https:\/\/www.example.com\/cool-product?fbclid=123456789abcdefg<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nThis Click ID enables Facebook to identify the user on the 3rd party browser (e.g. Safari or Chrome). The flip side to using this method is that many users share these links onwards so they can send mixed signals to Facebook – i.e. a friend with a different Facebook user opens a link with a Click ID belonging to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since this method allows deterministic identification, some browsers will actively strip this from the URL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Click ID, when available, is stored in a browser cookie _fbc<\/em> that can be retrieved and sent with CAPI events for improving the Event Match Quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\nFacebook Login ID<\/h3>\n\n\n\n A relatively new addition to the identification options (introduced in 2021) is the Facebook Login ID. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many websites and apps offer users the option to log in\/sign up with their Facebook account, which practically identifies the user.<\/p>\n\n\n
\n
Using this login option returns several users parameters to the website or app:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Email, full name, and a unique Login ID (per user, per app\/website).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Passing this value back to Facebook provides a deterministic identification of the user.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lead ID<\/h3>\n\n\n\n Facebook Lead Ads are a great way to drive direct response conversions. In many cases, these lead ads serve as an entry point for down funnel conversions. For example, a car dealership might get people to sign up for a test drive and report an actual conversion on the car sale event.<\/p>\n\n\n
\n
For this reporting to be accurate, we can use the Lead ID provided by Facebook on the conversion event. This Lead ID is reported to your selected integration, e.g., Hubspot or Zapier, and is too a deterministic identifier, as Facebook can tell which user clicked the Lead Ad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Probabilistic attributes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n Unlike the previous attributes, these attributes don’t provide clear identification of the user. Facebook uses these attributes alongside other signals it collects, to make educated guesses about who a certain anonymous user is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
FBP Cookie<\/h3>\n\n\n\n This cookie, _fbp<\/em>, is set by the Facebook Pixel once activated on a certain page the user visits. Previously, this cookie was set in a third-party context, but it is now set in a first-party context. This limits Facebook’s ability to create consistent tracking across multiple domains.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSetting this anonymous cookie helps Facebook so that their full activity history can still be traced back when a user is identified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you inspect the event data sent by the Facebook Pixel, you can see it also sends the screen resolution of the current device. This also helps with the IP\/User Agent matching described below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
IP & User Agent<\/h3>\n\n\n\n These two attributes are available by default on your browser. The IP address is used for serving the requested content back to your device (on a certain network).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The User-Agent is a short string that identifies the type you’re using so that the server you’re communicating with serves your content in the right format.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mozilla\/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit\/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome\/51.0.2704.103 Safari\/537.36<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contrary to popular belief, these don’t serve as unique identifiers. For example, multiple devices on a single Wifi network (e.g. an office space) will share the same IP. Devices might differ by their User Agent, but that too can become meaningless over a network with dozens of users in which multiple devices will share the same IP and User Agent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because these are weak identifiers, Facebook only accepts these attributes if both are sent in parallel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So how can Facebook use these attributes?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n Say you’re on a network with a few devices, such as your home IP. On this network, the User Agent attribute is more likely to be unique and can be matched back to a specific user with greater probability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Try this – open up an incognito session on your phone’s browser. This way, no cookies exist previously, and no Facebook ID exists. No visit a site that is heavily invested in remarketing, for example, BlendJet<\/a> (as of August 2022). Browse through a couple of pages on the site and exit the browser. Now, open up Facebook. Before you know it, you will be swarmed with remarketing ads by Blendjet, all based on your IP & User Agent. Boom.<\/p>\n\n\n\nUsing these attributes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n When working with Facebook’s CAPI, you should use as many possible data points as possible. It\u2019s that simple. I understand there are scenarios where this isn’t simple or possible, so try and prioritize these.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Deterministic values are preferred. Whenever you can send these I recommend you do. The probabilistic values reside in the user’s browser and are usually easier to collect, but require you to store them actively. I recommend grabbing these as hidden fields on a form submission. Note that the IP address isn’t available directly in the browser (only on the server calls).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In B2B cases, the personal information (email, phone number) is tricky to use for matching as it will likely differ from the data in the user’s Facebook profile (you don’t log into Facebook with your work email). In this case, the Click ID and Lead ID are essential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Facebook used to present a score in the Events Manager that ranked your Event Match Quality based on the number of attributes passed, regardless of their relevance\/accuracy. A linear scale now replaces it, but I still tend to ignore it when doing CAPI implementations for clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the significance of sending all keys<\/h2>\n\n\n\n This case as in an interesting example from a client of mine. They are offline events for down funnel actions of the users arriving from their CRM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Data sent to Facebook was based only on users with the FBCLID present. We also sent the user’s email address as an additional match key. The events are sent using Zapier (yellow line) and received in the Facebook Events Manager (red line) which logs all events. Events reported in the Ads Manager (blue line) are attributed to actual campaigns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During March 19th, the scheduled query sending the data to Facebook was changed in a way that damaged the email. Only the FBCLID was now present as a match key, and the match rate from events sent to events attributed plummeted. <\/p>\n\n\n
\n
Working with many clients on Facebook’s Conversion API (aka CAPI), I often receive questions about how the Event Match Quality is calculated for these events. To explain this, I usually take a step back to explain how I understand Facebook’s user identification mechanisms work. The attributes used in the CAPI payload open a window into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5236,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-facebook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5232"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6106,"href":"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5232\/revisions\/6106"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trackingchef.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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