custom conversion to your report as a new column.

Quick Tip: You may want to rank these events in your top eight for Aggregated Event Measurement if you have room. This will assure that the results are more complete.

Use for Optimization

I’ve long complained that Facebook doesn’t provide a built-in way to optimize for quality traffic. Instead, you optimize for landing page views or link clicks, and that almost always results in low-quality clicks.

But, there’s an alternative. While the jury’s out on whether Facebook actually learns from custom event activity, it’s certainly better than low-quality clicks.

Create an Engagement campaign.

Select “Website” as your conversion location within the ad set.

Finally, select “Maximum number of conversions” as your Performance Goal and then your pixel and conversion event.

Scroll Depth will now be the focus of your “Results” column.

Use for Targeting

You can also target the people who scrolled on your website. Create a website custom audience that is based on your events.

If you want, you can actually refine by the exact page that was scrolled.

Watch Video

I recorded a quick video on this, too. Check it out…

Your Turn

Have you ever used a custom event like this one? What do you think?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Create a Meta Pixel Event that Fires After Scrolling 70% Down a Page appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Create a Meta Pixel Event that Fires After Viewing a Page for 60 Seconds

Jon Loomer — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 00:01:47 +0000

Quality traffic is important. When you run Facebook ads that direct people to your website, you care whether people immediately leave or if they spend more time there. That’s why custom pixel events are so important.

What I’m going to describe is done with custom events and Google Tag Manager. Once you create such an event, you can use this for reporting, optimization, and targeting. It’s super useful, and I continue to take advantage of this today.

I wrote about these custom events nearly three years ago. But looking at that original blog post, I realize now that I made it way more complicated than it needed to be.

So today, let’s make this as simple as possible. When we’re done, I’ll provide specific examples of how this can be used as well as ways that you can make it more complicated if you really want to.

Your Base Pixel Code

I’m assuming at this point that you’re already using Google Tag Manager to manage your Meta pixel. But if you’re not, this is an important step. You’ll need to create a tag for the base pixel code that fires separately of any events.

When you create a tag, select the Custom HTML tag type. Then paste your base pixel code. It’ll look something like this…

Name it something that makes sense like “Facebook – Base Pixel.”

Then configure the triggering. You’ll select the Page View trigger and want it (presumably) to fire on all pages.

This is one of those things you can change if you really wanted to, but I’m trying to keep this tutorial simple.

Time on Page – 60 Seconds Event

Now it’s time for the fun stuff.

Create another tag and name it something like “Facebook – 60 Seconds.” The names of these things are for you only, so don’t stress over what they are.

Once again, you’ll want to use the Custom HTML tag type. Here is the code in the simplest form that you can use:

You can add parameters if you really wanted, but let’s stick to the basics.

We’ll want to use tag sequencing and make sure that the tag for your base pixel code fires first.

The top part of the tag will look like this…

You’ll want to create a new trigger. Select the Timer trigger type.

For whatever reason, the interval is in milliseconds. So, for 60 seconds, it will need to be 60000 milliseconds. Set the limit at “1” and create a rule that will fire on every page like the one I used below.

This is another area where you could get more complicated and have it fire every 60 seconds instead of just the one time. But, again, we’re keeping this simple.

When you’re done, it looks like this…

You can use the Preview feature to test it out, but otherwise publish your changes. If you’re using the Facebook Pixel Helper Chrome Plugin, you can see the event fire on your website once you’ve been on a page for 60 seconds (you may need to clear cache).

Use for Reporting

You’ll be grateful that you have this for reporting. Customize your columns and add a new column for this custom event. Of course, I’ve found this part to be buggy since not all custom events appear within this section.

If that happens to you, we’ll need to create a custom conversion mapped to the custom event. It will look something like this…

You have to create a rule, which is why I use URL contains “/”.

Once you create the custom conversion, you should be able to add it to your columns in Ads Manager. My saved columns consist of all sorts of custom events (and custom conversions mapped to custom events) based on quality traffic actions.

Quick Tip: Keep in mind that these events aren’t unique. One visitor can view multiple pages for 60 seconds, for example. Additionally, conversions are reported by default based on the 7-day click and 1-day view attribution window. You may want to limit it to 1-day click to get a more accurate view of engagement post-click.

Use for Optimization

It’s insane that Facebook doesn’t offer the ability to optimize for qualilty website traffic. But there is an option to try.

Instead of optimizing for link clicks or landing page views (which can lead to low-quality traffic), consider using time on page as your optimization event. Here’s how you’d do it.

Use the Engagement objective.

In the ad set, select “Website” as your conversion location.

Set “Maximum number of conversions” as your Performance Goal. Then select your pixel and conversion event.

I’ve heard mixed messages on whether Facebook actually learns from and optimizes for quality traffic in this case, but I still find myself using this often when promoting blog posts.

Use for Targeting

Keep in mind that Facebook has many built-in methods for targeting quality traffic, including an option based on time spent.

But you can also create an audience based on this event.

This is a great audience for remarketing.

Make it More Complicated

The event I had you create here was super simple and shouldn’t cause too many technical hurdles. If you want to make it more complicated, read my original blog post about this. In that post, I talk about using variables and firing events every 30 seconds. You can also have it fire on specific pages. The instructions in that post also include some basic parameters that I don’t use here.

And if you want to take it even further, I created an event that combined time spent and scroll depth. Admittedly, that may be taking it a bit far! But that’s how I ended up creating a broader “Quality Traffic” conversion event.

Watch Video

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

Your Turn

Do you create custom events like this one for tracking quality traffic? What do you do?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Create a Meta Pixel Event that Fires After Viewing a Page for 60 Seconds 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.

Why You Should Use the Facebook Pixel Helper Chrome Extension

Jon Loomer — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 18:00:39 +0000

Some of the most helpful tools are super simple. The Facebook Pixel Helper (is it the Meta Pixel Helper now?) is such a tool.

The Facebook Pixel Helper is a Chrome browser extension. It’s not new. But, it’s extremely valuable for Facebook advertisers, and it’s free.

What is it?

First, you need to use the Chrome browser. If you do, you can add the Facebook Pixel Helper browser extension.

It’s a troubleshooting tool that detects the presence of a pixel on the current URL you’re viewing. It also detects the standard events, custom events, and custom conversions that are firing.

Let me provide a couple of examples of how it can be used…

Managing Clients

Maybe you’re managing a client or are considering a potential client. You don’t have access to their Ads Manager, but you want to get a better sense of what they’re doing.

An example: I host one-on-one sessions. I’m not a hands-on contractor, but more of a short-term (45 minutes) consultant. I don’t have or desire access to your Ads Manager, Events Manager, or Business Manager.

Prior to our session, I have the client complete a questionnaire to tell me more about what they’re doing and what they hope to accomplish. They also provide a list of domains related to their business.

This allows me to poke around a little bit without any direct access. Do they have the pixel installed? What kinds of events are firing? It doesn’t give me a thorough review, but it provides some surface-level context.

Testing Tool

Yes, Facebook has its own testing tools within Events Manager. You can use them, too. And while they may be best for viewing how the pixel is firing across your website, I prefer the Facebook Pixel Helper for testing individual pages.

The extension makes it super easy to immediately see if the pixel fires when the page loads. It also allows me to test whether certain events fire when they’re supposed to, in real-time.

Learning Tool

It’s a great learning tool! When I write about the custom events running on my website, you can actually test them out for yourself.

You’ve already been on this page for a while. You’ve scrolled. You should also click the audio player at the top. Then click the helper to see the exact events that are firing.

Try it!

You can even expand each event to learn more about the parameters used.

Your Turn

Do you use the Facebook Pixel Helper, or do you prefer other testing tools?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Why You Should Use the Facebook Pixel Helper Chrome Extension appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Facebook Ads and the Role of Custom Conversions

Jon Loomer — Wed, 06 Apr 2022 18:00:12 +0000

Do you understand how custom conversions are used for Facebook advertising and how they’re different from standard and custom events? This is an area that is often confused.

The confusing part for many advertisers is that standard events, custom events, and custom conversions can all be used for both reporting and optimization. They each have their own quirks, similarities, advantages, and disadvantages.

Custom conversions, though, have a very specific role.

Let’s clear it up…

Targeting

You can create website custom audiences based on both standard and custom events. You can’t create website custom audiences based on a custom conversion.

When we talk about the role of custom conversions, understand it has nothing to do with targeting audiences.

Coding

One of the nice benefits of custom conversions is that they don’t require extra code to be added to your website. Both standard and custom events require event code (though, technically, you could use the Event Setup Tool to create standard events).

The process of creating a custom conversion is similar to that of a website custom audience. It can be created based on a URL or event fire.

Optimization

Standard events, custom events, and custom conversions can all be used for optimization. The difference is granularity.

For example, you can select the Purchase standard event as your conversion event that would be used for optimization.

