If you own a Shopify store and you do any sort of advertising on Facebook, you know the importance of installing the Facebook pixel on your store. According to Facebook, when someone visits your website and takes an action (for example, buying something), the Facebook pixel is triggered and reports this action. This way, you’ll know when a customer took an action after seeing your Facebook ad. You’ll also be able to reach this customer again by using a custom audience. When more and more conversions happen on your website, Facebook gets better at delivering your ads to people who are more likely to take certain actions. This is called conversion optimization.
Over the past two years, Facebook and other social media sites have come under increasing scrutiny about data collection and protecting user privacy. More and more people have become increasingly uneasy about how much information these platforms collect about them and what they do with that information.
Although Facebook gives users the ability to go through their settings and shut off data tracking, most people likely did not realize that this was even an option and didn’t change their settings. As a result, pixel performance wasn’t impacted significantly.
However, with the roll out of Apple’s iOS 14 update, Apple announced that users will be required to opt in to data collection for each app and if they don’t, the default is that the apps can’t access information about that user. The iOS 14 update will also block pixel tracking. What does this mean for Shopify sellers? It means that if the pixel isn’t able to track data from large numbers of users, it can reduce your custom audience sizes, impact conversion data, and affect optimization.
The solution is the Facebook Conversions API which allows you to track data on your own site like pages viewed and conversions event and then send that information to Facebook’s servers without the pixel.
KEY TAKEAWAY: The pixel is browser based whereas the Facebook Conversions API is server based! The information is stored on your server and then sent to Facebook instead of the pixel collecting the information based on user activity. With the Conversion API, you can have your own cookies tracking this information and use it to create retargeting campaigns, custom audiences, etc. without needing to use the pixel.
As I am not in a position where I have an online store where I need to implement the pixel of the Conversion API, I am not going to go further at this point to try and figure out the logistics of how all of that works. I am a firm believer in ” learn when you need to” and will post more on this issue when the time comes. For now, there are a lot of resources online where you can find out how to install the API.
Unofficial Show Notes 