With the Meta App, collected and enriched data from Spotler Activate is synced to Meta. In Meta, you can monetize this data by creating ad campaigns.
Want to increase ad targeting, match rates and conversion metrics in Meta? Or be ready for a cookieless future? Then upgrade the Meta connector to the premium app Meta Conversions API. You need to activate the default Meta connector first.
Which events can I share with Google and Facebook?
Activate the Meta connector
Go to the Apps page in Spotler Activate and click on the Meta connector (note: scroll down to connectors, this manual is not about the premium app Meta Conversions API). Log in with your Facebook account. Make sure you have access to your business manager account and the necessary Pixel and Ad account you want to link.
You are now logged in to Facebook. You can then set the following things in the link:
- Business Manager: Choose the business manager account you want to use for the link.
- Facebook & Instagram Page: It is mandatory to choose a Facebook page. Spotler Activate will not post anything to this page. You can skip Instagram account.
- Product Catalog: Select an existing Facebook catalog if available; Spotler Activate will update it with products from your catalog in Spotler Activate. If you don't have a catalog in Meta yet, you can choose to create a new one. Note: It is mandatory to link a Catalog. Would you rather not sync a product from Spotler Activate? After saving the connection, you can choose not to sync products to Facebook. Also, the type of the catalog must be "ecommerce", if it is not, you must create a new catalog, otherwise it will not be compatible.
- Facebook ad account: Select the correct account you want to link with Spotler Activate.
- Facebook Pixel Id: Select the correct pixel ID, this ID will be used on your website to send data to Facebook.
Do you already have a Meta pixel on your website? For optimal results, it is best to remove it: all events that you send to Spotler Activate, we sync browser and server side (if conversions API) to Meta. Your own implementation can influence the quality of the events. To check if you already have a Meta pixel on your website use the plug in Facebook Pixel Helper.
Activate the product synchronization
After saving the settings at Facebook you return to Spotler Activate. Do you want to sync products to Facebook? Then choose the option 'Synchronize catalog'.
Set up an Allow List for the Pixel
Setting up an allow list of domains for your pixel can prevent unauthorized traffic from being sent to your pixel. It is recommended to make these settings in Facebook Business manager.
- Go to events manager in Facebook: https://business.facebook.com/events_manager2
- Choose your Pixel and go to the settings tab
- Under the settings tab you will find 'Traffic Permissions' at the bottom
- Click Create allow list
Here you can then choose which domains are allowed to send data to the Facebook pixel. Only choose the domains that are familiar to you and that are allowed to send data to the pixel.
Events
Once the link is activated, Spotler Activate automatically shares in real time all events of profiles (unless custom consent is set) with your Meta Pixel. The events can be divided into three categories
- Frontend events: The events that are sent from the website via the base tracker sent to Spotler Activate, Spotler Activate converts to Meta syntax and is sent directly through the visitor's browser to Meta.
- Spotler Activate events: The events that Spotler Activate automatically generates and adds to the frontend such as SessionStart, PersonalizationView, PersonalizationClick and PersonalizationClosed. In addition, Spotler Activate sends an event called SqueezelyAudience to Meta. This event contains the audience ids to which a profile belongs in Spotler Activate.
- Backend events: The events sent to Spotler Activate via API Calls. For forwarding backend events it is activating Meta Conversions API necessary.
In Meta Events Manager you will find an overview of all events received from Spotler Activate:
The connection method indicates the way the events were received in Meta:
- Browser: the frontend events received through the Meta pixel.
- Server: the backend events received through the Facebook API. The forwarding of backend events requires the activation of Meta Pro
- Browser & Server: events received via both (and are deduplicated).
When you open an event, the number of events sent via Browser and Server are shown:
From this overview you can get the following:
- Events Processed: the events processed.
- Events Deduplicated: the deduplicated events, i.e. events received via both the browser and server.
- Events Processed: the events received through the server and not deduplicated. So these are the additional events that are included in the Meta statistics via the server method.
Products
Spotler Activate synchronizes once an hour all the products from the Spotler Activate Catalog to the Meta Catalog. It is possible to disable this. In Meta Catalog Manager, under Items you will find an overview of all products that are redirected from Spotler Activate:
Spotler Activate syncs non-personal product sets to the Meta catalog. The non-personal product sets are: most sold, most viewed, most in stock and random. Personal product sets (which are based on profile behaviour) may not be synced to Meta. In Meta Catalog Manager under Sets you will find an overview of all product sets forwarded from Spotler Activate:
Audiences
In the Spotler Activate Audience Builder you can audiences sync to your Meta Ad account.
To share email-based audiences with Meta, you can check the Email export option for sharing audiences based on email addresses.
In Meta Ads Manager, under 'audiences' you will find all audiences that are synchronized to Meta:
When you sync an audience, Meta on their side tries to generate this audience with the same profiles (also called matching). There are three methods for matching profiles in Meta:
- Event based: With event-based matching, Meta copies the audience rules from Spotler Activate and applies these rules to the events Meta has received (from Spotler Activate). This method has the most effective matching and can be applied retroactively (up to the time the app was installed). The downside, however, is that certain rules from Spotler Activate cannot be copied by Meta. Examples include segments and audiences based on profile fields or event fields that are not known in Meta. If the rules are not possible in Meta, Meta falls back on audience id based matching.
- Audience id based: With audience id matching, Meta uses the audience ids of profiles from the SqueezelyAudience event, to replicate these audiences in Meta. This method does not work retroactively, as the audience ids are not available until the audience is created. So this means that the profiles need to visit the website again, so that the SqueezelyAudience event (containing the audience ids) is sent to Meta again. Audiences in Meta 'Below 1000'? Chances are that Meta has reverted to audience id based matching and the profiles need to revisit the website.
- Email based: With email based matching, Spotler Activate forwards the email addresses of profiles in an audience to Meta. Meta then attempts to match the email addresses to their database and add those email addresses to the audience. If an audience reverts to audience id based matching, it may be advisable to create an additional audience and sync it as email based. In the short term, this can provide better matching.
It is important to know that the audience numbers you see in Spotler Activate will never exactly match the end result in Google and Facebook. This has a number of reasons:
- FB / Google must be able to link the event data to a profile in their system so that they can serve advertisements.
- You only send events to FB / Google when the link has been made, while in Spotler Activate you already have event data from the past.
- You have set up a more complex audience, which means you cannot use the direct event data.
In Meta, you can monetize data by targeting campaigns to audiences. For more information, it is recommended to consult Meta documentation.