Facebook Pixel. The Difference Between Basic and Advanced Setup
Facebook Pixel is a Meta tracking tool that monitors user actions on your website and lets you optimise advertising for those actions. We break down how the basic setup differs from the advanced one and why this directly affects ad performance.
What Facebook Pixel Is
Facebook Pixel is a tracking tool from Meta that lets you monitor user actions on your website and optimise advertising for those actions.
There are two types of setup for this tool.
Basic setup is the pixel code offered to you when you create the pixel. With this implementation, you can only record incoming traffic to the site and re-show ads to site visitors.
Advanced setup — this implementation lets you track a wide range of events on the site. The main events are: viewing a product page (ViewContent), adding to cart (Add To Cart), starting checkout (Initiate Checkout), purchase (Purchase), and lead (Lead). In addition, you can also pass data on exactly which product a user viewed, what its price is, the total value of products a user added to the cart, the amount of a purchase, and so on. This way you can track virtually everything that happens on the site.
An important note on relevance: today Meta is betting on server-side event delivery through the Conversions API, and pairing the pixel with the Conversions API is considered the standard for accurate tracking. The principle of advanced setup and the list of events themselves do not change — only the channel through which these events reach Meta changes. That is why everything discussed below remains relevant today.
Why You Need It
To get maximum ad performance, you need proper optimisation and a sound communication strategy. Proper optimisation lets you show ads to a higher-quality audience with buying behaviour. Poorly optimised advertising is wasted money.
A sound communication strategy lets you show your ads to people interested in a given product. You have probably noticed that as soon as you visit a brand's store, the product you viewed keeps showing up everywhere. The advertising seems to follow you around. It tells you about the product's advantages and why you should buy it from this particular store. In the end, you make the purchase.
Advertising is not a magic tool. It is a tool through which you communicate with your audience. That is precisely what a well-built communication strategy is. Without these two components, you are, roughly speaking, using only part of the platform's capabilities. With them, your budget is spent FAR more efficiently.
On top of that, you can uncover the site's weaknesses at one stage or another and get answers — where exactly the problem lies and what needs work. These settings also open up a unique opportunity for you — implementing a product catalog.
Product Catalog
A product catalog is a unique tool. Your products on the site automatically appear in your Facebook and Instagram shop (their quantity and price update automatically).
This way, through advertising you can show users the products they are interested in.
A product catalog also lets you use the catalog sales objective. With the right approach (and a broad product range), this objective is one of the most effective.
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Analytics and CRO