The Meta pixel alone isn't enough anymore

If your Meta results look worse than your actual sales suggest, part of the reason may be missing data. Browser-based tracking — the pixel — is blocked or limited more often than it used to be: Apple's App Tracking Transparency, Safari's tracking prevention, ad blockers and consent choices all reduce what it can see.

When Meta sees fewer conversions, it optimises on less information. Delivery gets less efficient, and reported performance drops even when real sales don't.

What Conversions API does

Conversions API (CAPI) sends conversion events from your server directly to Meta, alongside the pixel. Because it doesn't depend on the browser, it recovers events the pixel misses.

Where setups go wrong

• No de-duplication: the pixel and CAPI both send the same purchase, and Meta counts it twice. Each event needs a matching event name and event ID from both sources.
• Thin customer data: sending only the event, without hashed email or phone, gives a low Event Match Quality score — and fewer events get attributed.
• Sending events without respecting consent, which creates a legal problem on top of a tracking one.
• Setting it up once and never checking the Events Manager diagnostics again.

Our usual setup

Server-side Google Tag Manager, sending both Google and Meta events from one place, with consent mode respected, event IDs for de-duplication, and match quality reviewed in the first two weeks.