In the second half of this year, Facebook will be removing their conversion pixel. Time to start using  the new Facebook Pixel, they implemented last year. The big benefit of the new pixel is that it allows more accurate targeting of your audience, meaning you can reach a greater number of potential customers and convert these to sales.

The Old Conversion Pixel

The old conversion pixel is used on the success page or an opt-in page. It is triggered when a user visits a web-site through Facebook and completes the conversion the ad intended them to. This can be anything from completing a purchase to filling out a form for more information on the particular product or service.  It is required when running campaigns with the Website Conversions objective. We would place a conversion-unique pixel on the success page for a single product, allowing Facebook to report and optimize for that conversion.

The New Pixel

The Facebook pixel can be used for three main functions:

1. Building Custom Audiences from your website for remarketing.
2. Optimizing ads for conversions.
3. Tracking conversions and attributing them back to your ads.

The new pixel is added on the landing page of the ad on Facebook, when someone visits the landing page through the ad, the pixel is launched, letting Facebook know this page was activated from the Facebook ad.

Here’s an example of the new pixel:

This same code is placed on every page of your website. This is different, from the old conversion pixel because it can be adapted based on the action occurring on the page.

Now, create audiences of people based on the specific pages they visited and when, by creating rules to isolate people based on their activity on your website.

Benefits of using the pixel

With the Facebook pixel, you’ll also be able to:

• See clearer audience insights -In Ads Manager you will see a dashboard which gives you information on the traffic across your Facebook page. This can be used to filter the audiences to help decide your targeting strategy for your ads.

• Share your pixel – Useful when working with an agency or Facebook Marketing Partner. Instead of implementing a second pixel for your agency, you canshare your existing pixel with them through Business Manager.

 

The Pixel Code

The Facebook pixel code is made up of two main elements: the base code and the standard event code. The base code should be placed on every page of your website. This is what the new code looks like on ‘add to cart’ page.

Standard events

The one part of the code you’ll have to customize is the standard event section. There are 9 available standard events to choose from (see table below).

These represent the different types of actions people take on your website and only need to be placed on some pages.

There is a significant opportunity to be ahead of the rest of the market by utilising social. There are more than 1 billion people (35 million in the UK alone) on Facebook across the globe on their desktops, tablets and mobiles. However maximising the opportunity available requires careful targeting and I’d recommend you speak to a good agency.