Facebook Advanced Matching: What Is It & How To Turn It On?

Written by: ROIhacks.com
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One of the hottest topics in online advertising is attributing the conversions to the right media channel that played a role in driving the customer to a conversion. Facebook has developed the Facebook Advanced Matching feature for getting better in attributing conversions to the Facebook advertising campaigns you are running.

Using  Advanced Matching Facebook can get you more accurate data on who has converted on your website and this way you can see if Facebook has played a role in driving specific conversions.

Facebook Advanced Matching is an advanced technical Facebook Ads topic, but don’t worry, we are going to explain everything you have to know about it such as:

  • What is exactly Facebook Advanced Matching?
  • What user data can you send in with Facebook Advanced Matching?
  • Why should you enable Facebook Advanced Matching?
  • How to turn on the Facebook Advanced Matching Pixel?
  • How to set up Facebook Advanced Match (both automatic and manual)

At the of this tutorial, we will also answer some of the most frequently asked questions related to Facebook Advanced Matching.

What is Facebook Advanced Matching?

Facebook Advanced Matching enables Facebook advertisers to send in hashed customer data to Facebook with Pixel Events that will help Facebook to attribute more conversions to the right users and to generally provide you with more accurate conversion data.

Advertisers have to explicitly enable Advanced Matching on their Facebook Pixel. They can either turn on Automatic Advanced Matching (so Facebook automatically detects users data and sends it in), or can also set up Manual Advanced Matching with the help of a developer or with Google Tag Manager.

What customer data can you send in with Facebook Advanced Matching?

Currently, Facebook Advanced Matching can send in the following user information to Facebook:

  • Email
  • Gender
  • City, State, ZIP Code and Country
  • First and Last Name
  • Phone Number
  • Date of Birth
  • External ID

You don’t have to worry about any kind of user privacy issues as Facebook sends in these customer data in a hashed format and once they matched the customer data with their ad attribution system, they discard the hashed customer information.

Why turning on Facebook Advanced Matching is important?

As we said Facebook Advanced Matching helps Facebook to attribute more conversions for your Facebook advertising campaigns.

Facebook needs this information as the conversion tracking that is based on cookie information and the Facebook Pixel tracking can never be 100% accurate. Users change devices frequently and they are not always signed in to Facebook, they delete cookies, or their web browser might block the Facebook Pixel.

By turning on the Advanced Matching Pixel, Facebook does not have to 100% rely on cookie-based tracking and can use the customer data information directly to find which users converted from your Facebook Advertising activities.

When you enable Facebook Advanced Matching you will be able to:

  1. Get more conversions attributed to Facebook that will help you to analyze your campaigns more accurately and see the real impact of Facebook advertising on your revenue. You can then use this data to optimize your Facebook ad campaigns more efficiently.
  2. Increase the size of your Facebook Custom Audiences. By turning on Advanced Matching, Facebook can attribute more conversions to the users, this also means that Facebook can also feed more people into the Custom Audiences that are based on conversion data.
  3. Potentially decrease the cost of customer acquisition on Facebook. As the Facebook algorithm optimizes your ad campaigns based on the performance of the campaigns, if you can feed the algorithm with more accurate data it is trivial that Facebook algorithm will use that better data to optimize your FB ads campaigns even more effectively.

How to set up Facebook Advanced Matching?

To enable Facebook Advanced matching on your Facebook Pixel, you basically have two options. First, you can turn on the automatic advanced matching in Facebook Events Manager.

In this case, the Facebook Pixel will use its algorithm to recognize form fields and other sources that contain advanced matching customer information and it will send in with the Pixel Events happening on the page.

Secondly, you can set up Facebook Advanced matching with a manual method when your developer or you can modify the Pixel code on your website to also send in the necessary customer information to Facebook Advanced matching feature.

If you can, it is recommended to send in the customer information data both through automatic and manual advanced matching as the customer data and attributed conversions won’t get duplicated.

If you want to learn more about when you should set up manual vs automatic Facebook Advanced matching, definitely check out this article.

How to turn on Facebook Advanced Matching automatically?

To set up Facebook Advanced matching, all you have to do is to follow the following process:

  1. Open up your Events Manager by navigating from the right Business Manager Account.
  2. Choose the Facebook Pixel on the left where you want to enable Facebook Advanced Matching
  3. Click on the Settings tab of the Facebook Pixel
  4. Scroll down to Advanced Matching. First, toggle the ‘Automatic Advanced Matching’ button on.
  5. Then also enable the user information you would like to send in to Facebook using Facebook automatic data detection algorithm

Facebook Advanced Matching Customer Data

Set up Facebook Advanced Matching Manually

As we said there is no risk in also sending in the user data via Manual Advanced Matching. Additionally, Manual Advanced Matching tend to send in more accurate data as you explicitly specify the data that you want to send in, as you don’t rely on Facebook’s algorithm.

As setting up Manual Facebook Advanced Matching deserves its separate article on its own, we have a separate guide on how you can set up Facebook Advanced matching manually using Google Tag Manager.

Frequently Asked Question – Facebook Advanced Matching Pixel

Is it GDPR compatible to use Facebook Advanced Matching?

We are not lawyers, so don’t take this as legal advice, but Facebook Advanced Matching is GDPR compatible and it complies with other user privacy laws.

Although FB Advanced Matching uses the most sensitive user data, the data is automatically hashed in the customer’s browser before being sent to Facebook using HTTPS. And right after the matching is completed, Facebook gets rid of the hashed and unhashed data and doesn’t use it for other purposes.

How to turn on Facebook Advanced Matching?

You can turn on Automatic Facebook Advanced Matching by going to your Facebook Pixel in Facebook Events Manager and enable Automatic Advanced Matching there and you can also choose which customer information Facebook should detect on the page and send in with your Pixel Events.

How to improve your conversion tracking on Facebook?

One of the best ways is to improve your conversion tracking is to set up either Automatic or Manual Advanced Matching or preferably enabling both of them. This way Facebook will not only rely on Facebook Pixel or SDK data but also on customer information to identify a conversion.

How you can set up Facebook Advanced Matching Pixel?

If you want to set up Manual Advanced Matching Pixel as well then you either have to set it up in Google Tag Manager or asking a developer to set it up for you. Although it is way more work than automatic advanced matching, it usually gives more accurate data to Facebook.

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