You could use a custom event for this same purpose (in my case, one of my custom events is Podcast Play).

Custom conversions, though, allow you to set a more specific conversion event. You could first create a custom conversion based on the purchase of a specific product (or, in this case, category of product).

You could then set that as your conversion event, which could be used for optimization.

Reporting

This level of granularity also carries into reporting. If you add columns for standard and custom events, you will get reporting for those things.

For example, I have columns for Purchases, Registrations, and Searches (standard events) as well as Podcast Play and Quality Visitor (custom events).

This is nice, but sometimes you want details. What products are people purchasing? What are they registering for? What are they searching?

I also add columns for the registration for specific opt-ins and the purchase of specific products. I use custom conversions to accomplish this.

Summary

So, let’s summarize custom conversions and how they differ from standard and custom events:

No code is needed to create custom conversions (unlike standard and custom events)
You can’t create website custom audiences based on custom conversions (unlike standard and custom events)
You can map details of standard and custom events with parameters to add granularity to optimization and reporting

Your Turn

I use custom conversions quite a bit to help understand the specific actions on my websites that occur as a result of my ads. How do you use them?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Ads and the Role of Custom Conversions appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Facebook Event Parameters for Granular Reporting and Targeting

Jon Loomer — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 18:00:36 +0000

You can track events on your website — both standard and custom events — using the Meta pixel and Conversions API. It’s the Facebook event parameters that provide the power of granular reporting and targeting.

Let’s break this down, covering the following:

The role of parameters
An example of parameters
Using parameters for granular reporting
The role of parameters in powerful targeting
How to set up parameters

The Role of Parameters

You can set up conversion events to fire on your website when people perform important actions. Standard events will typically fire on a button click or load of a specific page to notify Facebook that an action like a purchase, registration, search, or lead has occurred. This information can then be used in reporting (conversion attribution), optimization, and targeting.

Thanks to these events, you can know the number of people who purchased anything on your website. That volume can help with optimization to find other people likely to purchase. And you can then target anyone who has purchased anything on your website.

But, it’s the parameters that provide the granularity and details of these purchases and other actions. The parameters send information like the product purchased, the amount spent, and more.

Examples of Parameters

Let’s use the Purchase standard event as an example. You can send the following details of a purchase:

Currency
Value
Conent_name (product name)
content_id (product ID)
Number of items

Collecting value helps an advertiser know if they are achieving a positive ROI.

The product name helps an adveriser know what was actually purchased.

And the number of items are helpful because a single purchase may actually include multiple products.

Of course, these are just a few examples used for the Purchase event. Standard events are structured, and you can only send specific information that Facebook expects as parameters with these events. You have much more flexibility with custom events.

Targeting Based on Parameters

When you create a website custom audience, you have the option of basing it on your events.

Let’s stick with the Purchase event. You can then “refine by” Parameter to isolate purchases by the accompanying parameters.

The parameters that appear will depend on the parameters your event uses.

I could, for example, create an audience that is refined by the value of the purchase.

You can also refine by aggregated value. You could, for example, create an audience of people who have made at least two purchases.

It could also be based on the total amount spent, average amount spent, or minimum amount spent.

I also do this with custom events for quality traffic activity. I send parameters like the scroll depth, amount of time spent on a page, and embedded YouTube video played. I can then create an audience for one of these events and isolate the audience by parameter.

For example, I can segment the YouTube video people watched on my website using parameters.

I can segment the people who played my audio player at least 5 times.

And I can segment the people who viewed a specific blog post on my website for at least two minutes.

How Parameters Contribute to Granular Reporting

These parameters also allow you to drill down in your reporting. Instead of getting reporting for all purchases, you can filter by purchases of a specific product, for example. You’ll do this with custom conversions.

Custom conversions are created a similar way to website custom audiences based on events. First, select the event.

Then, create a rule based on event parameters.

The parameters that appear will depend upon what you are using.

Here’s an example of a custom conversion for a purchase based on the name of the product.

You can and should also include the value of that purchase.

This custom conversion can then be used for both reporting and optimization. You can optimize for the purchase of a specific product, for example. But you can also add columns in your reporting for the purchase of that product.

Setting Up Parameters

How you set up parameters will depend upon how you’re sending events. You may be using partner integrations that automatically send events and parameters. Custom events will require custom coding to decide on the parameters you want and to send them.

The pixel event setup tool can help you set up standard events with some parameters without code.

It’s not a perfect tool and doesn’t provide a ton of flexibility, but it’s an option.

If you want to add code manually, you can use my Pixel Event Generator to help construct your event code with parameters.

Answer some basic questions, and the tool will spit out the exact code you need to use. It’s completely free!

Your Turn

What’s your experience been with event parameters?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Facebook Event Parameters for Granular Reporting and Targeting appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

How to Check the Quality of Facebook Ad Traffic

Jon Loomer — Mon, 21 Mar 2022 18:00:19 +0000

You should be skeptical of too-good-to-be-true traffic results coming from Facebook ads. Don’t just trust that those clicks and landing page views are highly-engaged users. There are ways to check.

We’ve discussed the pitfalls of optimization before. When you optimize for engagement, links clicks, landing page views, or any other surface-level actions, Facebook doesn’t care about quality. Not one bit.

If you tell Facebook you want link clicks, the algorithm will do everything it can to get as many of them as possible for the lowest cost. It doesn’t matter whether they are accidental clicks or three-second views. The optimization, in Facebook’s eyes, did its job.

But you care about quality. You know that a quality visitor is someone who has the potential to return to your website. A quality visitor may want to join your email list. And, of course, a quality visitor may actually buy from you. If not today, one day.

So, how do we verify the quality of your traffic results? Let’s discuss a couple of primary ways…

Add Columns to Your Reports

When you run a traffic campaign, Facebook will report on the metrics that are related to traffic, by default. But, is that all that matters?

Customize the columns of your report.

Then you can add or remove any columns that you want.

Think about what you consider a quality website visitor:

What do they do?
What might they do?
What do you hope they’ll do?

A good place to start will be any standard events that you may have created so that you can track all registrations, searches, leads, purchases, and more that result from your campaign. If possible, start with ranked events, as data is more likely to be complete.

Have you created custom events for quality web activity? This is certainly one solution.

Here are some events I use:

2-Minute Time on Page
70% Scroll Depth
Viewed 2+ Pages in a Session
Viewed an Embedded YouTube Video
Started my Audio Player

All of these actions are indicators of a quality website visit. Compare the results of these quality actions in this campaign to other campaigns.

URL Parameters and Google Analytics

I’ve written before about how to use URL parameters and Google Analytics to check your results. I’ve also provided an example of how doing so uncovered conversions that Facebook wasn’t reporting.

Set up your URL parameters however you’d like, but I prefer the Dynamic URL Builder that Facebook provides within ad creation. You can have it automatically pull information like the campaign name, ad set name, placement, ad name, and more.

And then, you can check the traffic that comes from people arriving from that link within Google Analytics. Go to Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns, and you can then view information like bounce rate, average session duration, and the number of goals completed (assuming you have set goals up).

Once again, compare this information to your typical traffic — or maybe even typical referral traffic, or referral traffic from Facebook. What do you expect for bounce rate, average session duration, and conversion rate on goals? How does this campaign compare?

Example

This post was actually inspired by an eye-opening discovery that I made with one of my campaigns. Allow me to explain what happened and how I detected the problem.

My goal was to drive website traffic to my blog. I started with a traffic campaign that optimized for landing page views and would ultimately try several variations that were conversions campaigns optimized for quality traffic metrics (based on custom events for scroll depth, for example).

The campaign would send close to 4,200 people to my website. The cost per landing page view was pretty good, but something didn’t feel right.

After determining that the average conversion rate (any conversion) on my website for all traffic was about 3%, I set a low bar expectation for this traffic to drive 1% of those 4,200 users — which would have been 42 conversions.

I added columns to my report in Ads Manager. No purchases. No registrations. Only three searches.

Since I was using URL parameters, I then checked the campaign in Google Analytics. Not a single conversion. Nothing. Nada. Facebook didn’t even luck into sending me someone who would convert.

It raised some red flags, to be honest. But, that’s a whole different conversation. The main point here is that I didn’t rely only on Facebook’s default reporting. If I had, that campaign would still be spending.

Make sure that you know what metrics you’re looking for and have multiple ways to check the quality of your results.

Your Turn

Have you had issues with the quality of traffic sent by Facebook ads? What did you do?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How to Check the Quality of Facebook Ad Traffic appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Surprise Facebook Ads Conversions

Jon Loomer — Wed, 16 Mar 2022 18:00:49 +0000

Maybe you’re running a campaign for blog traffic. Maybe you’re promoting free opt-ins. When you measure success, do you also track surprise Facebook ads conversions?

