We will explain here how you can optimize your Facebook campaigns by using an ad tracker and Facebook CAPI.
As you noticed, a lot has changed lately in the way Facebook Ads campaigns are ran and tracked, especially for iOS visitors.
This led to less data being available in Facebook Ads Manager and some statistical analysis being deployed at Facebook level to fill the missing pieces.
Certainly, it isn’t an ideal situation for optimizing audiences and getting the maximum from your Facebook Ads campaigns, right?
But there are things that you can do to improve your Facebook campaigns, and one important aspect is sending conversion details back to Facebook Ads.
Each affiliate network works slightly differently, so there isn’t a general solution to pass conversions to Facebook Ads from the network… that’s where your tracker comes to the rescue!
Let’s see how a complete ad tracking solution is the key here.
Problem: tracking purchase events in Facebook
Problem:
“You cannot track Purchase Events in Facebook from Affiliate Pages because the Facebook Pixel cannot be fired by the affiliate network or it gets blocked by browsers”.
Ok, this is a problem quite discussed lately in the Facebook Ads related groups and forums…
All the marketers working with Facebook as their traffic source have spotted issues with the campaigns optimization (especially after the latest iOS 14 updates…. and remember, now we are bracing ourselves for iOS15!).
If you are one of the ones using CPV Lab Pro to track Facebook campaigns, then you need to know that things remained unchanged in the tracking done by CPV Lab (meaning that it is still working smoothly!).
But the attribution and optimization process done by Facebook had to suffer simply because Facebook receives less data.
Solution: integration with Facebook CAPI
Solution:
“Facebook CAPI integration to pass Events through the API (Server2Server)”.
The latest version of CPV Lab Pro (Version 8.1) comes with Facebook Conversions API (CAPI) integrated so you can now send information about your conversions back to Facebook.
Feeding accurate information to Facebook is essential for improving the attribution mechanism and for audience optimization.
What is Facebook CAPI?
In order to maintain data privacy and still be able to deliver personalized ads to users, Facebook has launched Conversions API (CAPI or previously Server-Side API).
It is an interface that allows us to send events from the server level directly to Facebook (while the Facebook Pixel works on the client/visitor level).
Those server events are used in measurement, reporting and optimization. The goal is to send event and conversion data to Facebook Ads Manager while maintaining data privacy.
Ok, but how is that going to help you?
Well, it is quite simple… let me try to explain it really quick!
You have a campaign with a Landing Page that links to an Affiliate Offer (or a simple offer from your e-com site).
You also have the Facebook Pixel installed in the landing page so you can track through Facebook, but you also have the CPV Lab Pro direct traffic code installed on your Landing Page for tracking.
The ad tracking software will help you track everything in this campaign (the entire journey of your customer to the offer) and you see these results in the report pages from CPV Lab Pro.
Once the purchase is made at the affiliate network level, they will fire the CPV Lab Pro Postback URL to report the conversion which gets tracked in CPV Lab Pro.
But the affiliate network won’t pass conversion details back to Facebook Ads, so suddenly Facebook won’t know which visitors purchase… and this information would be useful in order to perform attribution optimizations.
And now, to come back to Facebook CAPI….
The integration with Facebook Conversion API allows you to pass conversion details from CPV Lab Pro to Facebook Ads automatically and have them appearing in your Ads Manager account.
This is very important for the optimization and the delivery of your Facebook ads!
Each time a conversion is reported from the affiliate network to CPV Lab Pro, it also gets posted to Facebook Ads through the new CAPI integration.
The process if fully automated, you only need to configure it once when you setup the campaign in CPV Lab Pro and then it will work for all conversions.
Sort of a conclusion…
So, by using a 3rd party ad tracker with Facebook CAPI included (like CPV Lab Pro) you will track the conversions (including the ones from iOS devices) first in the tracker and then you will send the conversion information back to Facebook via the Conversion API (server to server).
But there’s more!
Sometimes browsers or ad blocker utilities will block the Facebook Pixel and third-party cookies.
So even if the affiliate network can fire the Facebook Pixel or if you have full control over the Offer page, there will be many cases when the Pixel gets blocked from posting conversions to Facebook.
The CAPI integration will also help you in these situations as the conversion reporting gets done through the Facebook API (server to server) and not by the Pixel. So conversions will be passed successfully from CPV Lab Pro to Facebook Ads Manager.
Here we’ve made a simplified visual representation on how the IOS tracking is done after the latest updates from iOS 14.5:
