Facebook Ads

This document covers the steps required to send conversion data from Gamesight Marketing Analytics to Facebook. This is a two-way data sync that pushes your conversions to Facebook Ads enabling automated install-based optimization, in addition to pulling cost metrics in from Facebook which enables ROAS reporting in Gamesight.

Integration Comparison

Please use the table below to compare the different levels of integration that can be achieved with your Facebook ads

BaseStandard (Data Sync)Full (Postbacks)
Required StepsSteps 4-6 onlySteps 1-6Steps 1-6 & "Postback Conversions"
ImpressionsNoneImpression volume syncImpression volume sync
ClicksClick-through attributionClick-through attributionClick-through attribution
Conversion TrackingYesYesYes + postback conversions to Meta Pixel
CostNoneAd spend syncAd spend sync
Report StructureSyncs with Facebook campaign structureSyncs with Facebook campaign structureSyncs with Facebook campaign structure
  • All Facebook campaigns are measured with click-through conversions only. Even with the Impression volume sync integration enabled.
  • Impression volume and ad spend sync processes can be delayed by up to 6 hours compared to Facebook reporting
  • Retargeting & Optimization If you would like to perform retargeting or automated ad optimization on conversions, please see the postback section of this guide

Standard Integration

The following guide walks you through the process for linking your Facebook account for the Standard Facebook integration.

1. Link your Facebook Ads Account

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Facebook Ads Account & Gamesight Data Syncing

Before proceeding with the account linking steps outlined below, please be sure that you are linking a game-specific Facebook Ad Account.

This Facebook integration enables all active campaigns running in your Facebook Ads Account to sync back into Gamesight's reporting (including network reported Impressions, Clicks and Cost data).

First, you will need to link your Facebook Ads account to your Gamesight account. You can do this by opening the drop-down by your name at the top right of the page followed by selecting Settings.

On this page you will find a button labeled "Link Facebook Account" which will bring you through the Facebook oAuth flow and request permission to your Facebook Ads account.

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Facebook will now ask you to confirm that Gamesight can get access to your Ad account.

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Once the oAuth flow is completed you should see your Ad account(s) listed as shown below.

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Facebook Ads Accounts

Note that you will see all of your Facebook Ads accounts listed here. No one else will be able to see your list of Ads accounts and Gamesight will not sync any campaign information from these accounts.

We only pull reporting information from Ads Accounts that you have completed the Partner Access flow for. You will also choose which Teams in Gamesight have access to your account in a later step.

2. Share Partner Access with Gamesight

To assign Gamesight as a Business Manager Partner, you can follow the simple steps below.

First, from your Facebook Ads/Business Manager dashboard, go to Ad Accounts, select your Ad Account and click Assign Partners.

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Next, choose Business ID as the method of assigning.

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Finally, enter our Business ID (500711843669397) and assign Full Control permissions as shown below.

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Once this step is complete you should see Gamesight as an Agency attached to your Ad account.

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Return to your Gamesight Console and upon refreshing the page, you should see the status of your account as "Approved", meaning your Ad account is ready to be used by Gamesight!

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3. Share your Facebook Account

Next, you'll need to grant your other team members access to use this account. To do this, press the "Manage" button next to your linked Facebook account. This should bring up the Facebook account management modal.

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From here you can select the teams that you want to grant access to. This will allow all members in the team to create Trackers and see reporting details for that Facebook Ad Account.

4. Create your Tracker

Now that you have your account linked you should proceed to create a new Facebook Network Tracker.

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You should see that your Facebook account is automatically populated in the drop-downs on the Tracker creation screen.

If it is not, you can select your Facebook Ads Account, select your Dataset (formerly "Meta Pixel") and click "Next".

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Click URL

Once you have your Tracker created, copy the click tracker. It should be of the following form:

https://gsght.com/c/XXXXXX?campaign={{campaign.id}}&campaign_name=
{{campaign.name}}&ad_group={{adset.id}}&ad_group_name={{adset.name}}
&ad={{ad.id}}&ad_name={{ad.name}}

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Just use the Network Tracker!

You do not need to proceed to the Campaign / Ad Group / Ad levels of the tracker creation for the Facebook Ads integration. Simply copy your full Network-level Click URL and use it as the Destination URL for your placements. Gamesight will automatically mirror the Campaign structure that you set up in your Facebook Ads account.

5. Setup your Facebook Campaign

To track your Facebook campaigns all you need to do is drop your Gamesight tracking link in as the Destination URL for your Facebook Ad!

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You should be ready to run your campaign now! You can use the same Tracking link for multiple Facebook Ads Campaigns. Gamesight will automatically separate out your traffic all the way down to the Ad level.