What I mean by that is you may optimize for Landing Page Views, but you should still follow other types of conversions that result from your campaign in Ads Manager. The existence of these surprise conversions may alter your impressions of performance.

Let’s discuss how you can do this and provide an example…

Make Sure You’re Tracking Conversions

This may seem obvious, but make sure that your ad is set up to track conversions. Depending on your campaign objective and optimization, this may not be the case.

Within the “Tracking” section, at the bottom of ad creation, make sure that “Website Events” is checked and your pixel is selected.

You’ll be required to check this and select a pixel when optimizing for a conversion, but it isn’t required for many other situations.

Add Columns

If you’re running a campaign for traffic, engagement, or awareness, the default metrics that you’ll see in Ads Manager will be related to those objectives. While conversions may not have been your goal, they may actually happen. You should want to see them!

Click the “Columns” drop-down and select “Customize Columns.”

You’ll want to add conversion events, so click within the Conversions section on the left. Let’s start with Standard Events.

You can click checkboxes for total, unique, value, cost, and unique cost for any of the standard events. You can also add columns for custom events and custom conversions, but know that unique metrics aren’t available for them.

(SIDE NOTE: I’ve found that “unique” metrics are buggy and often don’t work.)

While you should add any and all conversions that you may find useful to your reporting, prioritize the events that you’ve ranked for your event configuration.

Saved Columns

This is one of the many reasons that I save columns to have a default setup that displays the metrics I care about most, regardless of the objective. I call my saved settings “The Good Stuff,” and you can read about the metrics I follow here.

If you don’t save columns and then set a column configuration as the default, Facebook will apply the Performance configuration as the default. This will hide these surprise conversions.

So, make sure that you go that extra step of setting this configuration as a default and you’ll always see it. You’ll also want to be sure that it applies to any campaign type that you create.

Example

I run a Reach campaign to a very warm audience with the goal of driving traffic to blog posts. If I stuck with Facebook’s default reporting, metrics would be focused on things like Reach and Impressions. By adding columns, I get a fuller picture of how that campaign is performing.

While my goal was traffic, I was able to uncover a lot more. This campaign also led to 143 registrations, 5 purchases, and 126 searches. That certainly alters my impression of the campaign!

Your Turn

What’s been your experience with surprise conversions when you had different goals?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Surprise Facebook Ads Conversions appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

10 Facebook Website Custom Audience Strategies

Jon Loomer — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 19:00:15 +0000

While cold, broad targeting is popular, I still find warm targeting extremely valuable. I believe this is especially the case for content creators like me. Website custom audiences can be a great tool, and you can use them in many different ways.

I attract you to my website with free content, driven here by email, organic search, social media posts, and ads. It’s then important that I can isolate those who were most engaged to move them to the next step.

Because of the importance of warm audiences for me, I have a rather sophisticated approach to website remarketing. It’s more than just targeting all of my visitors or retargeting an abandoned cart.

While I use many of the “base” audiences that anyone can create, I also create audiences based on standard and custom events that help me isolate those who show they really dug into my content.

Let’s walk through the ways that I’m using website custom audiences right now…

Group 1: Base

First, let’s go through the easy audiences, the ones I call the “Base” audiences. These can be created by anyone and only require that you have the Meta pixel on your website.

1. All website visitors.

This is the broadest audience you can create of your website visitors. If you lack traffic, this is where you’ll start.

Visiting your website should be a good signal. It suggests at least the smallest amount of interest in your business or content. Of course, such an audience includes everyone: Those who spend three minutes and those who spend hours; those who view one page and those who view 100; those who buy from you and those who never would.

While you can use this for multiple purposes (driving traffic back to your website, building your email list, or selling a product), the variation of engagement may make it the best fit for driving traffic or free opt-ins.

2. People who visit specific web pages.

I use these for several very different situations.

First, like in the image above, I’ll use it to isolate traffic to a specific section of my website. Not everyone listens to podcasts, so I can promote podcast episodes to people who have visited “Pubcast” pages of my website.

When I use an ad set to promote a single blog post, I’ll also make sure to exclude those who already read the blog post. I do that by creating an audience of people who visited that URL and exclude it in my ad set.

Another way I use these audiences for exclusion purposes is by excluding those who already bought a product or opted-in to a free thing. Instead of using the website custom audience for standard events (we’ll get to those), I choose to instead create audiences of those who visited the thank-you page for the product I’m promoting and exclude the people who have been there.

Finally, I run remarketing campaigns to people who visited a product landing page but didn’t convert. I do this by targeting the people who visited the landing page and then excluding those who visited the thank-you page. While you could do this in a single audience, I choose to create two (target one, exclude the other).

3. Visitors by time spent.

This audience has been around for years, but I still find it very valuable for isolating my most engaged audience. In this case, it truly can be used for promoting just about anything (on my website, at least), whether it be content, an opt-in, or a product.

The key to remember is that it will, obviously, shrink your overall audience quite a bit. If you target your top 5%, that will be extremely relevant, but it is also going to be a fraction of the total website visitors. Size can lead to deliverability issues.

Group 2: Standard Events

One of the many reasons that you should create web events is that you can target people who perform them. I use these at a very basic level. For example, I will target all people who have purchased a product from me during the past 180 days.

I do the same for CompleteRegistration and Search. I target each group as engaged users likely to want to read a blog post or buy a product from me. While I could refine by parameters to isolate those who bought a particular product or spend the most money, I don’t tend to do that.

Keep in mind that I’ll create audiences by URL (using the confirmation page) to target or exclude those who have bought or registered for something.

One event that I will utilize parameters for, though, is PageView. I’ve used this during a recent experiment to find my most engaged website visitors by the number of pages viewed.

Group 3: Custom Events

I’ve written before about how I use Custom Events to isolate quality engagement on my website that I can’t get from Standard Events alone. While one valuable use of these events is for adding more context to reporting, I also use it to target these actions.

I created these events in the first place because they represent important engagement on my website. So, it would only be logical to target the people who perform these important events.

Once you create these custom events, you can create the audiences based on the events. Here are examples of what I do…

1. User Views 2+ Pages in a Session

2. User Scrolls at Least 70% on a Page

Note that I don’t technically refine by scroll depth here because the event only fires once you’ve scrolled 70%. I used it as an example here so that you can see how you might choose the scroll depth for this audience. (Read more about this event here.)

3. User Spends at Least 2 Minutes on a Page

I’ve set up the event itself in different ways. It originally fired in 30-second intervals. Then I set it up to only fire at 1 minute. Now I have two separate events, one at 1 minute and one at 2 minutes. As a result, I don’t need to refine further to create this audience.

4. User Performs “Quality Visitor” Event (2+ Minutes AND 70% Scroll)

Just for fun, I’m showing how to create an audience of people who perform this event at least three times.

5. Embedded YouTube Video Watched

I typically use these to include all YouTube video views on my website, but here’s an example of how I could include only views of a particular video and for a certain amount of view time.

6. Audio Player Started on My Website

Your Turn

Are there any other audiences you use that I haven’t mentioned here?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post 10 Facebook Website Custom Audience Strategies 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.

The Facebook Ads Metrics That Matter

Jon Loomer — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 15:57:23 +0000

How did your advertising campaign perform? Part of the battle is knowing which Facebook ads metrics actually matter.

I’m often asked about what I care about. Facebook does a good job of surfacing metrics that are relevant to your objective, but that’s not good enough for me.

You can customize your columns in Ads Manager to include the metrics you care about most. You can also save those settings and make them your default.

Let me walk you through how to do that first. Then I’ll give you an overview of my saved settings that I call “The Good Stuff.”

Customize, Save, and Set as Default

In most cases, the default column preset is “Performance.” This is a preset that Facebook created. If you click that drop-down, select “Customize Columns.”

Then you can add and remove columns as you please. You can also drag and drop columns to prioritize what appears where.

Once you have a set-up you like, you can save it.

Click that drop-down again, scroll down to “Custom” and click the “Save” link.

Give it an amazing name.

Once saved, you can then make that columns preset your default.

If you ever make a change that you want to save, just click into that drop-down again and click “Save.” Name it the same thing as the preset you previously created.

Then click the button to replace the existing preset.

“The Good Stuff”

My default column preset is saved as “The Good Stuff.” Basically, these are all of the main metrics that I care about most, regardless of the objective or optimization. It allows me to easily compare campaigns and ad sets without making changes.

I currently have 30 metrics in this setup. It’s a lot, I guess, but everything I need is there. If there’s ever something I need that isn’t included, I just customize columns.

To make it easier, let’s group the metrics I use by category…

Metrics: Campaign Basics

These metrics aren’t exciting, but they have to be included. Otherwise, you’d start asking questions.

They’re the campaign basics. The staples.

Delivery
Budget
Amount Spent
Results
Cost per Result

Metrics: Reach, Impressions, and Frequency

I want to know how many people I’m reaching and how many times. But, it’s also really important to know how much it’s costing just to show these ads, both by impression and by person reached.

