The iOS14 update has had many negative consequences on Facebook ads tracking.
Many Facebook users have opted out of traditional cookie-based tracking (which is Facebook Pixel), and Facebook has decided to close its Facebook Analytics tool. This means that in 2021 the traditional tracking of Facebook ads have become more difficult within the Facebook Ads Manager and the Facebook ecosystem.
This is why tracking your Facebook ads with Google Analytics has become even more important than ever before.
In this short tutorial, we are going to explain what you need to do to be able to track Facebook ads with the help of Google Analytics.
And we are also going to show you two ways how you can do that very easily, without a lot of time investment.
How to track your Facebook ads campaigns in Google Analytics?
If you want to track your Facebook ads campaigns in Google Analytics, all you have to do is to use UTM parameters.
With Facebook UTM parameters, you will be able to check in Google Analytics how Facebook ads campaigns drive traffic and conversions to your website.
In a separate blog post, we have talked about how you should use UTM parameters for your Facebook campaigns, but here is the gist of it, if you want the short version:
- utm_campaign= “your campaign name’
- utm_source=facebook
- utm_medium=cpc.
So if you have a landing page where you push Facebook ads traffic the complete URL should like this:
www.example.com/landingpage?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=campaign001
Two ways to track Facebook ads campaigns
Ok, that’s great, but what if you have plenty of campaigns? Here is how you can add UTM parameters to all of your Facebook ads campaigns quickly.
Use a URL/UTM builder
You can either use a UTM builder, where all you have to do is just add the input parameters, like the URL of the landing page, the name of your campaign and you will get a nice URL back with all the UTM parameters properly added.
For this, you can either use Google UTM builder, or Facebook URL builder.
Use Facebook’s built in UTM builder
There is another solution that might be even easier.
When you are creating a new Facebook ads campaign, and you are in the Facebook ads creatives section of the campaign creation process, you have the option to add URL parameters in the Facebook Ads Manager directly.
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- All you have to do is to scroll down:
- Click on ‘Build URL parameter’
- Click to the field of campaign name, source and medium:
- Facebook will recommend the dynamic URL parameters you have access to
Here you can find a video tutorial on how to use the Facebook dynamic URL parameters so you can track Facebook ads in Google Analytics later:
Check the performance of your Facebook ads campaigns in GA
If you have set up the UTM tracking parameters correctly, all you have to do now is to open up Google Analytics and check the performance of your campaigns.
You can do this by opening Google Analytics, then go to this report in the Acquisition report section of GA:
In this report, you will be able to filter for campaign name, source, medium and use the built-in dimensions offered by Google Analytics, like age, demographics, etc.
Why should you track Facebook Ads in Google Analytics?
Here are some reasons that tracking your Facebook ads campaigns with Google Analytics is a must in 2021:
- users now have to opt-in for Facebook tracking them outside of Facebook. Based on statistics, only a low number of people with iOS devices opt-in for tracking.
- However, you can still track these people on your Google Analytics property without any kind of issues.
- You can exactly see all the micro and macro conversions that the campaign has brought in almost real-time
- Compare this to Facebook, where you are only going to see for iOS14 users who didn’t opt in the last conversion point for the user
