Facebook Conversion Tracking is Here, at least for dk
I just got a beta invitation to facebooks conversion tracking. We have been clamoring for this for a while and now it’s here.
I literally just opened it up and will be testing it this weekend.
There is a new link in my facebook account, called tracking.
At first glance you fill in a tag name, you make this up, assign a category of the type of conversion, and then give it a value of what it is worth for you.
This generates a code that you paste just above the body tag on your landing page.
Then very simply, every time the page loads, it sends the data to facebook, and they record that as a conversion.
What this means is that you need to send the visitor to a page, after the conversion takes place, where you are going to put the code.
You can also track people through a sales path to figure out where you are losing them.
This paragraph fascinates me from the help PDF.
In your reports, if a converting user clicked on an ad associated with the tracking tag’s advertiser account, the conversion is attributed to the last ad the user clicked; if the convert- ing user never clicked on an associated ad but simply saw an associated ad, the conversion is attributed to the most recent ad the user saw. Note that reports may be delayed up to one day.
The phrase “if the converting user never clicked on an associated ad but simply saw an associated ad, the conversion is attributed….” implies to me that it is not going to track only click throughs which we are used to, but WILL TRACK VIEW- THROUGHS. A view through was first brought up to me by Marcus Frind. That is the concept of the user seeing the ad, but not actually clicking on it, and then googling or typing in your site later. My initial experiments on this without this new tracking did not show a result, but Markus Frind claims it is more significant that click throughs.
(hours later)
This actually is what this tool does. Unbelievable. Just when facebook advertising was getting figured out fairly well by a few of us, the game is on again. These new variables will require a much more sophisticated analysis, but will also allow for much more efficient spending of clicks.
This ties in again with the idea of the ultimate user experience.
It is also interesting that this coincided with facebook tightening up a little bit on some of the advertisers recently.
Lots to learn and lots to test in the upcoming days and weeks.
Stay posted!
Neat. Conversions could be tracked with other analytics tools, (of course it’s always convenient to have those metrics in the interface) but view-through conversion tracking sounds very interesting.
It could produce some double attribution situations – especially if someone saw the ad and then later used a search engine and clicked on a PPC ad.
ReplyThis will only strengthen Facebook as a delivery medium for ads. It will challenge some of the current practices but at the same time, open up new possibilities.
ReplyLooks like an amazing feature. Is it available to download or to use as I don’t have it on my face-book account right now.
ReplyThe advancements are Facebook are amazing. For anyone who can master their system, it wouldn’t be hard to start up a decent size local advertising company. It will be nice when all pixel tracking is in real time, vs. up to 24 hour delay.
ReplyAs long as we are online we are aware that we can be tracked and our information to be stolen. This is a new electronic era with new problems for the society
ReplyThat’s a great addition to facebook. I always thought the running of ads on facebook was confusing, this will help me to understand it a bit more.
ReplyIt’s good to stay on top of the game by reading your post. I’m afraid that all ads on the net will soon be tailored to each user, and the only way that can be done is by tracking us. But who wins and who loses?
ReplyWow,I just found out about this!Thank you for the article.I hope they will expand this feature furthermore.
ReplyAs soon as everyone gets this figured out, it will change… as everything does
ReplyI have no idea what any of that means, but it does seem that Facebook is changing at a very high rate to satisfy the users and advertisers. It’s good they are taking both into account and not just what one or the other thinks.
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