What is Meta conversions API? What is it used for and why is it necessary?

The Meta Conversions API is Meta’s latest iteration for collecting and receiving data from third-party websites and marketers’ own backend systems. It can be used to replace traditional pixel tracking based on third-party cookies. Miikka Rahikainen, Head of Martech at Dagmar, summed up what marketers should know about the differences between Meta Pixel and Meta Conversions API – and why there is an urgent need to renew data collection.

The digital marketing ecosystem is changing rapidly. Tracking mechanisms based on third-party cookies stop working faster than we realize. Marketers must now prepare for the change and rethink their data collection to reflect the latest opportunities. Publishers have also started preparing for the change and are now also offering cookieless options for measuring and collecting user data.

META PIXEL TO META CONVERSIONS API

Traditionally, Meta has collected customer data from websites using a JavaScript-based Meta Pixel installed by a marketer. It has allowed marketers to collect visits and events to their website and use them to measure remarketing audiences, facsimile or advertising. The downside is that Meta Pixel has made strong use of soon-to-be-removed third-party cookies, so the amount of data it collects is getting smaller and smaller.

Meta’s latest solution, the Meta Conversions API, provides an interface connection that can be connected to things like website event tracking with Google Tag Manager server-side tracking. This service can completely replace traditional pixel tracking.

Now, in the transition phase, Meta recommends that pixel tracking and API connectivity be used side by side on websites. This allows us to collect as much data as possible.

The Meta Conversion API also enables exporting user-specific data from backend systems for targeting and measuring Meta’s advertising. Almost all CDP tools can use Meta’s Conversions API to send user-specific information. Advertising can be targeted and personalised, for example, based on offline events. This will also measure the impact of digital advertising on offline events and optimise advertising purchases, also based on these events.

WHAT DOES SERVER-BASED MONITORING MEAN IN PRACTICE?

Server-side tagging is based on, for example, technology enabled by Google Tag Manager. This is a feature of Tag Manager that can be used to create measurements, for example using Google Cloud servers. All site visit data can be collected with a single tracking, the data of which is sent from the server to different systems.

The data collected in server-based tracking is first transferred to the site’s server, from where it is forwarded to, for example, Google Analytics and advertising management systems.

In other words, data from the user’s browser and device is not sent directly to analytics, but the server can filter the data before transferring it to Google. The site owner can then control what data is tracked: for example, users’ IP addresses, which are considered personal data, may not be collected.

Dagmar’s experts install server-based monitoring in cooperation with those responsible for site development. We are also happy to train you in the self-installation of new trackers, so that analytics can also be developed independently in the future.

AUTHOR

Miikka Rahikainen

Martech Director

miikka.rahikainen@dagmar.fi

+358415062689

Miikka is Martech Director, with a special expertise in marketing technology. He spends his free time with various sports, both traditional and electronic.