Re: Facebook Code Details
Sibyl Piccuillo
To find a shareable Facebook link, log in to your account, navigate to the desired content, find the timestamp or date below it, and right-click to copy the link. Now, you can create QR code from URL and share it.
To generate a QR code through MyQRCode, go to myqrcode.com, choose the QR code type (Facebook in this case), add details about your code, customize the color and style, preview the created QR, and download it.
In addition to using QR codes for Facebook content, businesses can also incorporate QR codes into their Facebook ads. This can be a powerful way to drive engagement and conversions, as it allows customers to quickly and easily access additional information or promotions.
When creating a Facebook ad, businesses can choose to target desktop and tablet screens, providing an opportunity to include a QR code in the ad creative. By doing so, customers can simply scan the QR code using their mobile device to access the desired content. This can be especially useful for businesses looking to promote a specific product or service, as it provides a direct and seamless way for customers to learn more and take action.
Overall, incorporating QR codes into Facebook ads can be a valuable tool for businesses looking to drive engagement and conversions. By providing a direct and seamless way for customers to access additional information or promotions, businesses can improve the effectiveness of their Facebook ads and reach their marketing goals.
If you use Facebook ads, you need to use Facebook Pixel to measure the success of your campaigns. Deploying the Pixel on your website helps Facebook understand your website and how users interact with it. By extension, Facebook will understand how conversions happen on your website.
In this guide, I will show you how to install Meta Pixel with Google Tag Manager (not only basic pageviews but also other things, like events). The topic is quite extensive. Therefore, I recommend buckling up and diving into this. Also, consider subscribing to my newsletter to stay up-to-date with GTM.
This article will cover only the essential things to know when deploying the Facebook Pixel via Google Tag Manager. For a more detailed guide/tutorial, I have extensive lessons about FB Pixel + GTM in my GTM course for beginners.
Facebook Pixel is a solution created by Facebook that allows you to measure user/visitor behavior on your site. This information can further be used to track conversions, optimize campaigns or build audiences based on the data you send.
Once you place certain JavaScript code snippets on your site (and activate them based on user/visitor behavior), this data is sent back to Facebook. I will not dive deeper into the possibilities (because this blog post focuses more on the implementation). But if you are new to FB Pixel, you can get more information here.
Back in the older days (pre-2019), the only way to install Facebook Pixel via Google Tag Manager was by using the Custom HTML tag template. This meant working directly with JavaScript code, editing it a bit, etc.
These days, things are much simpler and more elegant because Simo Ahava created a Facebook Pixel Custom Template and shared it with everyone. It will make the entire Meta Pixel tag management process more convenient and less prone to errors.
Everything starts with the basic implementation of the Meta pixel. In other guides (especially the older ones) found online, you might see a term called Facebook Pixel Base Code (or something similar). In the next several steps, I will explain exactly that (but without using the term Base Code).
Suppose you deploy 50 or even more tags that send data to Facebook. You would need to insert the Pixel ID 50+ times manually. But what if one day, you have to switch to another Pixel ID? You will need to change the ID on all the tags manually.
Facebook Pixel Helper. Similar to GA4, you must ensure that the Meta Pixel has received the event data. Meta has a browser extension called Facebook Pixel helper. Install it, and this icon appears in the top right corner of your Chrome.
Enter the URL of your website (if I were working with my site, I would enter ) and click Open Website. After you are redirected to your website, go to the Test Events tab and check whether you see Pageviews coming from your device. If nothing appears, go back to your site and refresh the page once again.
You can manually deploy the Custom HTML tag when you have access to the complete Meta pixel code. Inside the tag code, you would need to make modifications if you wanted to capture additional parameters.
Where can you get the full Facebook Pixel code? Go to your chosen Meta Pixel in the Events Manager and select your pixel. Click on Manage Integrations, and a new window will appear on your screen.
A new screen will come up, asking you whether you want to install it manually or via a partner integration. Choose Manually add pixel code to website, and the browser will redirect to a new page.
