Your Definitive Guide to Conversion APIs

Partnering with Meta’s Facebook is a great way to get your ads noticed by the right people. Recent changes to Apple’s IOS 14 have altered how data is tracked, shifting the most effective tools toward Facebook Conversion APIs (CAPIs). The move away from tried and accurate data collection puts the onus of data integration in businesses’ hands. Understanding how to use the service will help you retain your ad effectiveness and future-proof your company’s marketing department at the same time.

The original method to connect with Facebook involved using their “Pixels” application. Meta’s new business tool lets companies manually share their online and offline data with Facebook. It utilizes an Application Programming Interface, or API, that facilitates communication between business servers and the Facebook Ads Manager server. 

The API does more than accept data collected from your business’s online sources. The technology allows companies to share their offline data, such as call logs and contact information. This lets your data work harder for you by allowing Facebook Ad Manager to analyze that extra data. While using the new system may be cumbersome at first, the wealth of information used sent by Facebook Conversion APIs can offer better results once established.

Access to a ton of data doesn’t do much good if the information is trash. Facebook’s APIs take in data from several sources, both from your online servers and the information you supply from other remote sources. Some of the significant events the systems track include:

Remember that your business needs to supply the data collected by Conversion APIs. Unlike its successor, none of this information can be gathered automatically.

The OG of Facebook’s Ad Manager data collection is the Pixel platform. While it performs a similar purpose, it does so in a different way and offers limited results. Using a slice of code on your business’s web page, Facebook will automatically grab several other customer characteristics and send them to the Ad Manager server. It does this primarily through cookies, a tactic that is losing effectiveness as technology, and privacy concerns, grow.

The internet is going on a diet as Apple, Google, and Mozilla promise to end the use of cookies across their web browsers. This is bad news for Facebook Pixel as it will soon have almost no access to the customer data it has used to advertise effectively all these years. The advantage of Facebook Conversion APIs is that they don’t rely on cookies. Instead, you gather the type of data you’d like to share from your servers and upload them to Facebook.

Because cookies are disappearing, Facebook’s CAPI will become an advertising necessity. However, the system isn’t just a workaround for cookies. It has several other advantages as well, such as:

It’s important to note that while Pixel is checking out your cookies and keeping an eye on the business’s website, the company server may be tracking the same data. That may lead to duplicate information, muddying analysis, and creating a host of problems. If you use both systems simultaneously, Facebook recommends enabling duplication or having your server track entirely different information.

As the digital landscape changes, businesses must find new ways to interact with their customers. Using cookies as a crutch for customer data will soon be a thing of the past. As businesses evolve, tools such as the Facebook CAPI will help companies close the gap between their service, products, and clients. In a win-win scenario, the consumer no longer feels spied upon while your business still gets the advertising leverage it needs to grow and prosper!