Automatic Facebook Pixel Events

The Facebook Pixel is getting its first major update, and this can be really big. Some of you are probably seeing strange things in the pixel reports or on a Pixel Helper check. It’s all related to the new update roll-out.

This update was completed around May 20th. You should see the new events yourself.

Here’s a video with the new events on our own website

The Mysterious Events

It all started a few weeks back when some of our clients sent us emails asking about some strange events in their Facebook Pixel. They were triggered without any outside intervention, making some folks think that their sites have been hacked. We started to investigate this right away, but we couldn’t find anything wrong. Those events had no logical explanation whatsoever! We were able to exclude the hacking theory, but that was about it. The only possible theory, Facebook is doing some sort of tests.

After some time we started to get other intriguing support requests. This time the Pixel reports were showing all sort of random data, while the Pixel Helper was looking calm and normal. This time we concluded that something is definitely going on, and we asked someone inside Facebook about it.

The Answer

It turns out that Facebook will start to collect events through automated means without the need to manually add them.

Here’s a quote from their official message:

As a result of this feedback, we’re introducing enhancements to the Facebook pixel to help us improve ads delivery and to automate the pixel set up process. These updates will start rolling out next month starting May 20th, enabling the pixel to send additional information that will help Facebook improve the delivery, measurement, and targeting of clients’ advertising efforts.

The additional data sent through pixel will include button click activity on clients websites, like “add to cart” or “purchase” clicks, and will also include information from clients website page’s metadata to better understand context associated with these actions.

But this will not work for all the events and placing the specific event where you actually need it will still be a highly valuable signal, removing any guessing and potential errors. 

So don’t stop firing events and standard events, because the new ones will not replace them.

And the New Events Are…

We were able to identify two automatically added events (not including the old PageView you are already used to).

The Microdata Event

It will gather all the Open Graph microdata available on your page and, according to Facebook, it will be used to understand the context associated with actions on your site. There are various plugins adding Open Graph microdata, and we assume that this event will work just fine with any of them. We had a positive experience with the Yoast SEO plugin, something you are probably using already.

The SubscribedButtonClick Event

It will fire on every click a user performs on your site, sending the button text as a parameter (buttonText), together with some other potential data (buttonFeatures parameter), like id, tag, value. There’s also a formFeatures adding additional info.

How to Use These Automatic Events?

The main advantage of this events will be an easier way to create Custom Audiences. They will be integrated into the Custom Audiences panel, and they will be ready to use in the same way as the standard events.

If you’re not familiar with building Custom Audiences from events, we have a small article on how to do it.

What’s not clear now is if these events will be also ready to use for ads optimization. That’s something we have to wait and see.

Here’s the Facebook page about this update

Here’s a video with the new events on our own website

HINT: It highly possible for this pixel update to be related to the NEW (and Fantastic!) ANALYTICS feature that Facebook is also releasing (some of you may already have it). More about this soon.