Facebook Ads Conversion Settings

Correct and accurate conversion settings are the core work of effective Facebook advertising. Conversion events can help advertisers define the success of advertising effects, comprehensively measure advertising effects and optimize for any conversion actions, and better train advertising conversion models.

“Conversion settings” are easy to say, but to ensure that conversion attribution is complete and accurate, you need to pay attention to many details and it is very difficult.

In this article, we will introduce the following:

Adding pixels

Standard events

Custom events

Custom conversions

Web event conversion API

Offline activity conversion API

Test events

Understanding attribution

I will introduce the basics of each of the above parts.

Adding pixels

Meta pixels are a piece of code that is placed in the source code of a page on the website. Any conversion event can be triggered by pixels and associated with Facebook advertising accounts. Pixels are essential for advertising conversion attribution, data reporting and advertising optimization.

There are many ways to add pixels, depending on how your website is built. If you use an integrated website builder, such as Shopify, adding a pixel becomes very simple, because there is a ready-made free Pixel installation plugin provided by Meta in the Shopify official plugin store. If you are using WordPress, the installation process is the same as Shopify. You can use the WordPress plugin to inject the pixel into every page of the website.

Because the above method is too simple, I will not demonstrate it here. I will only introduce the method I often use: Google Tag Manager.

Create a new pixel Pixel

First, go to the Event Manager and click “Connect Data Source” on the left.

Select Web (all independent e-commerce sellers must select Web).

Enter a name for the dataset (can be any custom name) and click Create.

If you use one of the following partners to build your website, please choose the corresponding partner. But here I will only introduce the manual installation method.

Select Manual Connection, where you will only link and install Pixel without linking it with the API.

Click View Guide.

You will be taken to a basic pixel installation wizard.
Copy the pixel code and paste it into the section of the website template HTML source code, as early as possible.

You can consider turning on automatic advanced matching to improve attribution, or you can choose not to turn it on now and turn it on after installing the pixel.

Install a previously created pixel

If you have previously created a pixel but have not yet installed it, find it in the Event Manager under Data Sources.

Select the Set Up Meta Pixel option.

Click the Add event drop-down menu in the Overview tab and select Add new integration.

Select Meta Pixel and click Set Up.

Choose to add the code manually or use a partner integration.

The steps after that are the same as creating a new pixel.

Standard events Without events, the pixel itself is meaningless.

Events notify the Facebook advertising system when consumers trigger important actions so that they can be used for attribution and data display purposes.

Standard events are predefined events tracked based on the advertiser’s business type. For example, purchases, adding to shopping carts, starting checkout, and subscriptions for online e-commerce businesses.

There are multiple ways to add standard events.

Manually add standard events.

Standard events are marked with a separate code snippet. If you add a standard event manually, add the code snippet below the base pixel code snippet.

For example, we don’t want to trigger the “Purchase” standard event until the purchase is completed, so add the “Purchase” event code after the base code snippet on the purchase confirmation page.

You can manually add the standard event code snippet using Google Tag Manager.

Each standard event requires creating a separate tag, trigger, and variable.

Use the Event Setup Tool The Event Setup Tool is a way to create standard events without code.

You can use this tool after you have installed the base pixel.

You can also find it in the Settings tab of the Event Manager.

Enter the URL of the page where you want to add the standard event, and then click Open Website.

The page will load and an action box for managing events will appear in the upper left corner.

Standard events can be created by tracking button clicks (if the button is detected on the page) or URL changes.

Use partner integrations.

If you use a partner like Shopify, most or all of this manual work will not be involved.

Custom events If your business needs to measure events other than standard events, and these events cannot be calculated through the metrics of standard events, then you need to configure custom events.

Custom events cannot be defined with standard events, but are a completely independent event.

Standard events are not always possible, in which case custom events are needed to play the most useful, such as product introduction video viewing time.

After years of experience, I have summarized the following commonly used custom event actions, including: Page stay time 2 minutes scroll depth 50% Page stay time 2 minutes and scroll depth 50% Watch product introduction video Internal link click External link click
Custom events use the same code structure as standard events, but are defined by you, but make sure to keep the name of the custom event different from all standard event names.

Custom conversions Standard events and custom events are used to track important actions for reporting and optimization targeting. Custom conversions are similar, but cannot replace standard or custom events.

