Facebook Ad Conversion Tracking
What happens after a Facebook user clicks a self-serve Facebook ad that takes them off of the Facebook platform? Right now most Facebook advertisers don’t know because Facebook ad reports offer limited information, namely only what happens on the Facebook platform like clicks and impressions. This is going to change. Facebook is beta testing conversion tracking with select advertisers now. This tracking is going to allow Facebook advertisers to track activity that happens on their websites as a result of a Facebook user clicking and even just seeing a Facebook ad.
Facebook Ad Conversion Tracking Details
The Facebook Conversion Tracking guide was released this morning from AllFacebook.com and it gives insight into what Facebook advertisers can expect to see in the near future. It appears that “tracking tags” is Facebook’s term for the values associated with conversion actions, similar to Google Adwords “goals.” Basically, Facebook advertisers will be able to define a specific conversion event or action on their website that they want to associate with Facebook ads. It’s not clear how granular the association with ads will be (e.g. will tags be associated with just an ad account, campaign or an individual ad?).
The guide points out that advertisers will be able to “Track individual page views, purchases, registrations or downloads. You could even track a series of page views to determine the path someone takes to these conversion events.” The tracking relies on unique tags for every conversion action which means a lot of organization and website customization for Facebook advertisers who want to really take advantage of these upcoming features. For example, if an advertiser wants to see what pages are clicked before a visitor makes a purchase or drops off, then each page and conversion event will have to have its own unique tracking tag. As bulbstorm pointed out “There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of sorting tags by campaign, by client, etc. That might not be a big deal for single-client or in-house ad managers. But for businesses tracking complex funnels or managing multiple ad campaigns for multiple clients out of the same ad account, it could get a bit clunky. ” It’s also not clear if advertisers can associate tags with event or inline fanning ads (which I’m a huge fan of the inline fanning ads).
Facebook Ad Conversion Tracking Reports
Reporting will be broken down into post-impression and post-click. Post impression is an important to know for advertisers who want to understand the effectiveness of using Facebook ads for brand awareness that translates into conversions. Facebook will also show Facebook advertisers timeframes in which a user clicked or saw an ad in comparison to when the actual conversion event took place. This is going to be divided into timeframes of within 24 hours, within a week and within 28 days. Last, advertisers will have the option of assigning a monetary value or a SKU to a tracking tag and Facebook will show the averages of them in the reports.
What This Means for Facebook Advertisers
Overall, this is great news for Facebook advertisers because it will give more insight into the ROI of their adspend on Facebook. Of course the more data Facebook advertisers and marketers are armed with, the better they will be able to optimize their ads, website content and fan page content to better reach their marketing goals. In addition to the unparalleled targeting capabilities that Facebook ads offers, Facebook is giving advertisers more ammo to leverage the platform and I expect to see more updates and features to make the advertising management experience easier.
Have you had a chance to beta test the new tracking? Have any thoughts on Facebook Ad tracking? Share here!