Should You Be Worried About Shopify’s Meta Tracking Integration?
This piece was written by Foxwell Founder Member and close friend and colleague, Brett Fish.
A hot topic of debate has emerged in our industry recently - centered on the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of Shopify’s native Meta tracking integration via the Facebook Shopify App. At the core of the discussion are questions about the quality and volume of the app’s tracking data being sent back to the Meta platform in the form of Pixel and Server (CAPI) events, and how much of that data the platform is actually keeping and using.
This could be a big deal, as Shopify is the largest commerce platform on the planet, and over 600k+ Shopify merchants are currently using the Meta App integration to provide tracking for their stores.
So is Meta’s Shopify integration potentially “hurting” your Shopify-based business by sending back less-than-optimal data, especially compared to using a manual setup or 3rd party data tool?
We dove in to investigate and present the information objectively, so you can make the best decisions for your business or brand.
But first - an important disclosure:
We have ZERO affiliation - financial or otherwise - with the tools that offer 3rd party data solutions.
My firm, Skysill Agency, provides Pixel/CAPI implementation and troubleshooting services for clients as part of our technical services line-up. Skysill is a Badged Meta Business Partner and was a member of the Facebook Marketing Partners for Technical Services (FMP-TS) program (which ended in 2021) where we served as a paid Meta vendor helping brands like Manscaped, Omaze, Whoop, and Otter.ai implement and troubleshoot their Pixel and CAPI setups. As vendors and participants in that program, we were free to use the best implementation tool for each project as we saw fit (which was often Google Tag Manager, which is free), and with the conclusion of the FMP-TS program, have no financial affiliation with Meta.
Is Shopify’s Meta Integration “Broken”?
If you’re one of the 600k+ Shopify stores currently using the Meta app integration to provide your tracking - should you be concerned?
The quick answer is, no. The Shopify Facebook app integration is fairly complete, albeit not “perfect”. The app handles both Pixel (browser) and CAPI (server) events and has two major benefits going for it:
1) It’s free
2) It’s easy to setup
With most server-side solutions (like Google Tag Manager and Meta’s CAPI Gateway), there are, at a minimum, fees to maintain the server instance that is processing your events. And there are also usually additional costs for implementation and ongoing maintenance.
Shopify’s integration is zero cost, and it’s also relatively quick and easy to set up. For many Shopify merchants, the Pixel data and server event tracking the app provides are likely more than adequate.
For higher volume stores, especially Shopify stores with large paid social ad spends - is using the integration “hurting” your business? No. But like we said….
The Shopify Meta Integration Is Not Perfect
While the Shopify Facebook app’s tracking integration isn’t irrevocably flawed, it isn’t perfect either.
For starters, Shopify doesn’t send back server events in real-time, which would be best practice, but instead batches events and sends them back in a quasi-real-time manner. This is likely due to the sheer volume of events Shopify is processing. It sends the events fast enough not to be problematic, but the faster events are sent back, the faster the Meta platform can learn and optimize your campaigns. Especially for high ad spend, volume, and traffic stores, there could be a positive impact over time by using alternatives that provide instant event conveyance.
The other big topic when it comes to the Shopify integration is its lack of effectiveness in sending back the “fbc” and “fbp” event parameters. The “fbp” parameter comes from a first-party cookie that contains a unique identifier for that browser and website but doesn’t point to the real identity of the user. It’s a “nice to have, but not critical” parameter, and not considered a high priority parameter by Meta.
The “fbc” parameter is a little more interesting in regards to ad tracking and attribution and is a key talking point in the debate between the Shopify integration and 3rd party data tools. When a user clicks on an outbound Facebook or Instagram ad link, Meta automatically attaches a “FBCLID” (aka “click ID”) to the URL, and when the user lands on the website, that identifier is saved to a cookie. The identifier can then be sent back as the “fbc” parameter with your events, and since it includes a timestamp and ad/user identifiers, it can assist in attributing web sessions back to users and the ads they clicked on (more on this in a minute).
What Benefits Do 3rd Party Tools Offer Over the Shopify Integration?
Several 3rd Party data tracking tools have recently hit the market and have entered the conversion as alternatives to Shopify’s Meta tracking integration. Tools like EdgeTag, Popsixle, and Elevar all have different offerings but share the general promise of delivering better, more comprehensive data back to the Meta platform. So what do they offer as distinct benefits over Shopify’s integration?
Real-time event conveyance. As previously mentioned - these tools send events instantaneously, which allows the Meta ads platform to learn and optimize as quickly as possible.
More robust conveyance of the “fbp” and “fbc” parameters. They use specific engineering to identify and attach these parameters wherever possible.
Additional functionality like session tracking and user fingerprinting, which can identify users across multiple sessions and tie the data together. This can result in better match rates for upper funnel events like PageView and ViewContent.
More overall data is sent to, and theoretically used by, the platform. These tools can send conversion data from other sources (such as TikTok, Google, etc.) to Meta, to help the platform further identify who your ideal or target customers are. And because it’s first-party data from a non-Meta source, it’s possible more if it can be kept and used.
Do 3rd Party Tracking Solutions Really Provide A Measurable Lift?
