Facebook pixels get upgrade to track actions & page data

The engine behind Facebook’s tracking and targeting just got an upgrade. The Facebook pixel helps track conversions, optimize ad spends and retarget users. An upgrade to the pixel was just rolled out that will now capture more information, including actions and page structure and data.

The biggest area that marketers should pay attention to is the ability to track actions based on site use. These actions include clicks like an “add to cart,” “click to call” or “purchase.” This should help advertisers gather more data on their site without having to implement custom events. The page metadata that will now be passed along includes Opengraph or Schema.org data included on the page.

According to the Facebook for Developers page, you can also turn off this new upgrade by implementing the following instructions:

If you’d like to configure the Facebook Pixel to not send this additional information, you can add the line fbq(‘set’, ‘autoConfig’, ‘false’, ‘FB_PIXEL_ID’) above the init call in the Facebook Pixel Base code and the Facebook Pixel will no longer send this additional information.

If your pixel was created before April 20, the new functionality will be go into effect on May 20. If the pixel was created after April 20, the functionality will be active now.

For more information, see the official Facebook update.

(Tip via Adweek.)

About The Author

Greg Finn

Greg Finn is the Director of Marketing for Cypress North, a company that provides world-class social media and search marketing services and web & application development. He has been in the Internet marketing industry for 10+ years and specializes in Digital Marketing. You can also find Greg on Twitter (@gregfinn) or LinkedIn.