Facebook ads - WTF am I doing wrong?

TacoCat

TacoCat

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So I encountered today this issue.

Take a look:

facebook.png


Can you see what's wrong with this campaign?

As you can see there are only 5 clicks, but 80 conversions!!!! How is this possible?

The conversion pixel is set up to fire only when it exactly matches the landing page:

domain.com/checkout/thankyou

To me this would only make sense only if those 5 users made 80 purchases, but that is not the case.

Any ideas?
 
While my money's on your pixel being set up incorrectly, is it possible that the conversions came via another channel? E.g. email or organic seo campaigns?

I guess it's also possible that the planets aligned and everyone you previously sent to the page decided to buy today.
 
MooFace said:
While my money's on your pixel being set up incorrectly, is it possible that the conversions came via another channel? E.g. email or organic seo campaigns?

I guess it's also possible that the planets aligned and everyone you previously sent to the page decided to buy today.
Click to expand...

Ha ha, unfortuanetly no, there haven't been any conversions.

I'm not saying that the pixel is not set up incorrectly, but what could have gone wrong? And besides, shouldn't the campaign count only conversions that came from that specific campaign? Looking at analytics stats those 5 users definitely didn't even generate 80 pageviews.
 
You might be doing nothing wrong.

TacoCat said:
And besides, shouldn't the campaign count only conversions that came from that specific campaign?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't rely on Facebook or any platform to determine that. Some of the crazy implementations of pixels I've seen just count the hits to the landingpage without checking for cookies or if the user's session even came from that source.

There are multiple ways I would approach this:

1. Only fire the pixel if the referring domain is from the platform (Facebook.com in this example). This puts protection on your side in cases where platforms don't have their shit together.

2. Only fire the pixel if previous page was the "domain.com/checkout/" page. Meaning they are just re-loading the "thankyou" page since you might have the download link on that "thankyou" page. They might have bookmarked it for example.

3. Create customized thankyou pages for each platform which is determined by the logic of the referring platform when they hit the landingpage. (You can do this through cookies or the user's session).

--

#1's implementation is easy with some javascript magic.

#2's implementation is probably the EASIEST, since you are just checking for the referring from the "checkout".

#3 is a bit more tricky since you'll require multiple "thankyou" pages, but it sort of relies on #1's implementation of knowing the referring domain OR reading some URL query you implemented and are passing, like "&utm_source=Fackbok", then setting the querying for situations where users try blocking the referring domain.

--

Someone could also be botting your stuff to waste your time, why? It's what people with too much time on their hands do.

The key is to take control of your operation and analytics and NEVER rely on the platform to be correct since most programmers on their side might be lazy or trying to reduce failures.
 
Never trust FB's reporting.

If their "estimated reach" wasn't obvious/dark hat tacit enough....
 
@CCarter the issue is a bit different than I originally thought.

I checked in and it turns out when I look at custom conversions section the pixel it self shows the correct number of conversions, but in the campaign level it shows the abnormal amount of conversions. Like 1000 conversions, for 13 clicks.

Maybe the more advanced guys in Facebook like @eliquid @OG has come in contact with the issue

I'm kinda stuck on this shit for days and can't figure it out, it seems like I'm the only one with this issue, since I can't find anything on it.
 
Is it possible you hit the page 80 times checking things and refreshing?

A couple things I would do:

1. If this is based on 1 day or a range of days, I would stay away from your own site for a day or 2 and then look at those stats ( hey, it happens to the best of us )

2. Create a new thankyou page to be sure no one is botting you or traffic from other sources. Have this page only accessible from FB traffic and require the page before it to have been loaded ( what CCarter said eariler ).

Check your regex you used for the pixel to make sure no other combos were used by mistake in that URL.
 
If you aren't already, tag your urls with the GA campaign codes and compare the conversions in analytics. That might make it easier to figure out what's going on.
 
ryandiscord said:
If you aren't already, tag your urls with the GA campaign codes and compare the conversions in analytics. That might make it easier to figure out what's going on.
Click to expand...

I've already tagged the links and I'm seeing way lower conversion numbers in GA than if facebook. By way lower I mean in facebook I see 1000 conversions for 20 clicks. In GA 1 conversion.

eliquid said:
Is it possible you hit the page 80 times checking things and refreshing?

A couple things I would do:

1. If this is based on 1 day or a range of days, I would stay away from your own site for a day or 2 and then look at those stats ( hey, it happens to the best of us )

2. Create a new thankyou page to be sure no one is botting you or traffic from other sources. Have this page only accessible from FB traffic and require the page before it to have been loaded ( what CCarter said eariler ).

Check your regex you used for the pixel to make sure no other combos were used by mistake in that URL.
Click to expand...

There is no way that it is from me checking the website. I'm 100% sure of that. because now I have 1053 conversions for 20 clicks.

THE PROBLEM is that if I look at the custom conversion section and look up the pixel I will see correct number of conversions. BUT if I look at the adset in POWER EDITOR it shows some ridiculous amount of conversions in the results column.
 
The column you are looking at might be "labeled" conversions. But it is not what you think it is, it could be any number of things based on your set up.

If the numbers show correct on the custom conversion then you can get them to show up correctly on the ad set.

1. Get out of power Editor for the stat viewing,
2. Customize your columns and go to "website" look for the action that is the name of the custom conversion pixel that is working.

Now you should have another column that is just for these conversions and will match the other number.
 
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