If you're running ads, your pixel is one of the most important pieces of technology your business uses.

Your pixel, whether it's from Meta, Pinterest, or even Quantcast (and you can have all of the above, not just one), gets information from your website traffic that ad platforms need in order to be more effective. I've seen businesses triple their returns on ad spend just from fixing one aspect of their pixel. When your pixel is working properly, ad platforms get a great idea of what kind of people are coming to your site and what kind of actions they are taking. Your pixel can be the difference between ads that never work no matter what you try, and ads that manage to do well even when they're set up poorly.

The pixel is a non-negotiable that even new businesses can benefit from — but they have to get it right.

Here's how you know when your pixel has issues

Undercounting or overcounting conversions. Generally it's okay if your pageviews are off by 2-5%. More important conversions such as purchases and adds to cart should be accurate.

Your pixel should never be double-counting or counting far below your actual purchase or add-to-cart numbers. If it is, this will have significant effects on your ad campaigns.

An undercount will reduce the algorithm's ability to find new audiences because it's getting less signals to learn from. An overcount is even worse — instead of being more careful because it's getting less signal, the algorithm will add all sorts of unsuitable people to the audience. Why? Since everyone who bought once bought twice in the pixel's eyes, it raises the level of desire those people had, and in turn brings people who the pixel deemed wouldn't want the product enough (low estimated action rate) into the group of people it believes do want the product enough.
Only showing server events or browser events and not both. This is a technical problem. Typically, your pixel should be receiving events from the browser pixel as well as the server/Conversions API.
This issue isn't very common and only tends to pop up when people set up their pixel manually. If you're using Clickfunnels or Elevar, this can happen if there are people who initially set it up or are tinkering with the setup.
Your event match quality is 6.0 or lower. Your event quality on Meta should be at leat 6.0, preferably 8.0.
The higher it is, the better job the ad tech will do of finding people who want to do the actions you're aiming for.
Whether you have an event business or an online ecommerce business, this is vital.

Here's how you fix these pixel issues

Undercounting, overcounting, match quality, and only showing server or browser events:
Turn off the "track events automatically without code" setting. It often causes double-counting. After turning it off, check to see whether your counts come down. If not, then remove your pixel integration and set it up again. If you're on Shopify, use the built-in integration with Meta and choose Maximum data-sharing in the settings section.

If you're with an ecommerce business that is doing anything less than $100k/mo, you can get great results with simple and cheap Shopify plugins like Omega Pixel. (This is not sponsored; I get no benefit from recommeding this to you. I've just been blown away by how good it is.) It's a marvelous tool that I've seen outperform bigger tools like Elevar and Upstackified.

If you're already paying for additional tracking to optimize your Meta performance, do it on top of this, OR remove it if required. (Elevar may require you to remove all previous tracking to avoid double-counting - do it.) Ensure that the tool is the only one sending data back to the pixel — and if the tool is overcounting after a few days, get rid of it as soon as humanly possible, even if you have to continue paying for it because it will unsell your products.

Another great thing about Omega Pixel is that it sets up other relevant events like a purchase subscription. Optimizing for that event has doubled, tripled, and even quadrupled brands' returns on ad spend nearly overnight. I've seen it many times recently and I'm stunned.

All of this goes to show how important it is to set your pixel up properly, regardless of the type business you have.

If you all want me to, I'll make a video walkthrough for this so everyone can find all these pixel settings and learn how to set them up correctly.

In the next email to you, I'll get back to the topics of effective ads, landing pages, and email retention as I usually do. Next week we'll cover a highly effective ad type I don't see as often as I should, but is great for brands that want to get a lower CAC.

Talk soon,
Ethan

How To Diagnose and Fix Your Meta Pixel So Your Ad Campaigns Can Finally Perform Their Best, Cut CAC in Half, and Grow Your DTC Brand

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