Facebook Pixel
Last updated
Last updated
Client-side events are sent to Facebook via the Facebook Pixel. The Facebook Pixel enables you to measure events that happen in the browser.
Accepts Track calls
Connection Modes:
Client-side | Server-side | |
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To set up the Facebook Pixel Integration, follow the following steps:
Go to the Facebook Pixel configuration page in Freshpaint and click "Configure".
In Facebook, go to Events Manager > Data Sources and find your Pixel ID and copy this value into your Freshpaint Facebook Pixel destination:
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.
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}.
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 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.
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.
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
should be included under properties
on track events.
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
is captured automatically for web events. The value should be the browser URL where the event occurred.
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 you can include in the event props to improve match rate include:
email
phone
last_name
first_name
ip_address
user_agent
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
In this approach, events are only sent from the browser, so no deduplication is necessary.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In this approach, different events are sent from the browser and the server, so no deduplication is necessary.
Facebook Event | Freshpaint Event Definition | Available Facebook Properties |
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Action source value | Description |
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