Facebook Conversions API

Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by Meta. This destination allows you to push every kind of event directly to Facebook through API: by sending online and offline conversions to you can increase the reach and accuracy of your campaigns.

You can, for example, not send campaigns related to a specific product to users who already bought it, or you can also send campaigns to users who bought a specific product in cross-sell logic.

How to send events to Facebook?

Facebook developed an API called 'Facebook Conversions API' https://developers.facebook.com/docs/marketing-api/conversions-api

You need a Facebook Business Manager account https://business.facebook.com/

Then on the menu, click on 'Events Manager':

Here you have to create a new Web Pixel:

Select Conversions API and give a name to your connection:

Now your pixel is created and you will have access to the IDs needed on our connector.

Where can I find the Pixel ID?

You need to fill the pixel ID on our connector, it is the ID of the pixel you just created on steps above.

You can find this ID when you click on the pixel's name and on the right of the graph activities. You can find it also on the settings tab.

You can now copy and paste this ID on our connector.

Then you need the Access Token

Where can I find the access token?

1. Go to Meta Event Manager

2. On the left menu, select (1) Data sources .

1. Locate your (2) existing dataset and select it or create a new dataset.

1. Click the tab (3) Settings

1. Locate the link (4) Generate access token and click it to generate an access token

1. Copy and paste your access token into the field API Access Token in your destination.

How to manage consents?

• Only events with a consent will be sent to Facebook

• Only conversions with personal information (email and/or phone number...) will be sent to Facebook

For customers with our product TRUST Commander:

TRUST Commander is our Consent Management Platform. (More information: https://www.commandersact.com/en/solutions/trustcommander/)

On the connector, the consent is managed with the field 'User Consent Category'. You should enter a category ID, the one corresponding to Facebook (advertising) on Trust consent categories.

For customers without our product TRUST Commander:

We should distinguish 3 cases:

• Your online events are collected through our Commanders Act event's tag: You have to provide, in the event tags, the list of category ids consented by the user, through the consent_categories property.

• You are pushing your events to us through API or CSV file: a field consent_categories must be added on the JSON or CSV to precise the consent category IDs of the user. Then inside the connector setting, use the field 'User Consent Category' to enter a category ID, the one corresponding to Facebook (advertising)

• You already manage consents on your side and you only send us, from your server,

  events that obtained the consent for the category advertising. In this case, do not fill the field ‘User Consent Category’ in the connector.

How the deduplication between the pixel and server is managed?

Using both the pixel and server is recommended per Facebook as it could avoid losing data.

To make it works, you should have the same configuration for both the pixel and server, using same Facebook parameters.

On the pixel, event_id is automatically generated by our Commanders Act Tag and we retrieve the same value for the server on integrations.facebook.event_id. As a result, these 2 values should be the same. Event_name should be the same also.

Fbp parameter is automatically retrieved to keep the same value between pixel and server.

Deduplication works when the same event is sent first from the browser and then from the server, otherwise it creates a duplicate. Events are pushed in real-time.

Examples

On pixel:

fbq('track', 'AddToCart', {
  value: #CARTVALUE#,
  currency: #CURRENCY#,
  contents: fb_addtocart_products,
  content_type: 'product'
}, { eventID: tC.uniqueEventId });

eventID: tC.uniqueEventId is automatically generated.

On server:

integrations.facebook.event_id

integrations.facebook.event_id automatically retrieves the eventID value coming from the pixel (eventID: tC.uniqueEventId) for standard events.

Mappings to Facebook Standard Events

The Facebook CAPI Destination will turn the Commanders Act event like...

{
  "event_name": "purchase",
  "id": "purchase_id_1234",
  "type": "online",
  "user": {
    "email": "[email protected]",
    "id": "user_example_id",
    "tcId": "202205231352367212315156",
    "consistent_anonymous_id": "202205231352367212315156",
    "consent_categories": [ "1", "2", "3", "4" ]
  }
  "value": 246.9,
  "currency": "EUR",
  "items": [
    {
      "product": {
        "id": "product123"
      },
      "price": "123.45",
      "id": "ET",
      "item_category": "Car",
      "item_quantity": 2
    }
  ],
  "context": {
    "event_id": "1a01c3e940f150eb9b8c542587f1abfd8f0e1cc1f",
    "event_timestamp": 1707830130234,
    "page": {
      "location": {
        "href": "https://site.com/path?s=2",
        "hostname": "site.com",
        "pathname": "/path",
        "search": "?s=2"
      },
      "url": "https://site.com/path?s=2"
    },
    "device": {
      "ip": "123.123.123.123",
      "user_agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/121.0.0.0 Safari/537.36"
    },
    "cookie": "_fbp=fb.1.1653472342558.832801021; some_other=cookie;"
  },
  "integrations": {
    "facebook": {
      "custom_data": {
        "category": "category1"
      },
      "user_data": {
        "fbp": "fb.1.1558571054389.1098115397"
      }
    }
  },
}

