Let's talk about the Facebook Pixel.

Have you ever been scrolling through your Facebook or Instagram feed and see an Ad that you think is scarily relevant to you? 

Well, you can put your tinfoil hats away because no, the Government is not spying on you! 

And no, they aren’t listening to every conversation you have, well at least I think they aren’t.

But chances are that this is the fine work of a Facebook Pixel.

What is a Facebook Pixel?

Technically speaking, a pixel is a few lines of code that gets implemented into the header of a website. 

The pixel will then receive information about the actions each user has taken on the site and reports it back to your Facebook Ads Manager.

A Facebook pixel can be set up to track multiple different events on a web page, this could range from a webpage visit, to a completed purchase or even adding an item to their basket. 

Still with me? Good, because it’s about the get a wee bit confusing. 

There are 3 types of events that a pixel can track

Standard Events - These are events that Facebook recognises and supports across its ad products. 

Some examples of these are: Completed registration, search, add to basket etc. you know, the classics. 

Custom Events - These are events that fall outside of those covered by Facebook’s standard events. 

These can be named anything you like and can be implemented by adding them into your website code.

Customer Conversions -  These allow you to segment your event information based on values, event types, and other custom information fields. 

You can create a custom conversion by building rules that define the high-level activities you want to track that is unique to your business. 

The vast majority of these are measured through specific URL’s so the creator can track if a user has landed on a specific page.

How these can be used for Facebook Audiences 

Based on the actions you have decided to track, Facebook will analyse this data and allow you to create Facebook Ads that are a lot more relevant to your audience. 

Facebook will use Custom Audiences and the pixel to match people who completed your event with similar users on Facebook. 

An example of this would be if you have had your pixel running on your site for over 30 days. You can extract the data from all the users that completed a purchase. Then you'll be able to create custom audiences & lookalike audiences. 

So that you can retarget your ads at people who are likely to behave in a similar pattern to those who completed a purchase. 

This, in theory, will allow you to also utilise your ad spend better as you are effectively displaying your ads to people who are more likely to complete a purchase. 

This feature will not only allow you to retarget your ads to people on Facebook based on actions that similar users have taken, but it also allows you to exclude certain events from your targeting to allow you to get your ads in front of whole new audiences.

I hope that you have found this blog useful and now understand the basics of what a Facebook Pixel is and how it can be useful to your business, especially when trying to target new audiences.

This may sound like crazy talk if you aren't familiar with Facebook Ads Manager. So, click here to read my last blog all about using FB Ads Manager!

To be honest you only really need to know the very basics, and we’ll do the rest ;)

If you want a🔥🔥🔥 Facebook Ads, then you know who to contact!

Written By Matt Haig