If you work in marketing, you’ve probably been dealing with privacy regulations, app tracking transparency and cookie phase-out updates for a while.
Due to growing privacy concerns, a body of regulations now provides users greater control over their data. While this is an important movement, it’s made every marketer’s job much more complex.
With more countries embracing GDPR and more browsers phasing out cookies in 2024, first-party data solutions are the future.
To adapt to these new regulations, Facebook launched its Conversion API in 2020. In this article, we will cover everything you need to know about the Facebook Conversion API and how to set it up.
What is the Facebook Conversion API?
The Facebook Conversion API is a tool that allows you to send various website, app events or offline conversions directly from your server to Facebook’s servers. This includes information such as purchases, leads, and other important customer actions.
Facebook then uses this information to optimize targeting, boost ad performance, and decrease your cost per conversion.
How Does the Facebook Conversion API Work?
Instead of relying on browser cookies, the Conversion API sends data directly from your server to Facebook.
Whenever a visitor takes an action on your website, such as filling out a form or making a purchase, your server collects first-party information regarding this event. This includes details such as the visitor’s email, their IP address, country, purchase amount and more.
Via the Conversion API, you can send all this data to Facebook. As mentioned above, Facebook processes this data and uses it to optimize ad performance.
Further in this article, we have included a step-by-step guide on how to set up the Facebook Conversion API.
What are the Benefits of Facebook Conversion API?
So, what are the key benefits of utilizing the Facebook Conversion API?
1. Accurate Tracking
The key benefit of the Facebook Conversion API is that it enables advertisers to collect more accurate data in a heavily regulated and privacy-protected online world.
Traditional tracking methods heavily rely on browser cookies. Due to major privacy concerns over the past few years, regulations such as GDPR or the iOS updates have given users more freedom to block cookies. Since the Facebook Conversion API solution relies on first-party data, these cookie regulations will not have a direct impact.
2. Enhanced Advertising Performance
By capturing rich first-party data and sending it to Facebook, their AI can optimize targeting for better results.
3. Lower Cost per Conversion
This point is tied up to the one above. By feeding more high-quality, accurate data to Facebook’s algorithm, they will be able to allocate your ad budget more efficiently.
4. More Control Over Shared Data
Since you are collecting the data on your own server, you can decide what you wish to send to Facebook for better results.
Which Events Can You Track with Facebook Conversion API?
The Facebook Conversion API enables you to track a wide range of events, including web or app events such as View Content, Search, Purchase, Lead, Start Trial, Add to Cart, Form Submissions, or custom events depending on your needs.
You can also track offline conversions such as email sign-ups or phone calls.
Most advertisers use third-party tracking tools for event tracking. The main advantage of using a tracking tool is to simplify your work by using pre-built integrations and configurations. These platforms automatically collect user data and post it back to Facebook without you having to do any manual implementations.
In the next few sections, we will provide a step-by-step guide on how to use a tracking tool alongside Facebook.
What is the Difference Between Meta Pixel and Conversion API?
The main difference between the two is that the Meta Pixel is categorized as a client-side tracking tool, while the Conversion API is a server-side tracking solution.
Essentially, this means that with the Meta Pixel, the information is collected on the client’s browser. You can set this up by adding a piece of code on your website, and although it is easy to implement, this solution heavily relies on browser cookies. As we explained above, users have the freedom to use ad blockers, or change their settings to protect their privacy. This leads to a gap in the data you are able to collect.
With the Conversion API, we are dealing with first-party data that is unaffected by browser settings or privacy updates. If your priority is to have the most accurate data, this is the best choice for you. Although this is slightly more complex to set up, tracking tools make this process much easier with ready-made integrations and templates.
Let’s take a look at how setting up the Conversion API for Facebook works.
How to Integrate Facebook Conversion API on ClickFlare: Step-by-Step Guide
For this guide, we will show you how to set up the Facebook Conversion API using ClickFlare as your tracking tool.
ClickFlare is a click tracker that helps performance marketers with tracking, reporting and attribution for their ad campaigns.
The main benefit of using ClickFlare as your tracker is because it has one of the most flexible Conversion APIs in the industry. This means that you get a lot of freedom over which data you send back to Facebook to optimize your performance.
So, how does it work in practice?
First, you need to set up the pixel you will use to post conversion data back to Facebook.
On your Facebook business account, click on Meta Events Manager. Then, proceed to Data Sources and select the pixel you wish to configure.
Once you have selected the pixel, you need to go to Settings. Scroll down to the Conversions API section and under Set Up Direct Integration, click on Generate Access Token.
Finally, copy the details displayed on your screen. We will need them for the configuration on ClickFlare.
Now that your Facebook pixel is ready, let’s proceed with the ClickFlare integration.
For this, you need to go to Settings on ClickFlare and then click on Integrations. Under Conversion API Integrations click on Add Integration and select Facebook from the list.
Here, you’ll need to connect the pixel you just created. If you click on Add a New Pixel, you will be asked to input the pixel name, ID and Access Token you copied from Facebook.
Next, select the action source category. Depending on where the collected data is coming from, you need to specify the source (e.g., website, phone call, email etc).
Now, it’s time to decide which tracked events you will post from ClickFlare to Facebook. Under Event Type Mapping, you can choose between standard events or create custom ones based on your specific needs. For each event, you also need to specify how you’re going to post it back. For example, you can send ClickFlare conversions to Facebook as leads.
Finally, you need to determine which information to send to Facebook. To stay compliant with Facebook’s requirements, ClickFlare already has a default list of parameters filled in for you. While you cannot remove any of these mandatory parameters, you can add new ones. For example, if you are collecting email addresses or phone numbers from your visitors, you can send that back to Facebook to enhance performance.
Conclusion
With privacy regulations around data collection becoming more and more strict each year, we will see a big shift towards first-party data.
To help advertisers accurately track their campaigns, Facebook has launched their Conversion API solution which allows marketers to post data from their server back to Facebook.
The Facebook Conversion API not only supports accurate tracking, but it also helps improve your ad performance and lower advertising costs. Marketers typically use tracking platforms to collect first-party data which they can send to Facebook. ClickFlare is one of the tracking tools with the most advanced Facebook Conversion API in the market.
Regardless of which platform you decide to use, it is essential that you prioritize compliant, first-party data collection for your business to avoid being negatively impacted by current or new regulation updates.