This is where the conversation gets interesting, and the “measurable” aspect becomes the key part of the discussion. There are three important concepts to understand when evaluating the benefits of these tools:
Data Provenance
The first important concept to consider is “data provenance”. Data provenance refers to the origin of the data, if it was responsibly captured, permissions for how it’s used, and if it’s compliant with policies.
Because Meta owns the Pixel and the Shopify app, it has to be extra careful in this regard. If a user opts out, Meta will discard/delete their data, regardless of origin. The platform also discards other data, even when it has permission, to be “extra compliant" with policies. Meta used to display/report the difference between the amount of data it receives and what it actually keeps and uses, but it no longer provides that information, so there’s no longer a way to quantify that gap.
Because 3rd Party tracking tools install onto your Shopify store, the data they send back is 1st Party (i.e. a user places an order, and these tools send the info from their order from Shopify to Meta). And because the data is both 1st party and coming from a non-Meta-owned app/source, the platform can theoretically be more liberal with how much of the received data it can keep and use.
Deduplication
The majority of events are still being tracked by the Pixel. In a best practice tracking setup - both a browser (Pixel) and server (CAPI) event should be sent for each tracked user event. And on Meta’s platform, Pixel events are given priority in those situations, with the server event being deduplicated and discarded. This is how the platform avoids over-reporting when both types of events are received for the same user action or conversion.
This is important to keep in mind, as 3rd Party tools such as Popsixle send server events back to Meta. So if the Meta platform receives a Pixel event, Shopify CAPI event, and 3rd party server event for the same transaction (which would be the outcome with their best-practice setup), the platform will keep the Pixel event and discard the server events.
In their official documentation, Meta states that implementing server tracking (CAPI) can provide an 8-15% lift in attributed events above Pixel-only tracking - suggesting that the Pixel is capturing anywhere from 85 to 92% of trackable events, with server events backfilling the rest. And the Shopify app-based server events are making up a majority of that gap. So technically, the benefit from additional 3rd party server events would only be realized on a very small percentage of events where a Pixel event and/or Shopify server event are not present.
However, it has been suggested that Meta could possibly be dropping all events (both Pixel and Server) for opted-out users in an act of over-compliance. We don’t have tangible proof that this is happening, outside of the observed end metrics. And it would somewhat contradict the intended function of AEM (Aggregated Event Measurement), where we still receive prioritized events from opted-out users. But in that hypothetical situation, it would be possible that more of these “1st party data” server events from non-Meta-owned sources could be received and used, since the Pixel and Shopify server events would be absent. In that case, the server events sent from 3rd party tracking tools would cover a larger percentage of events, and become much more valuable.
Inferred Results
In our industry, we know that success is always measured by the end results we generate. And this is key in evaluating the effectiveness of 3rd Party tracking tools, because there isn’t a way to measure the specific lift these tools provide, outside of observing end results (which can be influenced by other factors in addition to the data received).
For example, we previously discussed how one of the main benefits of 3rd Party tools is that they do a superior job of sending the “fbc” parameter with events, which can assist in attributing website sessions and conversions. However, in the research for this piece, I spoke to a former Meta Solutions Engineer who stated the “fbc” parameter wouldn’t play a critical role in attribution because the Meta Platform can match an ad impression (view or click-through) with a website purchase conversion using the available PII (personally identifiable information). In another interview with a Product Manager for a well-known reporting/attribution tool, he stated that while an improved “fbc” match rate should theoretically provide improvement, they haven’t seen actual data that supports that.
Several members of the Founders group - whose opinions I trust and respect - have implemented these tools and observed a noticeable lift in performance post-implementation. While it’s still fairly early in observing these results, one account had seen a decrease in CPA by 13%, with the new tracking tool implementation being the only significant change.
Do 3rd Party Tracking Solutions “Restore Pre-iOS 14.5 Performance”?
As much as we’d all love to discover a solution that can help us get back to the golden age before iOS 14.5 and Apple’s ATT restrictions, the answer here is “no.” Is it possible that 3rd party solutions can provide more data to the platform and improve results? It’s possible, but performance improvements are observational and have to be inferred as opposed to being specifically measured.
However, even when using a 3rd party tool and passing more data to the platform, the changes that went into place with Apple’s ATT starting with iOS 14.5 were sweeping and comprehensive. There’s no magic trick, hack, or solution to restore that data. Once a user has opted out, their data is gone and can’t be used, and no tool or solution is going to provide a workaround. Can newer tools with specific engineering help maximize the data that remains? While it’s still early in the life of these tools and there’s a lot left to be determined, early observed results would suggest it’s possible.
Summary
The notion that Shopify’s Meta tracking integration is “broken” or “hurting your business” isn’t accurate. In fact, it can be a very solid tracking option for many Shopify stores thanks to being free and easy to implement. But it’s also not perfect, and new tools have emerged as alternatives that are specifically engineered to maximize the data shared with the Meta platform.
While on a technical level these 3rd Party tracking tools provide data enhancement benefits that could improve ad results, the specific lift they provide is impossible to measure and quantify. However, early returns on accounts that have implemented these tools have been positive, with observed improvements in match rates and key metrics such as CPA. So there is growing optimism that these tools are indeed providing a performance lift, especially for high ad spend and traffic stores with significant amounts of data. And in the end, results always speak for themselves!