Understanding Event Match Quality (EMQ) Scores in Meta Ads

Every ad buyer tries to have the highest EMQ scores in the Meta Events Manager, but few realize what this data even means. Here’s an in-depth overview of everything you need to know about Event Match Quality scores.

➡ FIRST, THE NAME

The name EMQ is misleading, because these scores don’t represent QUALITY, they represent VOLUME. To be explicit: quality and volume are not the same thing. Imagine if a 3-Michelin star restaurant simply served larger portions than a 1-Michelin star restaurant. (No thanks)

EMQ is a score that benchmarks the volume of data parameters that you send back to your Meta ad account via a server-side CAPI connection.

This data is made up of events like PageView, AddToCart, and Purchases.

Within those events, there are parameters sent that help determine WHO the PageView or Purchase action was taken by.

➡ WHAT IT VISUALIZES:

EMQ shows the types of data parameters being sent and the percentage of events that contain those parameters.

If you send 100,000 events, and 50,000 of them contain hashed email values, your EMQ bar graph for the email data parameter would show 50% capture rate.

➡ WHAT IT BENCHMARKS:

EMQ measures how much data you are sending relative to your peers.

If most advertisers send PageView payloads with email 0-5% of the time, and you send PageView events with email 50% of the time, you are going to have a higher EMQ score.

EMQ scores are a quick way to see a number next to your event data. Seeing a number below an expected range would be a diagnostic red flag, and alert you that something needs to be improved within your data connection.

➡ WHY THIS DATA MATTERS:

All of this data is being sent to Meta to unlock WHO is taking actions on your site. This trains Meta’s learning model who your most valuable customers are, so that its campaigns can optimize to more of the right people.

As you send more matchable data, and send them a higher percentage of the time, there’s a higher chance that Meta will match events to identities.

➡ WHAT’S A GOOD SCORE?

Top-of-funnel events like PageView tend to have less data available and a common EMQ score might be in the range of 4.5 to 6.0.

Mid-funnel events like AddToCart tend to have a moderate amount of data and a common EMQ score might be in the range of 6.0 to 7.5.

Purchase events should be chock-full of matchable parameters like email, phone, etc. A common EMQ score for Purchase is 7.5 to 8.5 and very strong scores are in the 8.5 to 9.3 range.

➡ SUMMARY

These scores are a benchmark that quickly signals if your data connection is sending less data than expected. Knowing how to interpret this data is very valuable to either find and fix data problems, or to feel confident that your data connection is excellent.