Introduction
If you've encountered varying conversion figures between Facebook Ads and Meritto reports, there might be several factors contributing to this disparity.
Let’s understand how Facebook Ads track the conversions as there are several “conversion” metrics available.
When the target audience comes across an ad on Facebook, Instagram or the Audience Network, there are several actions that they can take, such as:
A. Watching a video in the ad
B. Visiting your website
C. Buying a product.
If people perform actions on the ad you've posted, like buying something from your website, Facebook Ads will credit these actions to your ad as long as they occur within the conversion window you've defined in your ad account.
Note: User interactions with your advertisement, like making a purchase on the website, are associated with your ad if they occur within a specific timeframe following someone's viewing or clicking on your ad.
By default, Facebook Ads sets the attribution window as 1-day view and 28-day click, which means attribution is given only when they happened within 1 day of someone seeing your ad or within 28 days of someone clicking on your ad.
Check Attribution Window:
If you change your attribution window to show view and click attribution, then you'll see two columns for each metric:
- one for view-through attribution
- one for click-through attribution.
If someone clicks your ad and purchases a product on your website, that purchase would be reported under click-through attribution. If someone views your ad and then purchases the product, that purchase would be reported under view-through attribution.
In both the views when a click occurs, Facebook Ads only registers the click for purposes of attribution.
Facebook Ads employs a last-touch attribution approach. You can specify the time frame within which you'd like to track the actions people take after interacting with your ads. This choice impacts the outcomes you observe for your ads.
Below is a screenshot from where you can change the attribution model.
To change the attribution window in Facebook Ads you have to use the following steps:
- Navigate to Settings from the main menu
- Click Edit under Attribution
- Select your preferred Attribution Window.
Recommendation: To decrease the mismatch of conversion counts between Facebook Ads and Meritto recommendation are provided below.
- Always keep the Facebook Ads attribution window as short as possible to decrease the mismatch counts of Facebook Ads and Meritto reports.
- You can set it minimum as 1 day and by default it as 1-day view and 28-days click.
Why do I see different numbers of conversion in Facebook Ads and Meritto?
A.1 If a UTM parameter is wrongly created or broken.
When a UTM parameter is wrongly created or broken, they won't be able to find the leads in Meritto reports against that particular source and conversion count will mismatch in Facebook Ads Conversion and Meritto reports.
For Building UTM Parameters you can use any online tool to avoid mistakes.
Online Tool to create UTM parameter for Marketing Campaign.
https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/
A.2 Identify the Campaign and Compare Lead Count in Facebook Ads and Meritto using UTM Parameters:
Reason: User might miss to use the UTM parameters in some of the campaigns and when leads are checked in Meritto reports with that specific source you would see discrepancy shown between Facebook Ads and Meritto reports.
Case Example: You are running around 8 Ads on Facebook Ads and you have created UTM parameters for 6 Ads but you forgot to create the UTM for the newly added 2 Ads that would cause a mismatch in conversion count.
Note: We encourage the use of UTM parameters along with your ads for better analysis of specific ads in Meritto reports.
B. Case: If you see a higher number of Conversions in Facebook Ads report compared to Meritto report
Reason: Conversion tracking code is not placed on the appropriate page where conversion is taking place.
Case Example : The Facebook tracking script must be positioned on the thank you page, where the actual conversion occurs. Occasionally, advertisers make an error by putting it on the ad's landing page. Consequently, whenever a user visits that landing page, each click is recorded as a conversion. This leads to inflated numbers in Google Ads reports compared to the figures in Meritto reports.
C. Case: If you have applied a date filter causing mismatch in data between Facebook Ads and Meritto report.
Reason: There could be a mismatch in Facebook Ads and Meritto Report as Facebook Ads shows the conversion at a different time when the impressions/clicks took place while Meritto shows a different time and date when someone completes the registration.
Case Example:
If a prospect lead searches for Targeted Keyword on Facebook and clicks on Ad1 at 11:55 PM but does not fill the lead detail and goes to some other website to gather more information and comes back after an hour at 00:55 AM finally filling the lead capture form thus completing registration, In this case, Facebook Ads will show conversion for yesterday whereas in Meritto report it will show that conversion happened today because user filled the form at 00:55 AM and day is changed here.