Custom conversions are calculated using metrics between standard events and custom events. They cannot be used for optimization targeting, only for data reporting. Custom conversions can be created manually in the Event Manager. Click “Custom Conversions”.

Click Create Custom Conversion.

You can create custom conversions based on the specific URL that a user views.

Or select specific standard or custom events to create custom conversions.

Then create based on the specific URL, referring domain, or event parameters when the event is triggered.

Standard events are triggered on the website after any purchase or registration, but custom conversions can be created for purchases of specific products and registrations on specific pages.

Conversion API for Web Events

The purpose of the Conversions API is to send events directly from the website server to Facebook.

Combined with pixel events in the browser, this can help advertisers get a more complete picture of event conversions.

There are two main ways for companies to implement the Conversions API link, which I will explain in detail later.

There have been rumors for many years that the Facebook Pixel is about to die, and it is no longer as reliable as it used to be.

The main reasons for this are privacy policy restrictions and the ban on third-party cookies, and using pixels alone will cause great inaccuracy in the data.

The Conversions API for web events is more reliable than the separate pixel Pixel. When you use both at the same time, Facebook will record the conversion of valid events to the greatest extent.

You can set up the Conversions API manually or turn to partner integration. But there is a key factor to consider: duplicate data.

Since events will be sent from two different sources, Facebook needs to be able to tell whether the event is unique or duplicate.

Third-party integrations are great for this. Especially when partners manage both the pixel and the API integration, deduplication is often done automatically for advertisers. Using the Conversions API Gateway is a very effective way to configure the Conversions API, which can simulate all the events sent by the pixel.

We can set up the API Gateway directly using AWS servers or Stape, which is easy to use and cheap.

On average, about 10% of additional event conversions are captured after using the Conversions API Gateway.

This can be seen in the Event Manager Overview tab.

Offline event conversion API
In reality, there are some conversion events that do not occur on the website. For example, in B2B trading companies, the conversion of orders occurs in offline communication. This is an offline conversion offline event. These events usually require us to use the CRM system. But now the offline conversion API is being phased out and will no longer be valid by May 2025. Advertisers can still send offline events, but they need to send them through the main API.
Test events
Once we have configured an event, we need to test it to prevent over-counting or under-counting of conversions and causing inaccurate results. The main way to test events is to use the testing tool in the event manager.

You can test Web and CRM events separately.

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

After testing, we can get actual recorded data of the triggered event, which can help us solve any conversion tracking problems in real time.

理解归因
创建转化事件是广告投放的基础，我们还需要了解归因的工作原理，便于我们理解广告系统的算法和广告优化方式。

归因是将转化归功于广告的方式。

简单来说，广告受众点击了广告并在归因窗口内完成转化，此广告将获得该转化的功劳。归因设置界面：

The default attribution setting is 7 days click + 1 day view. This means that if someone clicks on your ad and converts within 7 days, or views your ad (but doesn’t click) and converts within 1 day, Facebook will attribute the conversion to the corresponding ad.

Here are Facebook’s default attribution settings:
Clicks:
7 days or 1 day views:
1 day or no engagement:
1 day or none

Interactions and views are only relevant for video ads. If someone watches your video for at least 10 seconds, doesn’t click, and converts within a day, it is considered an engagement or view conversion.

Attribution settings control two things:
How conversions are reported.
How delivery is optimized.

Facebook’s goal is to get as many conversions as possible for advertisers, and changing attribution settings affects the advertising algorithm.
Understanding how attribution works is an important step.
But you can’t always just look at the surface results, you need to understand more background behind it.

There are two features that can help us understand attribution at a deeper level:
Compare attribution settings Assuming attribution is set to 7 days click and 1 day view, how many of these conversions are view-through conversions? How many are click-through conversions? This context is important. View Compare Attribution Settings:

You can choose to add columns for each attribution window, and there’s even an option for 28-day clicks.

Are most of the conversions reported attributed to 1-day views? If so, this is likely a remarketing campaign. If most of the conversions are attributed to 1-day clicks, this indicates that the audience purchased quickly after clicking on the ad.

First Conversion This is a new feature that helps solve the problem of inflated conversion data. Let’s say someone clicks on your ad and makes three separate purchases within the attribution window. In this case, all three conversions will be reported. However, we can also limit the reporting to the first conversion only.