Meta Attribution: Why Quality Data Beats Quantity

Not all data is created equal. This is especially true for the Facebook/Meta Events Manager.

To illustrate this, look at the below image and tell me: which account would you rather have, A or B? Which account is likely to have more accurate attribution and do a better job of training Meta Machine Learning systems on who your best customers are?

Account A looks pretty typical, especially if you're using the built-in/free Shopify CAPI connection. There's a high EMQ score of 8.4. Most passed data parameters look healthy, near 100%. Email and Phone, in particular, are being passed at a high rate.

Meanwhile Account B looks embarrassingly bad. The EMQ score is awful at a mere 5.9. It looks like most parameters aren't being passed very often.

However, I'd bet $1,000,000 that Account B has better data.

I'd bet that Account B has higher match rates.

I'd bet that Account B has more accurate attribution.

Most importantly, I'd bet Account B has the data needed to unlock the greatest value of Meta Machine Learning.

How is that possible?

The most valuable data point to pass for attribution is fbc. These are unique click ids that match back to specific ad clicks from specific users. The chances of Meta correctly matching the purchase to a user and to a specific ad campaign is close to 100/100 if a valid fbc parameter is sent.

Account B is passing fbc at twice the rate as Account A. I'd bet that their attribution accuracy is about twice as accurate as a result.

The most valuable data point to pass for matching to a deterministic user is External ID. These are unique identifiers that Facebook uses to match to specific users. The reason you pass email, phone, ip, user agent, etc is in the hope that Meta is able to match that data back to a person. Sending a valid External ID is a guarantee that the match will be made.

Account B is passing External ID 99% of the time. That suggests that every single purchase can and will be matched to a deterministic user. Past data that has been passed for that user will automatically be enriched to make a light payload a chock full payload, by matching on External ID.

Remember that the Events Manager is simply a log of all the data being deposited to your Meta ad account. Sure, more data is better than less data. The amber alerts and scores are meant to help diagnose issues when expected data isn't being sent. But remember that sending the right data is what really will improve your performance and attribution.

So which account would you rather have?