What is a Facebook Pixel?

Many people also know the Facebook Pixel as a Facebook Remarketing Pixel, because it collects all the data you need to run your remarketing on Facebook. The pixel is one of the analysis tools that you can use in your marketing – you can use it to measure your advertising and understand the actions that the target group takes on your website.

Further down the post you will find a guide to creating and installing a pixel.

Why should I have a Facebook Pixel?

You must have a Facebook Pixel so that you can collect data for your advertising and measure its effectiveness. First of all, you must use your data from the pixel to ensure that the ads are shown to the right people in your target group. You can both use the data to find new customers, but also target people who have visited a specific page or performed an action on your webshop. Among other things, you can use the data to run retargeting.

Use your data from the Facebook pixel to measure the effectiveness and your results. With tracking through the pixel, you can access to see how many people converted, filled out forms on your webshop, looked at specific products and much more.

How does a Facebook Pixel work?

When you have set up a pixel on your website, the pixel will be ‘fired’ when a person takes an action that you have chosen to track. Some of the most common actions will be tracking which pages people visit, whether a product is added to the cart, payment initiated and purchase. When the pixel has registered an action, you will be able to see this in your Facebook Business Manager under the Event Manager. You can use this data, among other things, when you create new ads.

Create and install a Facebook Pixel for your business

Basically, you need a website and access to the page’s coding/CMS so that the pixel can be implemented and a Facebook Business Manager, since the pixel is created here.

Step 1: Create the pixel in Facebook Business Manager

Open Facebook
Business Manager
Go to Company Settings
Then click on Data sources and then Pixels
Tap Add
Insert a pixel name
Insert your web address
Then press Continue

Step 2: Implement your pixel on your website

Now your pixel is created and you are ready to implement it on the website itself. This can be done in different ways. Below we go over three options: add the code manually to the website, use an integration partner or guidance via email.

1. Add the code manually to the website

Go to the Event Manager
Choose the pixel you would like to use – as a business you should only have one pixel lying around
Click Continue Pixel Setup
Click Install Code Manually
Copy the code to the pixel

Now go to your own website.

Go to the header in your CMS system or platform
You now need to use the code you downloaded in the previous step and paste this into the header section. It should be inserted just above the closing header tag
Now add the right events. We go through how further down.

2. Use an integration partner

Facebook has many different integration partners that make it easy for you to implement your pixel.

Over time, Facebook has established a collaboration with many different companies, so that you can more easily implement and work with the necessary tools. The partner integrations offer, among other things, an easier integration of the Facebook Pixel, but also app events and an API for offline conversions. With a partner integration, it is not necessary to change the code on your website. There are, among other things, partner integrations with Shopify, Magento and WooCommerce as well as WordPress.

Go to the Event Manager
Choose the pixel you would like to use – as a business you should only have one pixel lying around
Click on Continue Pixel Setup
Click Use a partner
Select the partner you wish to use for the implementation
You will now be shown instructions for implementing your pixel through the chosen integration partner.

3. Guidance through e-mail

If you have a developer associated with your website, you can use the Facebook Business Manager to send a guide to the developer in continuation of the setup.

Go to the Event Manager
Choose the pixel you would like to use – as a business you should only have one pixel lying around
Click on Continue Pixel Setup
Click Send instructions via email
Enter the email address of your developer
Press send

Once you have set up your pixel through one of the three options above, remember to check that your pixel is set up correctly and is tracking your events.

Event codes for tracking

Once you have inserted the stamp pixel on your website you can add specific events. The event codes track various things such as PageView, AddToCart and Purchase, as some of the most common ones. In this way, you can collect more specific data on your website, which is important to you when you use it in your marketing. You can do this by deploying the code manually in the coding or through partner integrations.

You can implement many different codes on your website. For example, if you want to know when someone adds an item to the shopping cart, you can use the AddToCart event. The code looks like this: fbq(‘track’, ‘AddToCart’).

The AddToCart event code with the content_ids and content_type parameters for the specific item looks like this: fbq(‘track’, ‘AddToCart’, {content_ids: [‘1234′,’1853′,’9386’], content_type: ‘product’});. The events must contain these special parameters so that you can match items on the website with items in your product catalog.

iOS 14 and domain verification

Following Apple’s iOS 14 update, you must verify your domain in Facebook’s Business Manager and create a priority list of your event codes (events). You can read more about how to verify your domain and rank events in our blog post about exactly the same. Read the blog post here.