Reach
Impressions
Cost per 1,000 People Reached
Cost Per 1,000 Impressions
Frequency

Metrics: Clicks

Not every click is the same, but I still like to see the reporting on each click type. I also like to see rate and cost metrics related to those clicks.

Link Clicks
Outbound Clicks
Landing Page Views
CPC (Cost Per Link Click)
Cost Per Outbound Click
Cost Per Landing Page View
CTR (Link Click-Through Rate)
Outbound CTR

Metrics: Standard Events

The standard pixel events you care about will differ depending on your website. The main two standard events that matter for my website are purchases and registrations. I could include ViewContent or Search pixel events, but I’m just not prioritizing them.

Registrations Completed
Purchases
Cost Per Registration Completed
Cost Per Purchase
Purchase Conversion Value
Purchase ROAS

Metrics: Custom Events

I’ve created three different custom events. I track quality traffic with the Time on Page and Scroll Depth events. I also have a custom event for embedded YouTube video views, but I just don’t prioritize that event.

Maybe you use different custom events. Maybe you don’t even use custom events. Feel free to track custom conversions, too, if they matter to your business.

Here are my metrics that matter related to custom events:

Time on Page Event
Scroll Depth – 70%
60 Seconds Time on Page AND 70% Scroll Depth
Cost Per Time on Page Event
Cost Per Scroll Depth – 70%
Cost Per 60 Seconds Time on Page AND 70% Scroll Depth

Find What Works for You

There’s a ton of room here for adjustments. I guarantee if you ask me a month from now, I’ll make changes to this. Most likely, that would be due to adding custom conversions to monitor more specific conversions.

But the main point here is finding the metrics that represent “The Good Stuff” for you. Save it. Default it.

It makes the Ads Manager experience so much easier.

Watch Video

Your Turn

What metrics would you include in “The Good Stuff?”

Let me know in the comments below!

The post The Facebook Ads Metrics That Matter appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

How to Use Google Tag Manager to Manage the Facebook Pixel and Events

Jon Loomer — Sun, 28 Nov 2021 03:19:51 +0000

For the past couple of years now, I’ve used Google Tag Manager to manage the Facebook pixel and events (both standard and custom events). In this post, I’m going to walk through exactly how I do that.

I wish I would have started using GTM to manage my Facebook pixel and events sooner. It provides a ton of flexibility and ability to get creative in ways that you can’t while sticking with standard events only.

Install the Base Pixel Code

In order to take advantage of Google Tag Manager for standard and custom pixel events, you’ll first need to add the base Facebook pixel code.

Within the Google Tag Manager workspace for your domain, go to Tags.

Click to create a “New” tag.

Click “Tag Configuration.”

Select “Custom HTML.”

This is where you’ll need to paste your base Facebook pixel code. Go into Facebook Events Manager and select your pixel as the data source.

Then click the “Add Events” drop-down and select “From a New Website.”

Choose to “Install Code Manually.”

Click the green “Copy Code” button.

Then paste that code back into the HTML field of the tag you were creating in GTM.

Under “Advanced Settings,” choose “Once per page.”

At the bottom, click into “Triggering.”

Select the “All Pages” page view trigger.

Name your tag (something like “Facebook – Base Pixel”) and save it.

Then click to submit your changes.

Create Standard Events

First, you can technically use the Facebook Pixel Setup Tool to create standard pixel events without code. I’ve personally not had a lot of luck with that tool and choose to do it manually in Google Tag Manager.

We created a Facebook Pixel Event Generator tool to help with this process. Let’s assume that I want to create a ViewContent event for the view of my training landing page.

I select “ViewContent.”

Everything else is optional, but I’ll also provide the name of the landing page for “content_name.”

The code I need is now at the bottom of the page. Copy that.

Here’s a video of how to use that tool if you need it…

Now, create a new tag in Google Tag Manager. Once again, it should utilize custom HTML. Paste the code we just copied from the Event Generator.

Let’s name the tag before we go further. This is for you, so name it whatever you want. Make sure it’s descriptive so you know what it is.

Under Advanced Settings, expand Tag Sequencing and check the box for “Fire a tag before [your tag] fires.”

We want the base Facebook pixel code to fire first or the events won’t work. Click to select a tag and then choose the base pixel tag that we created earlier.

Click into Triggering and then click the “+” to add a new trigger. This trigger will be the view of the specific page that will result in the ViewContent event firing.

First name it. Then click Trigger Configuration. Select “Page View” as your trigger type.

Select “Some Page Views” and then “Page URL” from the drop-down. You’ll use Page URL “contains” and then paste in everything from your landing page URL after the domain name (including “/ and /”).

When you’re done, save and submit your changes.

You can do this with any standard event. I also create events for CompleteRegistration and Purchase using the page view of the thank-you pages as the trigger events.

Create Custom Events

One of the really cool benefits of Google Tag Manager for managing your Facebook pixel is the custom events that you can create. I’m not going to use this space to detail how I created all of my custom events because I’ve already written individual blog posts on each one.

I’ve created a custom event to trigger when someone views a page of my website for at least 60 seconds. It uses a special Google Tag Manager timer trigger.

I’ve also created a custom event to trigger when someone scrolls at least 70% deep into a page. This event utilizes the Scroll Depth trigger.

And finally, I created an event that triggers when someone watches YouTube videos embedded on my website. These events use a YouTube Video trigger.

I’m sure there’s still way more that I can do with custom pixel events using Google Tag Manager, but these are really nice tools to help me track, optimize, and target quality actions on my website.

Test Them

You can test whether the pixel and events are working using the “Test Events” tab in your Events Manager. But I find it’s easier to simply use the Facebook Pixel Helper Chrome plugin.

If you use the plugin, simply navigate to the page that should fire the event you’ve added.

If everything is working properly, all expected events will fire and display with a green checkmark.

GTM + Conversions API Gateway

While the Conversions API Gateway isn’t part of Google Tag Manager, I wanted to note that the two play nicely. Once I set up the Conversions API using the API Gateway, it automatically detects all of the standard and custom events that pass through the pixel.

Watch Video

Your Turn

I’m a big fan of using Google Tag Manager to manage my Facebook pixel and events. Have you used it to create other powerful custom events that I haven’t?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How to Use Google Tag Manager to Manage the Facebook Pixel and Events appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

8 Ways to Target Quality Website Visitors with Facebook Ads

Jon Loomer — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 18:16:26 +0000

One of an advertiser’s targeting tools is reaching people who have visited their website before. But not all visitors are created equal. So, it’s important that you have strategies to target quality website visitors most likely to act with Facebook ads.

The idea of targeting website visitors is to reach those who are familiar with you and are most likely to act favorably. Of course, those who visit routinely or spend hours on your website are much more valuable than those who visited once.

So, the goal is to isolate the most engaged visitors while eliminating accidental clicks, quick abandons, and even visitors who viewed a single page and never returned.

Keep in mind that this method isn’t for everyone. If you only get a few hundred or few thousand visits per month to your website, limiting the audience further may result in a failure to deliver the ads.

With that in mind, let’s dive in…

1. Time Spent Percentage

Back in 2016, Facebook rolled out an easy way to create an audience of people who spent the most time on your website. It’s easy because it’s built into the website custom audience creation process, and anyone can do it.

When you create a website custom audience, select “Visitors by time spent” with the Events drop-down (“All website visitors” will be selected by default).

You can then select the top 5%, 10%, or 25% of users who spent the most time on your website.

The top 5% would obviously be the most relevant, but also the smallest audience. Keep that and the Retention in mind when creating any of the audiences we’re discussing in this blog post.

Once again, a low retention (1-10 days) will be the most relevant, but it may not give you enough usable volume. These are things you will need to experiment with.

2. Frequency of Page Views

Instead of focusing on the people who spent the most time on your website, you can isolate those who viewed the most pages. This can be especially useful for simply eliminating those who viewed only one page.

This is another option that everyone has. In this case, though, the ability to create such an audience is a bit buried.

When creating your website custom audience, select the PageView event.

The PageView event fires on every page load that includes the Facebook pixel. Unlike standard and custom events, PageView is built into the base pixel code (you don’t need to add it).

With PageView selected, click “Refine by” and select “Aggregated Value.”

By default, Facebook will use a frequency greater than or equal to “2.” That’s a great place to start!

Feel free to experiment with frequencies greater than “2” as well as increasing and decreasing the retention. If you can get the volume, this is a great way to isolate your highly-engaged website visitors.

3. Performed One of Multiple Standard Events

There are several standard events that, if performed, would signify a high-quality visitor. What those events are may depend on your website and the events that occur.

Following are events that could signify a quality visit:

Purchase
CompleteRegistration
Lead
Contact
Search

You can create individual website custom audiences for any or all of these events. Here’s an example of a website custom audience for a Purchase event during the past 30 days…

Then include those audiences in your targeting to reach anyone who has performed any of those events.

