The Facebook pixel is an extremely valuable software for monitoring business data on Facebook. Unfortunately, its effectiveness has been declining lately. However, all is not misplaced, because of the Facebook conversions API.
The Facebook conversions API is another software in your Facebook data toolkit that works with the Facebook pixel to ensure you get all the information you need. Combined, they make it easier to correctly monitor, attribute and enhance your Facebook advertising performance.
What’s the problem with the pixel?
Basically, ad blockers, cookie blockers, and different masking tools have begun to cut down on the quantity of knowledge the pixel receives. And now, Apple’s iOS 14 update is creating an even bigger problem to tracking data through the pixel.
The iOS 14 replace extremely restricts using cookies for monitoring on Apple cellular gadgets. That means the pixel alone provides you with so much fewer details, which is about how iOS users interact with your small business. If someone clicks through to your website from Facebook, you may not know.
Not involved in losing the information from iOS users? Consider that Facebook expects all major browsers to block or significantly restrict third-party cookies by 2022.
Your ad targeting will even be affected, and the size of your customized audiences and retargeting audiences will possibly decrease.
However, don’t panic. Learn to discover ways to save your data, attribution, and concentrating on with the Fb conversions API.
What is the Facebook conversions API?
To know the Facebook conversions API, you first have to understand slightly bit in regards to the Facebook pixel.
(If you want to understand all the pieces about the Facebook pixel, check out our blog post on that very matter.)
Briefly: The Facebook pixel is browser-side software. That simply means it tracks data utilizing the user’s browser.
However, the browser can also be where the user can install cookie blockers and ad blockers, or disallow monitoring cookies altogether. Browsers crash generally, losing data pathways. They’ll additionally drop information when connections are poor.
The Facebook conversions API, by contrast, is server-side software. Actually, it was formerly referred to as the server-side API. It allows you to monitor conversions via your website’s server, relatively than through your customer’s browser. For your information, Facebook conversions API tracks “server events” instead of monitoring “browser pixel events”.
The conversions API does not rely on cookies. That means your website visitors’ browser settings and efficiency don’t affect its monitoring capabilities.
As we mentioned, it’s an extra business software that works together with the Facebook pixel. It improves the accuracy of your Facebook monitoring, by capturing data that would be misplaced if relying on browser events alone.
It additionally supports enhancing your Facebook advertisements’ performance by providing more complete data for ad optimization.
What does the Facebook conversions API monitor?
The Facebook conversions API allows you to monitor three kinds of information:
- Web conversions (like gross sales or signups)
- Put up-conversion events (approvals for a mortgage)
- Web page visits
It provides you better insight into your full gross sales funnel than using the pixel alone. That’s because it allows you to incorporate data like CRM knowledge and qualified leads.
It also provides the knowledge required for:
- Ad targeting (like customized audiences and retargeting)
- Ad reporting
- Audience Insights
- Dynamic ads
- Conversion optimization for Facebook ads
The conversions API also gives you greater management over the data you monitor within Facebook. For example, you possibly can add business information like profit margins and customer value.
There are additionally specific variations of the conversions API designed for apps and offline gross sales. These allow you to monitor app events and bricks-and-mortar retailer gross sales and visits, respectively. However, since these are separate business tools, we won’t dig into them on this put-up. If you would like to understand more, inspect Facebook’s detailed information on the app events API and offline conversions API.
Facebook pixel vs. the conversions API
Here’s how Facebook itself lays out the difference between Facebook pixel and therefore the conversions API:
“The pixel enables you to share internet events from an internet browser, while the conversions API lets you share internet events directly from your server.”
Or, perhaps slightly extra witlessly:
“If sending browser pixel events is like sending mail via airmail, then sending server events is like sending mail by way of freight. They are each mechanism to transport the bundle (data about an event) to a destination address (a Pixel ID).”
In terms of using these tools, it isn’t really a case of both/or. Instead, it’s a matter of each/and.
We’ve already talked about how adjustments in the iOS 14 replacements impact the Facebook pixel. And how the increasing use of ad and cookie blockers also affects the pixel’s ability to gather consistent browser-based data.
Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean the pixel is no longer useful. It’s simply useful in another way. In fact, it is best to have your Facebook pixel set up and working before you try to set up the conversions API.
In case you haven’t set up your pixel yet, check out our blog publish with detailed instructions on how to use Facebook pixel on your website.
When you link the conversions API and your Facebook pixel, you enlarge your opportunities of registering a conversion. In case you choose to track the same events using each tool, you might even register some conversions twice. Fortunately, the double-tracking is appropriated by Facebook via a course referred to as “deduplication.”
Deduplication
Deduplication sounds complicated. However, actually, it just means maintaining one conversion event and discarding its duplicate.
If one of the business tools (pixel or the conversions API) data the event, no downside. If each reports the event, Facebook will deduplicate the monitoring. It compares the pixel event parameter to the conversion API’s event_name parameter and the pixel’s event_ID parameter to the conversion API’s event_ID parameter.
The “tl;dr” model is that these tools work together, to provide you essentially the most accurate Facebook monitoring data and insights.