Facebook Pixel

Client-side events are sent to Facebook via the Facebook Pixel. The Facebook Pixel enables you to measure events that happen in the browser.

Destination Info

  • Accepts Track calls

  • Connection Modes:

Client-sideServer-side

Web

Mobile

Server

Getting Started

To set up the Facebook Pixel Integration, follow the following steps:

  1. Go to the Facebook Pixel configuration page in Freshpaint and click "Configure".

  2. In Facebook, go to Events Manager > Data Sources and find your Pixel ID and copy this value into your Freshpaint Facebook Pixel destination:

  3. To use the Facebook Conversions API, you'll need to generate an access token. Copy this value into your Freshpaint Facebook Pixel destination:

That's it! You have successfully set up the Facebook Pixel destination. Enable this destination for events you'd like to send.

Events

When you send an event to Facebook from Freshpaint, Freshpaint will create an event in Facebook by hitting Facebook's event API endpoint at: https://graph.facebook.com/{API_VERSION}/{PIXEL_ID}/events?access_token={TOKEN}.

Standard Facebook Events

See below for a complete list of Facebook standard events, the Freshpaint event definitions they are mapped to, and the available properties that can be sent in with each event. All properties are optional unless otherwise noted as "Required".

Facebook EventFreshpaint Event DefinitionAvailable Facebook Properties

AddToCart

AddToCart

content_ids, content_name, content_type, contents, currency, value

product added

added product

AddToWishlist

AddToWishlist

content_name, content_category, content_ids, contents, currency, value

AddPaymentInfo

AddPaymentInfo

content_category, content_ids, contents, currency, value

CustomizeProduct

CustomizeProduct

``

Contact

Contact

CompleteRegistration

CompleteRegistration

content_name, currency, status, value

Donate

Donate

InitiateCheckout

InitiateCheckout

content_category, content_ids, contents, currency, num_items, value

checkout started

started checkout

Lead

Lead

content_category, content_name, currency, value

Purchase

Purchase

Required: value, currency Optional: content_ids, content_name, content_type, contents, num_items

Schedule

Schedule

Search

Search

content_category, content_ids, contents, currency, search_string, value

products searched

searched products

StartTrial

StartTrial

value, currency, predicted_ltv

SubmitApplication

SubmitApplication

Subscribe

Subscribe

value, currency, predicted_ltv

ViewContent

ViewContent

content_ids, content_category, content_name, content_type, contents, currency, value

product list viewed

viewed product list

product category viewed

viewed product category

product viewed

viewed product

Facebook Events are case-sensitive

Any of the space-delimited names above are case-insensitive and may be alternatively delimited by an underscore or no separation. For example, "product added" can also be expressed as:

  • Product_added

  • productAdded

These non-Facebook-specific names can be useful when sending to multiple destinations, such as Facebook Conversion API and TikTok Ads, without requiring a Rename Transformation for one or both destinations.

Facebook Custom Events

You can also track your own custom events in Facebook, which also can be used to define custom audiences for ad optimization. Custom events also support parameters, which you can include to provide additional information about each custom event.

Event Parameters

Parameters are optional, JSON-formatted objects that you can include when tracking standard and custom events. They allow you to provide additional information about your users and their actions. In Facebook, these are called object properties. See Facebook's documentation for a complete list of object properties and their definitions.

Action Source

action_source should be included under properties on track events.

Action source valueDescription

website

Conversion was made on your website.

email

Conversion happened over email.

phone_call

Conversion was made over the phone.

chat

Conversion was made via a messaging app, SMS, or online messaging feature.

physical_store

Conversion was made in person at your physical store.

system_generated

Conversion happened automatically, for example, a subscription renewal that’s set on auto-pay each month.

other

Conversion happened in a way that is not listed.

Client User Agent

client_user_agent is set by including the user_agent property on track events. The value should be the user agent of the browser where the event occurred.

Event Source URL

event_source_url is captured automatically for web events. The value should be the browser URL where the event occurred.

Additional Parameters

When you send user actions to Facebook, Facebook will attempt to match those actions to a particular Facebook user. In most cases, you'll want to send additional user traits and Facebook parameters to improve the number of the events that are matched to a Facebook user. See Facebook's documentation on all of the parameters that Facebook accepts.

User Traits

User traits you can include in the event props to improve match rate include:

  • email

  • phone

  • last_name

  • first_name

  • ip_address

  • user_agent

Facebook Parameters

You should include the fbp and fbc parameters found on the browser whenever possible.

The fbp parameter can be found in the _fbp cookie, and the fbc parameter can be found in either the _fbc cookie or the fbclid query parameter. See Facebook's documentation for more information.