You could also technically combine multiple events into the same audience. When creating the audience for all Purchase events, for example, click the “Include More People” button.

Then add another event (or events) so it looks like this…

I personally prefer the individual event audience method so that each audience can be used more flexibly.

Read this post for more info about creating website custom audiences based on pixel events.

4. Page Scroll Custom Event

I use Google Tag Manager to manage my Facebook pixel and one reason is the ease of creating custom events. One of the custom events I’ve created tracks when people scroll a certain distance in a blog post. The idea here is that if you don’t scroll, you weren’t a high-quality visitor. But if you scroll a specified depth (70, 80, 90, or 100%), you were engaged.

I’m not going to go through all of the details of setting this up here, but I did write a blog post about it!

Once you create the event, you can create a website custom audience based on it.

5. Time on Page Custom Event

Time on Page is another custom event I set up using Google Tag Manager. Understand that this is slightly different from Facebook’s built-in Time Spent audience. The Time on Page event gives us a bit more flexibility.

Facebook’s Time on Page event uses three rigid groups of percentages. The Time on Page event fires at intervals that you determine.

In this case, you can isolate people who have spent a specific amount of time on any post, rather than separating only those who spent the most time on your website overall. At minimum, you can cut out the quick abandons and, for example, focus only on those who spent at least 30 seconds on a page.

Once again, I won’t go into all of the details of setting this up here. You can read a blog post I wrote for that!

Once you create this event, you can create a website custom audience based on it.

These days, I only fire a Time on Page event at 60 seconds.

6. Page Views Per Session and Per User Custom Events

Something else I’ve experimented with is the Page Views Per Session and Page Views Per User custom events. Using cookies, an event will fire each time you view a new page. That cookie will either be session-based or time-based. In the case of the per-user event, the cookie will last up to two years to track the total number of pages you view.

Now, this works a whole lot like the PageViews frequency approach we discussed before. I haven’t yet determined whether the extra work to set these up is worth it over simply using PageView frequency. There are some advantages to this approach, like the ability to create a custom conversion to optimize and track for these events.

If you’re interested in setting these up, check out this blog post by DigiShuffle (#10 and #12).

Once again, you’ll be able to create website custom audiences based on either of the events.

7. Mix and Match Audiences

Once you have all of these options, the question may be, “Which one is best for targeting quality website visitors?” Well, you can test that. But there’s also nothing stopping you from including two or more of these audiences within the same ad set.

This is the best way to get you volume while eliminating the most glaring characteristics of a low-quality visit. The other way to increase volume, of course, is to increase the retention (max of 180 days).

8. Quality Visit Conversion Optimization

If you use any of the custom events I’ve mentioned in this blog post, you can do more than just target people who perform them. You can also have Facebook optimize for that type of event.

To do that, you’ll first need to create a custom conversion for that event.

Then, run a Conversions campaign. Optimize for conversions and select that custom conversion as your conversion event.

Facebook will then optimize for and report on that event occurring.

Your Turn

These are the methods that I use for targeting quality website visitors. How about you?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post 8 Ways to Target Quality Website Visitors with Facebook Ads appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Create a Custom Facebook Event for a Watched YouTube Video in Google Tag Manager

Jon Loomer — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 17:43:10 +0000

Imagine you have an important YouTube video embedded on a page of your website. If someone watches that video, it will tell you that they are a potential lead. You can create a custom Facebook event to track, optimize, and retarget them with Facebook ads.

The original inspiration for this approach came from this blog post. I made some alterations. Feel free to make your own alterations to fit your needs.

First, know that I use Google Tag Manager to manage my Facebook pixel. One of the reasons I do that is because of the ease of creating custom events like this one.

For more on using Google Tag Manager for creating custom events, check out the following blog posts:

Configure the Video Variables in Google Tag Manager

First, you’ll need to tell Google Tag Manager the actions related to a video you will want to track.

Go into “Variables” on the left.

Click the “Configure” button at the top right for the built-in variables. Then make sure the Video Title, Video Current Time, and Video Percent boxes are all checked (you can select others to fit your needs, too).

Create a Video Trigger

Now, go into Triggers on the left.

Click to create a new one. Name it and click the edit icon at the top right.

Select “YouTube Video” under User Engagement trigger types.

I’ve chosen to capture when the video starts, completes, and is 50% completed.

Again, use what you want here. I found that adding too many captures created errors for short videos.

Click to add JavaScript API support and enable the trigger on “Window Load.” I found that leaving it on the default of DOM Ready resulted in not always firing.

Create a Tag

Go into Tags on the left.

Click to create a new one. Name it and click the edit icon at the top right.

You’ll want to select “Custom HTML.”

Paste the following code within the HTML area (don’t forget the opening and closing SCRIPT tags):

fbq('trackCustom','VideoWatched',{'Title':{{Video Title}},'Video Percent':{{Video Percent}},'Video Time':{{Video Current Time}}})

It will look like this…

Under Advanced Settings, click the box in Tag Sequencing to fire a tag before this one fires. You’ll want to select your Base Pixel Code tag (you should have created this earlier, assuming the pixel is already running on your website).

This assures that your base pixel code will fire before the event code. Otherwise, the event code will not work.

Under Triggering, click the edit icon at the top right.

Select the Video Trigger we created earlier.

Test it with the Facebook Pixel Helper

After all of the steps above are done, submit your changes. Then go to an embedded YouTube video on a page of your website.

To test it, I use the Facebook Pixel Helper Chrome plugin. Watch the video tutorial below that explains how to set this up.

Then check the Facebook Pixel Helper to make sure that the events you created are firing. You should see multiple “VideoWatched” events (assuming you set it up to capture multiple stages).

Here is the final time it fired, showing the video was completed…

Create Custom Conversions for Tracking and Optimization

You’ll want to use these events for both tracking and optimization purposes. Within your Events Manager, click to view your Custom Conversions.

Click to create a new one. Select the VideoWatched custom event.

If you want to get granular, you can create rules to isolate time, percent, or video title parameters.

You can then do any of the following:

Add this custom conversion to your configured events list and optimize for it
Optimize for this as a non-configured event
Add columns to your reporting to include this event

Create Website Custom Audiences for Targeting

You can also target people who completed these events. Go into your Audiences page and click to create a new Custom Audience.

Select Website…

Select your pixel. Within the Events drop-down, select the VideoWatched event under the “From Your Events” section.

Refine by “URL/Parameter.”

Just like when you were creating a Custom Conversion, select a parameter and refine accordingly.

You will now be able to target this very specific group.

Your Turn

Have you experimented with custom events for people who watched your embedded YouTube videos? How have you — or how would you use them?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Create a Custom Facebook Event for a Watched YouTube Video in Google Tag Manager appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

The Problems with Facebook Ads Optimization

Jon Loomer — Wed, 13 Oct 2021 18:18:38 +0000

Facebook’s ads optimization systems are powerful. They have a ridiculous amount of data they can use to make sure that the right people who are most likely to act will see your ad. But while powerful, there are some inherent problems.

This doesn’t mean that Facebook ads optimization is bad. It means that there are some specific circumstances and settings you should watch out for, if not avoid.

In this post, let’s talk about how Facebook ads optimization works, the scenarios that could create problems, and the ways you can mitigate them.

How Facebook Ads Optimization Works

It’s important that you understand how Facebook ads optimization works. Once you understand how optimization functions, you will begin to predict the potential pitfalls.

While you set an initial “pool” audience in the ad set, Facebook knows that some of the people within that audience are more likely than others to perform your desired action. Facebook will try harder to reach those individuals while avoiding those more likely to result in a wasted impression.

The “desired action” is key. Some people are more likely to click, others more likely to view a video, and still others more likely to convert. All of these audiences and qualities are different.

At the bottom of your ad set, you choose the action you want Facebook to optimize for.

Per Facebook:

Choose the event you want to optimize for in your ad set. Your selection affects who sees your ads to get you the desired outcome. For example, if you choose to optimize for link clicks, we’ll show your ad to the people most likely to click your link.

The pool of people changes depending on your optimization event. This is important. In theory: Optimize correctly, get more desired actions and save money on waste.

Facebook Doesn’t Care About Quality

Let’s think about how Facebook’s automated systems can be misled. In the case of most actions, Facebook doesn’t care about quality. They only care about getting you the most of these desired actions for the lowest cost.

Some people click a lot. Some people comment and like a lot. Videos may hang up in a person’s news feed more than others.

Take a look at the engagement on your ads. Do you ever get angry reactions? Do you get people who complain about seeing your ads in their news feed? Do you get spam or worthless comments?

Guess what? This is all engagement! If you optimize for engagement, these are people who are likely in the pool of desirable people to reach. Facebook will see this engagement as being successful since engagement is what you asked for.