According to the official Facebook documentation, standard events are the most common actions a visitor/user can do on a site. The Meta platform recognizes and supports those events across all ad products. These events can be used to build audiences and optimize conversions.
If you struggle to track interactions on your own, you might need to ask a developer for help. They will then push data to the Data Layer, and you need to use the Custom Event trigger to catch that data.
The final step is to test the reports in Facebook Business Manager. Go to Events Manager > Data Sources. Choose your Pixel and then click Test events. Check whether you see the Lead event there.
We want this tag to fire only when someone clicks the Play button. Therefore, we need to create a Youtube video trigger for that. Click the Triggering section in your Facebook Pixel tag and select the Plus icon in the top right corner.
Also, by looking at the documentation, you can see which fields are expected by Meta. For example, if you send the AddToCart event and want to send some custom data (like product price, etc.), the Facebook pixel will expect content_ids, content_name, content_type, contents, currency, value. None of these are required when it comes to AddToCart.
Next, click the Triggering section in your Facebook Pixel tag and select the Plus icon in the top right corner to create a new trigger. Then click Trigger Configuration > Custom. We want that dataLayer.push (that contains the transaction data) to use as a trigger.
Following the steps in this guide, you probably have already noticed that Facebook Pixel Helper shows things like Microdata Automatically Detected or Button Click Automatically Detected. This is called Automatic Data Detection.
First, I will show how to set the Advanced Matching up in Google Tag Manager. Imagine that you work with a website where users can log in and use your services. You could ask a developer to push the following data to the Data Layer (and do this before the GTM container code is loaded):
Excellent writeup. Question if you have time: I created a PageView tag to send data from my dataLayer. I see when testing I get two page views, one with no data (perhaps one that facebook sends automatically?) and one with my data. Should I somehow disable the one without data, and if so, how would I do that? I'm using gtm-templates-simo-ahava.
If you want to have a GDPR-compliant setup and control when your tags fire, implement it via GTM. If not, then directly. If you implement via GTM (and you're not on a Shopify plus), you won't be able to track checkout steps.
excellent article! thank you very much! but I have a question. I have to set several facebook pixels that must activate based on certain keywords in the URL. how can I manage them better? I'm currently using 5 pixel variables with 5 regex tables. but it's a huge job since I always have to add new pixel codes for my company. is there a way to create such a condition with regex table compatible with gtm and facebook pixel? example: If the URL contains HOME, then activate these pixels 111111,22222,3333 if the URL contains GARDEN then it shows these pixels 4444,5555,6666 etc? I wish I could manage multiple pixels per page by managing them all from a single regex table. is it possible in your opinion? Thank you a lot
Hi, why not. Use just one regex table variable? Add rows for different keywords and if a certain keyword is matched, then return 11111,22222,33333 pixel ids. Then use that regex table variable in the Facebook pixel custom tag template.
Thanks to the queue that FB pixel offers, the tag will be firing but the data will be sent only when the consent is given. Of course, if you have implemented everything as I have instructed in the guide.
Thanks for your answer.
I knew that we will continue firing tags even if the consent was not given, HOWEVER, the data will not be sent." and this is the reason for which I wrote you. As I said in my case I see the FB PageView Tag firing and the data passed to FB even if the consent has not been given.
Difficult to comment without seeing the actual situation. There is definitely something configured improperly, otherwise, it would work. If the data is still being sent even with the GDPR settings disabled, this means that the value of your Regex variable is incorrect or:
- OneTrust changed something on their end. This means that the variable returns the wrong value.
- You have more than one FB pixel tags and not all of them have the GDPR settings configured.
I have probably kind of strange question. I want to remove my GTM-FB pixel integration. I did it one day ago but still seeing events in FB coming in from GTM. I removed GTM code from my website and deleted everything related to it in my GTM account (even the container containing all of this). Should I just wait couple of days ?
Can I ask you a question regarding purchase events?
1) I'm already tracking purchases with custom conversions.
Would it be wise to also track purchases with a standard event via GTM? Both would be tracked via the rule URL contains "/checkout/order-received/". Or would you recommend to just one one of those?