Configuration Options

Transformations

Converting Freshpaint Events Into Facebook Standard Events

Freshpaint events can be converted into one of Facebook's standard events. A popular use case would be to convert an existing conversion event into Facebook's Purchase event. The Conversions API creates a connection between your first-party customer data and the Meta systems that optimize ad targeting and help measure the results of your advertising efforts.

In the example below, we are going to transform an existing "Test Event" into one of Facebook's standard Purchase events.

To get started, create a new Transformation and select Standard Event. Next, select the existing Freshpaint event you want to transform and the destination you want to send it to:

Then, select the "Purchase" event from the list of standard mappings and click "Save" to go to the following step:

Some of Facebook's standard events requires a certain set of properties.

In the case of the Purchase event, your existing Freshpaint event will need the following event properties:

  • value (amount of the conversion)

  • currency (USD, CAD, etc)

For this transformation, you'll see that the event will be sent to Facebook named as "Purchase" while converting the value property type into a number and sending the currency property value in all uppercase characters as required by Facebook.

If a currency property isn't sent with your conversion event and all of your conversions are in a single currency type such as USD, you can add a new transformation rule to send USD as a constant property for your conversion event:

As new instances of "Test Event" occur, the transformation would then send them to the Facebook Conversions API destination as standard Purchase events.

If a currency property isn't sent with your conversion event and all of your conversions are in a single currency type such as USD, you can add a new transformation rule to send USD as a constant property for your conversion event:

As new instances of "Test Event" occur, the transformation would then send them to the Facebook Conversions API destination as standard Purchase events.

Finally, visit your Facebook Events Manager account and navigate to the Overview tab and confirm the Purchase event is in the list:

Note: events may take a few minutes to populate in this view.

Options for Configuring Facebook Destinations

There are a few different ways to implement conversion tracking with Freshpaint's Facebook integrations. You can use the Facebook Conversions API to complement tracking with your Facebook Pixel, or you can use the Pixel as a standalone integration. The option that's best for you depends on your specific goals with the Facebook Conversions API.

You can choose from the following implementation options:

If you are a HIPAA customer, you should use only Facebook Conversions API

Use Only Facebook Pixel

This approach is best if you are NOT a HIPAA customer and are not concerned about having granular control ever what data gets sent to Facebook. If you are a HIPAA customer, you should use the Facebook Conversions API destination.

Matching

When you send user actions to Facebook, Facebook will attempt to match those actions to a particular Facebook user. The match rate can be improved by including additional parameters.

Deduplication

In this approach, events are only sent from the browser, so no deduplication is necessary.

Use both Pixel and Conversions API to send the same events

By sending the same events from both the browser via the Pixel and the server via the Conversions API, you can improve the accuracy of browser events by providing redundancy. Events that previously would've been lost (e.g. due to the browser Pixel being blocked or network errors) can still be captured using the Conversions API.

Matching

When you send user actions to Facebook, Facebook will attempt to match those actions to a particular Facebook user. For matching in this configuration to work best, the same external_id should be sent from both the browser and server.

This can be done by enabling the "Use User Id or Anonymous Id as External Id" setting in the Facebook Pixel destination. Enabling this setting will direct Freshpaint to use the User ID for identified users or Anonymous ID for anonymous users as Facebook's external_id both on the browser for the Pixel and for the server/Conversions API, enabling Facebook to better match users.

You can also improve the match rate by including some additional parameters to your events.

Deduplication

When the same event is sent from both the browser and the server, the events must be deduplicated to avoid having the same event counted twice. For events to be deduplicated, event names must be the same, and the server event from the Conversions API must arrive after the client event from the Pixel. In this case, the server event is discarded.

If the server events is received first, no deduplication occurs. The server event must arrive after the client event in order to deduplicate.

For Facebook to deduplicate events correctly, the recommended "Use UserId or Anonymous Id as External Id" setting must be enabled, OR the fbp parameter must be included in server-side events.

Use both Pixel and Conversions API to send different events

In this configuration, you will send some browser events through the Pixel and some server events to the Conversions API. This approach is best when you have events that can't be captured in the browser, such as a separate payment system. This approach is also ideal when you want to include sensitive data that shouldn't be sent to the browser.

Matching

When you send user actions to Facebook, Facebook will attempt to match those actions to a particular Facebook user. For matching in this configuration to work best, the same external_id should be sent from both the browser and server.

This can be done by enabling the "Use User Id or Anonymous Id as External Id" setting in the Facebook Pixel destination. Enabling this setting will direct Freshpaint to use the User ID for identified users or Anonymous ID for anonymous users as theexternal_id both on the browser for the Pixel and for the server/Conversions API, enabling Facebook to better match users.

You can also improve the match rate by including some additional parameters to your events.

Deduplication

In this approach, different events are sent from the browser and the server, so no deduplication is necessary.

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