Some people click ads. Sometimes people click them by mistake. Some have terrible internet speeds and the page fails to load. There are also fake profiles and bots that click on things to appear real.

Take a look at the visit quality from your ads in Google Analytics. How long do they spend on your website? Do they immediately abandon?

Facebook sees all of these clicks and visits as being equal. If you optimize for Link Clicks or Landing Page Views, Facebook will use these people in your pool of potential targets. And when they click, Facebook will see your ad as being successful.

Why? Because you told Facebook you wanted link clicks or landing page views. That’s what you got! Success!

But… You care about quality.

Quality Matters

Of course, you want quantity AND quality. You definitely don’t want the lowest quality engagement. Luckily, there are some ways to mitigate it.

First, you can trust Facebook much more when optimizing for purchases, value, or conversion leads (someone who ultimately buys after a lead). These are difficult for Facebook to misunderstand and screw up.

I understand that you can’t necessarily optimize for purchases all the time. So, I want to give you some things to consider when assembling your campaigns that can help limit low-quality results.

Broad Targeting and Optimization

One of the biggest dangers to attracting low-quality results is using broad targeting for surface-level optimization like engagement, video views, and link clicks. Facebook will have no problem finding these actions, and you’ll probably get them cheaply.

Consider using tighter audiences for these optimization options. Target custom audiences, page followers, and precise interests.

Country Targeting

Most advertisers understand that bots and spam seem to come from some countries more than others. No country is immune, of course. It’s all a matter of balancing risk and reward.

Especially if you aren’t optimizing for a “quality” action, be selective about the countries you target. Otherwise, Facebook will simply find the cheapest clicks and engagement from the cheapest countries while potentially avoiding the countries where you get business.

Do some research to uncover where your paying customers come from. That should be your starting point.

You should also consider adjusting how Facebook targets people by location. By default, you will reach people who “Live in or were recently in” the countries you select.

While it may make sense for some businesses to target those who are traveling to and from a country, it may make more sense to focus only on those who live in the countries you’ve selected.

Placements

There’s only one placement I have strong negative feelings about, and that’s Audience Network. If you’re not familiar with this placement, it includes the apps and websites that monetize themselves with Facebook ads.

I’ve found Audience Network to be a huge source of accidental clicks and even click fraud (my account has been refunded several times due to Audience Network click fraud). If you’ve ever used an app and clicked on an ad by accident when it popped up unexpectedly, you understand how accidental clicks can happen.

It’s not that you should never use Audience Network as a placement. If you optimize for purchase conversions and you’re getting purchases from that placement, keep it. Because if those purchases don’t happen, Facebook will show ads to that placement less and less.

The problem I’ve seen is when optimizing for link clicks, landing page views, and engagement. Facebook will see those accidental clicks (and even click fraud) as satisfying your goals. If you ever run a traffic campaign with results that seem too good to be true, that may be because they are.

The reality is that this is how optimization is supposed to work! You asked for clicks. Facebook sees they can get you a lot of clicks within Audience Network. Suddenly, you start spending a big chunk of your budget within that placement, leading to more clicks. Facebook thinks they got you what you want.

You should check to see if the bulk of your budget is being moved to Audience Network. You can do this by using the Placement Breakdown.

Then check the quality of that traffic in Google Analytics.

Impact to Custom Audiences

Beyond generating misleading ad results, ignoring the inherent problems associated with Facebook ads optimization can lead to a watering down of your custom audiences.

If you indiscriminately run traffic ads that drive low-quality traffic, you will start building low-quality website custom audiences.

If you fail to mitigate issues related to low-quality engagement, you will start building low-quality page engagement custom audiences.

These are often go-to audiences for advertisers to target those who are closest to your brand and most likely to act. But, if you’re not careful, you will damage their effectiveness.

Traffic Alternatives

There is a solution to the traffic optimization problems. What we want is high-quality traffic. We want people who spend a lot of time on our website or scroll through the entire post. We want to avoid the accidental clicks and quick exits.

The solution is custom pixel events and optimizing for conversions.

I’ve created two different custom pixel events to track quality traffic (I created a blog post for each on how I set them up):

Instead of running a Traffic campaign that optimizes for link clicks or landing page views, I create a conversions campaign that optimizes for conversions (with a Quality Traffic Custom Event as the conversion event).

This makes sure that Facebook measures success by optimizing for and seeing more high-quality traffic visits. The result is that the cost per click will certainly be higher, but I’ll also generate more quality traffic.

Watch Video

Your Turn

I hope this post has helped you better understand how Facebook ads optimization works, the potential problems it can cause, and how you can mitigate those issues.

Have questions? Let me know in the comments below!

The post The Problems with Facebook Ads Optimization appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

How to Optimize For and Track Facebook Custom Events

Jon Loomer — Mon, 30 Aug 2021 21:03:13 +0000

Thanks to a recent update, advertisers can now optimize for and track Facebook custom events — without needing to first create a custom conversion.

If this doesn’t make sense to you, allow me to explain…

What are Custom Events?

First, when we speak of “events” in this context, I’m referring to pixel events. Publishers who install the Facebook pixel (a unique snippet of code) to their website can track and optimize for specific events that occur on their website using Facebook ads.

There are two kinds of events:

1. Standard: Facebook has predefined events that they can easily recognize for tracking and optimization purposes. Examples include Purchase, CompleteRegistration, VieContent, and Search (among many others).

2. Custom: Maybe you have events that can’t be defined within “standard” constraints. You can use custom code to define “custom” events so that Facebook can track these as well. An example of a custom event on my website is the “Time on Page” event.

This allows me to send an event when someone has spent 60 seconds or more on a page. (You can read more about how I created this custom event here.)

The Problem (Before)

Once you create a custom event, you can create an audience of people who have performed it for targeting purposes. Here’s an example using the custom event I created for Time on Page.

After that, however, custom events had some weaknesses. You could optimize for standard events when creating a conversions campaign. You could also track standard event conversions by adding a column (if you didn’t define it as the conversion event in the ad set). But custom events needed another step.

In order to optimize for or track a custom event, you needed to first map that event to a custom conversion (since you could optimize for and track custom conversions, but not custom events).

What This Update Means

Mapping a custom event to a custom conversion in order to optimize for or track it seemed like a completely unnecessary step. And it was.

With this update, you will now be able to select a custom event when choosing your conversion event within the ad set.

Facebook doesn’t do a very good job of differentiating between what’s a standard event, custom event, or custom conversion during this process, but there’s one indicator. Standard and custom events don’t have rules, whereas custom conversions do. You should recognize all standard events. If you are uncertain whether an event is a custom event or custom conversion, hover over it to see if rules were set up for it.

Here’s a custom conversion where rules were set up…

And here’s a custom event, showing no rules…

If you select a custom event as a conversion event, it will be tracked in the “Results” column. But, you can also now add a column for a custom event now.

Click to customize columns…

On the left, you’ll see a “Conversions” section that includes standard events, custom conversions, and custom events.

You can then add a column for that custom event, regardless of whether you define it as your conversion event.

iOS 14 Considerations

Something to consider here is that you currently cannot configure your eight ranked events to include custom events, only standard events and custom conversions. Ranked events will result in more complete reporting, assuming you have a substantial audience using iOS devices.

My assumption is that Facebook will eventually allow us to add custom events as our ranked events, but until then this is something to keep in mind.

Your Turn

Have you started optimizing for and tracking custom events?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post How to Optimize For and Track Facebook Custom Events appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Facebook Pixel Events and Custom Conversions: Best Practices

Jon Loomer — Mon, 14 Sep 2020 02:08:04 +0000

Meta pixel events and custom conversions are important tools that can amplify your marketing and advertising efforts. Given some crossover between the two, it may be challenging to understand the difference between them as well as when and how to use each. This post is meant to provide some clarity.

First, if you haven’t read my guides on how Facebook pixel events and custom conversions work, I encourage you to do so:

Throughout this post, we’ll discuss how to utilize each (if at all) in the following processes:

Conversion tracking in Ads Manager
Conversion optimization
Targeting
Dynamic ads

When we’re done, I’ll walk through exactly how I use Facebook pixel events and custom conversions.

Conversion Optimization

If you want to get the best results, you’ll want to take advantage of Facebook optimization. When creating an ad set, Facebook will optimize for your performance goal. This means that they’ll show your ads to people within your audience most likely to perform that action.

If you optimize for a conversion, Facebook will optimize for the specific conversion event that you define for Facebook at the top of the ad set.

You can select a standard event, custom event, or custom conversion.

First, know that there’s certainly value in setting your conversion event as any registration, purchase, or some other standard event. That creates volume that may help with optimization.

But, maybe you want to set a goal that is more specific, like the precise product that you want to sell. Know that you can still do that with custom conversions.

You can do this either by creating a custom conversion based on a standard event and parameter…

…or by product purchase thank you page URL (either using the standard event or not)…

You can also map a custom event to a custom conversion.

Conversion Tracking in Ads Manager

When running Facebook ads with the goal of a conversion, you will want to be able to measure success. To accomplish this, you’ll need to define your conversion goal so that Facebook can report on how many of those events occur as a result of someone seeing or clicking your ad.

First, know that when optimizing for conversions, Facebook will report on the goal conversion that you set in the step above as your default “Result.”

Know that when you hover over the number in that Results column (while optimizing for some type of conversion), Facebook will report on all custom conversion events that resulted from someone seeing or clicking on your ad.

But, maybe you want to see how many conversions happened when you weren’t optimizing for a conversion. You still can. This can be incredibly valuable.

Click to customize columns.

You can add columns of Total, Value, or Cost for any standard event or custom conversion.

We’re back to the same problem we faced with optimization! No ability to select a standard event based on parameters or a custom event.

If you’re reading closely, you probably know the answer. Map your standard event with parameters or custom event to a custom conversion. Do that and you can add a column to your Ads Manager for reporting.

Targeting

You can’t simply target a pixel event or custom conversion. But you can create a website custom audience that’s based on a pixel event (not a custom conversion) and target it within your ad set.

This is where it gets interesting and potentially complex. The audiences you can create are only limited by the number of pixel events (standard and custom) and parameters you use.

When you create a website custom audience, you will have the ability to select “From your events.”

You will be able to select from both standard and custom pixel events here — whatever events are active on your website.

First, you can choose to create an audience based on an event without refining by parameters. This could give you volume for more targeting power.

For example, here’s an audience of all purchases…

But, you can also refine by URL/PARAMETER or aggregated value.

So, you could create a website custom audience based on an event that occurred on a particular page (purchase event by confirmation URL) or based on product name using parameters.

You could create an audience of all purchases with a value of more than $100.00.

If you refine by Aggregated Value, you could even create an audience of all people who made at least two purchases during a given time period.

Or you can create an audience of people whose sum of all purchases over a given period of time is greater than or equal to $500.

Once again, your possibilities for targeting are only limited by how much you use pixel events. This is where putting in the work to use standard events with parameters as well as custom events really pays off.

Dynamic Ads

If you have an e-commerce company and want to benefit from Dynamic Ads, it’s a must that you use standard events with parameters (custom events and custom conversions don’t apply).

The ability to target Dynamic Ads based on the above categories relies on your diligent use of standard pixel events and parameters. That is how Facebook knows that someone viewed, added to cart, or purchased a particular product.

Summary

I created the following matrix to try and summarize how standard events (with and without parameters), custom events, and custom conversions can be used.

An important point: While you can’t technically track and optimize for standard events by parameters or custom events (with or without parameters), you still have options. All you need to do is first map that event to a custom conversion.

Can you get away with using ONLY pixel events and not custom conversions? Only if you have no interest in defining the specific conversion (product name and other details) for the purpose of optimization and tracking. Not a great idea.

Can you get away with using ONLY custom conversions and not standard or pixel events? First, not if you run an e-commerce website and want to utilize Dynamic Ads. But otherwise, you’d need to have the smallest of websites with a minimum number of conversion types to consider this approach.

Best Practices and What I Do

Note that this post isn’t meant to instruct you on which pixel events, parameters, and custom conversions to create. That’s going to vary from business to business. Instead, I hope this provides clarity on how each is used. But, I would like to explain how I use them.

For every product I launch, I create a standard event in Google Tag Manager and use the parameters to define the product, currency, and value.

I create a custom conversion for that product to isolate it for optimization and tracking in Ads Manager. Note that I create my custom conversions for product purchases and registrations based on confirmation page (mainly because it’s easier and my website is set up to do it this way).

I create a website custom audience for that purchase, but again I base it on the confirmation page URL.

You may not be able to create your purchase custom conversions or website custom audiences based on URL if you don’t have a unique confirmation page for each product purchase. That’s where you’d instead base those on pixel events and parameters.

I still use standard event parameters so that I can create some of those unique website custom audiences I discussed earlier. Otherwise, you could make the argument that standard event parameters are less necessary for a website like mine.

This same process applies for all of my free opt-in products. I create custom conversions and website custom audiences based on the confirmation page URL, and I add standard events with parameters.

I also create custom events based on time on page and scroll depth to measure, optimize for, and target high-quality visits.

The pixel events and custom conversions you use will depend on your business. But this is what I do.

Learn More About the Facebook Pixel

Want to master the Facebook pixel? Take your learning a step further with the Facebook Pixel Masterclass, a video series covering advanced topics related to the pixel. We’ll go into detail related to pixel events, custom conversions, tracking, optimization, and targeting.

Or, if you aren’t ready for the advanced topics, check out my Facebook Pixel Basics free video series (this is also included within Facebook Pixel Masterclass). You can register by clicking the link below…

[GET THE VIDEO SERIES]

It includes eight lessons covering what the pixel is, why it’s important, how it works, how to add it to your website, and how to test that it’s working.

Enjoy!

Register For Facebook Pixel Basics Free Video Series

The post Facebook Pixel Events and Custom Conversions: Best Practices appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Facebook Pixel Events: An Introduction

Jon Loomer — Tue, 08 Sep 2020 19:48:32 +0000

The Facebook pixel allows advertisers to better track, optimize, and target. These are the three most critical aspects of advertising, leading to the success or failure of your efforts. To make the most of the pixel, you need to utilize the Facebook pixel and events on your website. Not only must you utilize events, but you must do it right.

This post is your introduction to Facebook pixel events. It will help you better understand what pixel events are and how to use them.

First: The Base Facebook Pixel Code

If this is your first exposure to the Facebook pixel and events, know that pixel events can’t live independently. You must first have your base Facebook pixel code installed on every page of your website.

The base pixel code is what identifies the data as being connected to your ad account.

If you haven’t done this yet, read this post that outlines three primary methods to get the base pixel code added to your website — including what I do.

What Pixel Events Are

The base Facebook pixel code is what alerts Facebook that someone loaded a page on a website connected to a particular ad account. If you only have the base pixel code, your website sends page views, and nothing more.

If you use pixel events, you can define actions that occur on your website. The most common events we think of might be purchases, registrations, or leads. When using events, Facebook knows when these actions occur.

You notify Facebook of these actions with the addition of a pixel event. Most often, these pixel events fire when specific pages with their related code loads (though they could fire on button clicks or other custom actions).

For example: A visitor hits a landing page for a product (View Content event fires by visiting this page). They add the product to their cart but haven’t completed the purchase yet (Add to Cart event fires). They then submit their payment info and complete the purchase, redirecting to a confirmation page (Purchase event fires).

Sending this information to Facebook helps in three primary ways…

1. TRACKING: You’re able to connect your advertising to actual sales that occurred on your website because Facebook associates a person who saw or clicked your ad with a conversion.

2. OPTIMIZATION: Since Facebook knows who has converted on your website, you can optimize to reach other users similar to them.

3. TARGETING: You can target the specific people who performed these events.

Standard Events

At the time of publication of this blog post, there are 17 predefined standard Facebook pixel events (18 if you include Page View, which is included within the base pixel code). Facebook is likely to add more, as they already have during the evolution of pixel events.

Add Payment Info
Add to Cart
Add to Wishlist
Complete Registration
Contact
Customize Product
Donate
Find Location
Initiate Checkout
Lead
Purchase
Schedule
Search
Start Trial
Submit Application
Subscribe
View Content

Here’s a grid that includes all of the standard events, what they mean, and the code for implementation (with parameters, as necessary).

Standard events are helpful for a couple of reasons. First, the predefined code makes it easier for publishers to add events to their website.

Second, an event utilized on websites around the world means more data for optimization. If a person has shown to make online purchases on other websites, they may also be more likely, combined with other factors, to purchase on yours.

Custom Events

If you have an event that falls outside of the 17 standard events, you can create a custom event. This, of course, will be a bit more technical. While most often used for targeting (you can create a Website Custom Audience based on standard and custom events), you can still track or optimize for custom events if mapped to a custom conversion.

We’ll go into more detail on custom conversions in a separate post. However, you can read about two custom events that I have created for my website (and how you can create them, too):

Parameters

So far, we’ve discussed how to notify Facebook when a conversion occurs. Facebook may know, for example, that someone completed a purchase. But, how do we provide details of that conversion? That’s where parameters come in.

Parameters provide details like currency, value, quantity of items purchased, and the actual name of the product purchased or acted on.

It looks like this…

Only certain parameter are valid for each conversion event. In most cases, parameters are optional. The exception is the Purchase event, which requires currency and value.

More details can be found here on which parameters are available for each event.

Adding Events to Your Website

Event code needs to be added after the opening BODY tag. There are three primary ways to add events to your website:

Manually
Partner Integration
Event Setup Tool

Ideally, you can utilize partner integration that makes this easier, particularly for standard events. For example, if you have an e-commerce website on Shopify, much of the work is likely done for you.

