Facebook Conversions API

Aka Facebook CAPI

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':

Events Manager

Here you have to create a new Web Pixel:

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.

Find the Pixel ID

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

Then you need the Access Token

Where can I find the access token?

Click on the settings tab.

Scroll until the section 'Conversions API'

Click on the button 'Create Access Token':

Create access token

If you are not able to click on the button 'Create access token', that mean you don't have enough rights to do it. You should be administrator on your Facebook Business account to create it.

Then you can copy and paste the Access Token on our connector.

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.

event_id should be the same

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": "[e-mail]",
    "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: 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

COMMANDERS ACT EVENTS	FACEBOOK STANDARD EVENT
begin_checkout	InitiateCheckout
purchase	Purchase
add_to_cart	AddToCart
view_item	ViewContent
view_item_list	ViewContent
search	Search
add_payment_info	AddPaymentInfo
add_to_wishlist	AddToWishlist
generate_lead	Lead
page_view	PageView
sign_up	CompleteRegistration
contact	Contact
customize_product	CustomizeProduct
donate	Donate
find_location	FindLocation
schedule	Schedule
search	Search
start_trial	StartTrial
submit_application	SubmitApplication
subscribe	Subscribe

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)

Remark: You can customise the event_name using Properties Transformations in Destination settings.

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)

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

COMMANDERS ACT STANDARD PROPERTIES	FACEBOOK STANDARD PARAMETERS
user.id (hashed)	user_data.external_id
user.email	user_data.em (email, hashed)
user.phone	user_data.ph (phone, hashed)
user.gender	user_data.ge (gender, hashed)
user.birthdate	user_data.db (birthdate, hashed)
user.lastname	user_data.ln (last name, hashed)
user.firstname	user_data.fn (first name, hashed)
user.city	user_data.ct (city, hashed)
user.state	user_data.st (state, hashed)
user.zipcode	user_data.zp (zip code, hashed)
user.country	user_data.country (hashed)
context.device.ip Automatically set if generated from Commanders Act OneTag	user_data.client_ip_address
context.device.user_agent Automatically set if generated from Commanders Act OneTag	user_data.client_user_agent
The cookie "fbc" Automatically created by the Facebook Pixel client-side tag.	user_data.fbc (Click ID)
The cookie "fbp" Automatically created by the Facebook Pixel client-side tag.	user_data.fbp (Browser ID)
value	custom_data.value
currency	custom_data.currency
items	custom_data.contents
name OR first items[i].product.name found	custom_data.content_name
category OR first items[i].product.category_N found (N ∈ [1, 5])	custom_data.content_category
default value : 'product'	custom_data.content_type
status	custom_data.status

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

COMMANDERS ACT STANDARD PROPERTIES	FACEBOOK STANDARD PARAMETERS
value	custom_data.value
currency	custom_data.currency
items	custom_data.contents
name OR first items[i].product.name found	custom_data.content_name
category OR first items[i].product.category_N found (N ∈ [1, 5])	custom_data.content_category
default value : 'product'	custom_data.content_type
status	custom_data.status

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"
            }
        }
    }
});

integrations.facebook.* deprecation

integrations.facebook.* usage will be deprecated. The feature is still working, but it is recommended to use the destination settings instead for maintenance and reliability purpose.

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