Facebook’s “Pixels” page – understand your pixel events

Until recently, the Pixels page was rather uninteresting and quite uninformative, with just some basic raw data about your pixel activity. It wasn’t by no means of any great help, other then to show you if your pixel was working or not.

But things are evolving in the Facebook ads universe, and the Pixels page has a new design and some nice features. In true, Facebook is pushing more and more updates related to the way it makes their huge amount of data available to its advertisers, something that can only be good news for all of us.

Facebook Analytics: for a deeper understanting about your site traffic and your pixel’s events, you can also use Facebook Analytics. We have an article about it here

Pixel Helper: the Pixel Helper Chrome extension remains your best pixel testing tool (article here). The Chrome extension is connected to Facebook and it shows real-time pixel status and eventual warnings and errors. The Pixels page info can be used instead for a more general pixel events analysis. Keep in mind that sometimes the data is not updated instantaneously.

From your Ads Manager, open your top menu and click on the Pixels link:

 

It will lead you on the Pixels Page, where you can see all your pixels listed with a few key info: the number of events received, top events and an activity graph:

 

For more details, click on one of your pixels.

You will see “Today’s Activity”, with the number of recorded events, top events, a graph for the last 30 days and a list of all your events:

 

Move your mouse over the plus sign, and you’ll see how Advanced Matching has increased people reached. Note that PixelYourSite Pro automatically sends Advanced Matching info for all your Purchase events (WooCommerce or EDD).

 

To dig deeper, click on each menu tab: Events, Activity, Settings.

The place where you will find some very useful data is the “Activity” tab. You will get a list with the last 100 events fired by your pixel, and you can also select each event from the left side menu. In the events table you can find:

  • Event time: the exact time when the event was fired
  • Event Catagory: event’s name
  • Device: Desktop, Android, iOS
  • Parameters: all the parameters an event has
  • Referring URL: the URL where the event was fired

Move your mouse over the event’s parameter to see the full set of data.

 

If you click on the “Settings” tab you will get a list with all your Custom Audiences and your Custom Conversions.

Purchase Event’s order_id parameter

There is no doubt that the Purchase event is your most important event, and there are situations where you want to know what exact transaction was recorded by each distinct Purchase event. That’s why, since PixelYourSite Pro 6.2.1, we’ve added a new parameter, the order_id. What it does is very simple, it tracks the order ID for each WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads transaction.

When you want to know what order is connected to a particular Purchase event, go to Activity, select the Purchase event from the event’s left side menu, and move your mouse over the event’s parameters. Among other parameters, you will also see the order_id:

This way you can have a better idea about what was really tracked and you can check if there are some orders missing, or orders beeing tracked multiple times.

Important: the pixel’s data beeing show on the Pixels page is global, with all the events beeing tracked regardless of the traffic source. This data will be different from your Ads Reports, where only ad-generated events are shown.

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11 Responses

  1. Hello, Cristian.

    Thank you for sharing these news 🙂

    Abaout the purchase events, I have noticed that some purchases are missing in my Facebook pixel (only a few, not a great problem). Why occur this? You have mentioned at the end of the post “you can check if there are some orders missing”, so, is this normal?

    Thanks.

    1. The purchase event should fire every time a new order is completed and the client reaches the thank you page (order-received). If some events are missing it means that not all your customers land on the order-received page. Sometimes this is due to PayPal not redirecting the client, for example.
      It’s also possible that some clients are using an ad-blocker, completely blocking the pixel.

  2. Can’t seem to see the info or order id when i move the mouse over the event’s parameters… where else can i see the info or specific order per facebook campaign purchase? would be really helpful to link exact orders with campaigns or purchase events…

    1. Yes, it’s been like this in the last few days. It’s either a bug or modification that FB has made. Right now there is no other way, but they might work to some update to make it possible again.

      UPDATE: All these info and much more is now available in Facebook Analytics.

  3. is there any way to see the order id in google analytics, with connections to its facebook ad or campaign? since we cant see it in FB anymore?

  4. Hi Guys, thanks for the article
    I work for a magento-based ecommerce. Do you know if there is some plugin that provides order_id for Magento?

    Thanks again

  5. Hi
    Please i have a burning question: If i can track the order ID, where in facebook analytics i can see the specific order ID that is linked to a specific purchased event from a specific campaign?

    Thanks a lots

    1. You can’t unfortunately. What I suggest you do is to add UTM tags to your ads, and check them inside Google Analytics. This will give you some good insight on what orders/products are generated by each Facebook ad.

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