You could use the Event Setup Tool, which is Facebook’s codeless method for adding pixel events. As of this writing, the Pixel Event Setup Tool is far from perfect (generally related to bugginess and a lack of parameter flexibility).

If given the option (and no partner integration), I prefer to set up events manually. Unfortunately, Facebook scrapped their tool that seamlessly provided the code you’d need when creating events. My team created a new option for you, called the Pixel Event Generator. Try it out!

Some Notes on Tracking, Optimization, and Targeting

I want to add some clarification regarding tracking, optimization, and targeting related to pixel events…

TRACKING: You can add columns for standard events within Ads Manager, but not custom events. Also, you can’t add separate columns based on parameters. For custom events and specific products, you’ll need to map your events to custom conversions for tracking purposes.

OPTIMIZATION: Like tracking, you can optimize for a standard event, but not custom events. Optimization would be for the aggregate of all purchases, for example, rather than the purchase of a specific product. Once again, you could optimize for a custom event or specific product purchase by first mapping the event to a custom conversion.

TARGETING: Understand that you can’t just drop a name of a pixel event in your ad set targeting. You need to first create a Website Custom Audience and select the pixel event. You would then use that audience for your targeting.

We’ll get into more details on these topics in separate blog posts.

Facebook Analytics and Attribution

One final point. Know that the pixel and events aren’t only helpful for advertising. They also help with analysis of organic content. When using Facebook Analytics and Facebook Attribution, you can measure your performance, regardless of whether the source of traffic came from an ad.

These are two very deep topics on their own that will be discussed separately.

The post Facebook Pixel Events: An Introduction appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.

Create Facebook Pixel Events for Time Spent

Jon Loomer — Tue, 26 May 2020 23:29:00 +0000

In this post, I’m going to walk through how to create a custom Facebook pixel event based on time spent on your website (all pages or a section of your website). That event will help you better track, optimize, and target those who spend the most time on your website.

[READ ABOUT HOW TO CREATE A PIXEL EVENT FOR SCROLL DEPTH.]

This is a big deal. It’s more than simply creating a custom audience of those who spent the most time on your website, as is already easily possible (top 5%, 10%, and 25%). This provides more granularity of those audiences, but two most important capabilities of this approach are through measurement and optimizing for this type of visitor.

The Problem: Low-Quality Traffic

The foundation of my marketing strategy is driving traffic to my website. I use organic content, email updates, and Facebook ads to send a constant pipeline of people to my site. That starts my funnel, where I hope to get them on my email list (usually via a free offer) before making a single-product sale and, hopefully, ongoing membership.

The quality of this funnel is reliant on the quality of that initial traffic. If my website is flooded by low-quality visits (typically reflected by a quick exit), my other efforts will fall apart.

I had become increasingly skeptical of results I was seeing from Traffic campaigns promoting blog posts using Landing Page Views optimization. I would occasionally see runs of too-good-to-be-true results. After digging further, the culprits were typically source country or placement (Audience Network almost always sends low-quality traffic).

Why does this happen? Simple: Facebook cares about volume and costs without care regarding quality. They don’t hide from this fact, either…

When optimizing for Landing Page Views (after clicking the ad, the website and Facebook pixel load), Facebook will try to get you the most LPVs for the lowest cost. It doesn’t matter whether those are three-second or three-hour views. Facebook doesn’t care.

This may not matter when it comes to sales. A $100 sale is a $100 sale. But there is a huge variance in the quality of a Landing Page View.

The Solution: Facebook Pixel Event for Time Spent

We want Facebook to track, report, optimize for, and even target based on the time spent on our website. We can force Facebook to care about the quality of the traffic they are sending.

By creating a Facebook pixel event to create a log of visits based on 30-second multiples (30, 60, 90, 120, 150, and 180 seconds), we can then do the following specific things:

Create Custom Conversions based on these events
Add columns to our ad reports for number and cost of these events to get a clearer view of ability to drive quality traffic
Optimize for any of these specific events to focus on targeting and driving high-quality visits
Create website custom audiences of those who performed these events for high-quality targeting

A member of my team did this for me using Google Tag Manager. I am going to walk through the specific steps so that you can do it, too.

Add the Base Facebook Pixel

I assume you have the base Facebook pixel code already installed on your website. Just in case, let’s walk through this anyway.

We’re doing this within Google Tag Manager. While there are likely ways to do it elsewhere, the variables and triggers provided by GTM make it easier to execute.

1. Create a tag and name it “Facebook – Base Pixel.”

2. Choose “Custom HTML” as the tag type under Tag Configuration.

3. Paste your base pixel code in its entirety within the HTML text box. Below is an example, but you should use your own code unique to your ad account.

4. Under Triggering, we want our base pixel code to execute on all pages of our website.

Note that I won’t have the events we’re going to create execute on every page (that’s up to you). But the base pixel absolutely should.

Create a Trigger

We want Facebook to fire an event for every 30 seconds a visitor is on a page.

1. Create a new trigger in Google Tag Manager and name it “Blog – 30, 60, 90, 120, 180 seconds.”

2. Select the “Timer” trigger type.

3. For interval, use 30000 milliseconds (30 seconds). You can use a different interval if you please.

4. Set a limit of 6. Again, this is optional, but in my case I wanted to record events at 30, 60, 90, 120, 150, and 180 seconds.

5. Set to page path contains “/blog/”. I’ve decided to focus only on blog posts, but this is again optional. You could skip this step and it would execute on any page.

Create Variables

We need the pixel to record the event number and interval so that this can be executed in the tag (coming up). So we need to create two variables in Google Tag Manager.

1. Create a variable called “DLV – gtm.timerEventNumber” using the Data Layer Variable type. Use the data layer variable name “gtm.timerEventNumber.”

2. Create a variable called “DLV – gtm.timerInterval” using the Data Layer Variable type. Use the data layer variable name “gtm.timerInterval.”

Create a Tag

Now, we are going to create a new tag in Google Tag Manager that will reference the trigger and variables we just made.

1. Create a new tag and name it “Facebook – Blog – 30 Seconds or more.” Names are up to you, of course.

2. Use the Custom HTML tag type.

3. Paste the following code within the HTML text box…

It should look like this…

4. Under Advanced Settings > Tag Sequencing, check the box next to “Fire a tag before Facebook – Blog – 30 Seconds or more fires.”

5. Select the “Facebook – Base Pixel” tag under setup.

6. Under Triggering, select the trigger that we created previously.

Test Your Event

Let’s make sure this event is working. Within your Events Manager, select your pixel and click on Test Events on the left.

Open a separate window or tab and go to a page of your website where this event should trigger. Wait a while, and it should appear within this window.

You can also use the Facebook Pixel Helper to test in this same way.

Create Custom Conversions

I’ve created custom conversions for each of the six interval timer events that should be firing.

1. Instead of “All URL Traffic,” select “Blog Tracking” under Custom Events.

2. Click to Add a Rule.

3. Instead of “URL,” select “Event Parameters.”

4. Select “Time on page” as your custom parameter.

5. Enter “30 seconds” next to “Equals.”

6. Name it, select a category (probably “Other”), and set a value (probably leave it blank).

7. Repeat for 60, 90, 120, 150, and 180 seconds.

You can test these custom conversions just as you tested your event. You should also start to see activity within your list of custom conversions.

Add Columns in Ad Reports

This is information you should monitor within your ad reports, particularly when you drive traffic to blog posts. To do that, click to Customize Columns…

And then find your new Custom Conversions and check the boxes to add them to your report.

Optimize for High-Quality Traffic

If you would normally run campaigns to promote blog posts, let’s do it a little differently.

First, use the Conversions objective rather than Traffic.

When you set Optimization for Ad Delivery at the ad set level, select one of the custom conversions you’ve created.

Feel free to experiment with the different time intervals to see if it impacts your results.

By setting up campaigns this way, Facebook will attempt to show your ads to people most likely to click and spend 30+ seconds on a blog post.

Create Website Custom Audiences

As you probably know, there are already ways to target some of your highest quality website visitors. You can target based on time spent on your website…

You can also create audiences of people based on number of PageView events…

And we can now create audiences based on these new events we’ve created…

While the Time on Site audience will allow you to reach those who spent the most aggregate time on your website and the PageView audience allows you to target those who viewed the most pages, this lets you focus on those who spent a specific amount of time on any blog post.

Your Turn

This approach has changed my Facebook advertising. It gives me a much clearer view of the quality of visitor I’m driving and allows me to optimize for that type of visitor. This isolated audience also gives me an option for targeting of a small, value-packed group.

Are you doing something similar? What do you think?

Let me know in the comments below!

The post Create Facebook Pixel Events for Time Spent appeared first on Jon Loomer Digital.