...into Facebook CAPI events like :

{
  "event_name": "Purchase",
  "event_time": 1707830130,
  "event_source_url": "https://site.com/path?s=2",
  "action_source": "website",
  "user_data": {
    "em": [
      "b4c9a289323b21a01c3e940f150eb9b8c542587f1abfd8f0e1cc1ffc5e475514"
    ],
    "external_id": [
      "user_example_id"
    ],
    "client_ip_address": "123.123.123.123",
    "client_user_agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/121.0.0.0 Safari/537.36",
    "fbc": "fb.1.1554763741205.AbCdEfGhIjKlMnOpQrStUvWxYz1234567890",
    "fbp": "fb.1.1558571054389.1098115397"
  },
  "custom_data": {
    "id": "purchase_id_1234",
    "currency": "EUR",
    "value": 246.9,
    "contents": [
      {
        "id": "product123",
        "quantity": 2,
        "item_price": 123.45
      }
    ]
  }
}

The following mappings are fully automated and do not require any additional configuration by default. You can still customize each as follows.

Mapping: (root)

Server Event Parameters - Conversions API - Documentation - Meta for DevelopersMeta for Developers

Mapping: event_name

Facebook Pixel specifies Standard Events whose semantics correspond to events in the Commanders Act Standard

If the destination receives a Commanders Act Event with event_name matching the list, it will automatically be sent under the associated Facebook Standard Event name. Otherwise, it will be sent without any transformation

Examples:

• If the destinations sees a add_to_cart event (IN the list), it will send an AddToCart to Facebook CAPI

• If the destinations sees a custom_name event (NOT IN the list), it will send an custom_name to Facebook CAPI (no transformation)

Mapping: action_source

Server Event Parameters - Conversions API - Documentation - Meta for DevelopersMeta for Developers

By default, action_source will be set to 'website' (most events relate to online activity). IF Enable App tracking is checked THEN action_source='app'

Offline conversions specificity:

• IF your event has the property type='offline'

• THEN the Facebook Event will have action_source='physical_store'

• ELSE the Facebook Event will have action_source='website'

Example :

// CommandersAct
{
  "event_name": "purchase",
  "type": "offline",
  // ...
}

// Event sent to Facebook API:
{
  "event_name": "Purchase",
  "action_source": "physical_store"
  "custom_data": { /* */ }
  // ...
}

If you need to overwrite this value, you currently can use Properties Transformation to set the integrations.facebook.action_source.

Mapping: user_data

Customer Information Parameters - Conversions API - Documentation - Meta for DevelopersMeta for Developers

Every property can be overridden using integrations.facebook.user_data.<property>

Minimal required information

Events can only be used if there is enough information to match a user. Facebook expects at least one user_data property, but strongly advises sending as many properties as possible.

Here are our conditions to send the events :

• at least 1 of those fields: em, ph, external_id, fbp, fbc

• at least 3 of the other fields

Note : external_id, fbp, fbc will allow matching event with other events. But to match a user, one of those events shall contain additional information (em and ph are best suited for matching)

Mapping: custom_data

Custom Data Parameters - Conversions API - Documentation - Facebook for DevelopersFacebook for Developers

Default behavior

Facebook specifies rules for standard properties. The rest is completely free.

By default, we fill custom_data as follows :

1. We copy all CommandersAct Event properties into custom_data (except some context fields like source_key)

2. Then we map the standard properties according to the table above (can overwrite 1. values)

3. Finally, we overwrite with integrations.facebook.custom_data.<property> if exists

Overwrite custom_data

Best choice would be to use Properties Transformation to modify your event properties which will be copied into custom_data.

But you can override the final value using integrations.facebook.custom_data.<property>.

Example :

cact('trigger', 'purchase', {
    "currency": "EUR",
    "value": 101,
    "integrations": {
        "facebook": {
            "custom_data": {
                "content_name": "some_custom_name",
                "your_field": "your_value"
            }
        }
    }
});

Mapping: app_data

App Data Parameters - Conversions API - Documentation - Meta for DevelopersMeta for Developers

integrations.facebook.* deprecation

Check results on Facebook interface

To view quality matching on Facebook interface, go here: Events manager > select the event > View Details > Event Matching > Rating Background

How to send offline conversions

The recommanded way is to use the HTTP Tracking API source to send your offline events from your servers (or any other emmiter). You just need to send a purchase event with the type property equals to offline More details on the automatic mapping here: Mapping action_source