Multiple Landing Pages

Since Gamesight uses a single tracking link for all of your Facebook campaigns, it isn't possible to use the normal tracker management tools to control the landing pages for your campaigns. If you want to direct users to different landing pages you will need to use the destination_url parameter on your tracking link to control the page.

For example, if you wanted to override the landing page for your ad to direct to Google, you would append the URL to the end of your link as shown in the example below.

https://gsght.com/c/XXXXXX?campaign={{campaign.id}}&campaign_name=
{{campaign.name}}&ad_group={{adset.id}}&ad_group_name={{adset.name}}
&ad={{ad.id}}&ad_name={{ad.name}}&destination_url=https://google.com

You can read more about using the destination_url parameter in our URL Parameters & Macros guide.

6. Measure and Optimize

After running your Facebook campaign for a day or two, you should start to see campaign performance details in your Gamesight reports. You'll automatically get impression, click, and cost data for all of your Facebook campaigns.

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Postback Conversions to Facebook

Gamesight, in partnership with Facebook, has created an integration for sending conversion data from your game back to Facebook. This enables automated optimization towards install, in addition to unlocking re-targeting, exclusions, and audience creation!

Dataset - Share Partner Access

Sharing access to the Meta Dataset (formerly "Meta Pixel") with Gamesight is quick and easy! The following steps walk you through this process using Facebook Business Manager.

1. Go to the Partners page in your Business Manager.
2. Click on "Gamesight" in the Partner listing or enter our Business Manager ID 500711843669397.
3. Click the "Share Assets" button.
4. Provide Use events dataset permissions to the dataset that you want Gamesight to post conversions to.
5. Click "Save Changes".

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Contact Gamesight!

In order to enable postbacks to your Dataset (formerly Meta Pixel), you will need to contact us once you have shared Dataset access with Gamesight. Please open a live chat or email us at [email protected] so that we can finalize the setup for postbacks on our end.

Multiple Postbacks

If you would like to set up additional postbacks from Gamesight to Facebook Ads, you can do so directly through your dashboard. Please check out our Postbacks documentation for a walk-through!

Facebook Postback Event Names

Facebook provides a set of Standard Event Names that you can utilize to name your Postbacks in Gamesight. Using a Standard Event Name will require no additional work in Facebook to see and utilize your postback data in your Facebook campaigns.

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Non-Standard Event Names

Using an Event Name that is not in Facebook's list of Standard Event Names will require you to set up a Custom Conversion Event in Facebook Ads.

Custom Conversion Events

If you are using a non-standard Event Name for your postback from Gamesight to Facebook, you will need to set up a Custom Conversion Event in Facebook in order to see and utilize the postback data in your campaigns. This can be done by opening your Meta Dataset (formerly "Meta Pixel") in Events Manager, followed by clicking "Create > Create Custom Conversion". In the image below, you will see an example of a Custom Conversion Event.

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Once you have received at least one postback with a non-standard name in your Dataset, you should be able to find the postback under the list of "Custom events" as shown in the image below.

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A Custom Conversion Event requires at least 1 "Rule". The Rule can be filled out at your discretion, however you can make the Rule something simple such as: URL > Contains > .

By entering a period in the text field below "URL > Contains" you can click the "+" button on the right to add the period as a rule. The logic behind this simplified rule helps to avoid any potential issues as we know that every URL has to have a "." in it.

Additional Match IDs for Postbacks

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Additional Match ID Use Cases

The following steps are only necessary if you are seeing low match rates in Facebook Ads Manager or if you would like to send unattributed conversions to your Meta Dataset (formerly "Meta Pixel").

The standard Postback integration described above this section works by using the Facebook Click ID to send conversion signals back to the platform. This is a reliable signal for all users attributed to your Facebook campaigns via Gamesight. If you would like to include organic users in your postback, please look into implementing the following additional match IDs.

Gamesight supports multiple additional matching methods into the Meta Dataset. These can be helpful for increasing match rate, or to send unattributed/organic installs back to your Meta Dataset.

External ID Sync (Optional)

If you are seeing low match rates in Facebook, you can set up a landing page where both the Meta Dataset and Gamesight Web SDK are placed.

Here is an example of the completed integration code:

<script>
/* Including the Meta Pixel snippet */
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script',
'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js');
  
/* Including the Gamesight Web SDK snippet */
(function(G,m,s,g,h,t){G.gsght=G.gsght||function(){
(G.gsght.q=G.gsght.q||[]).push(arguments)},G.gsght.q=[],G.gsght.h=1*new Date();
h=m.createElement(s),t=m.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];h.async=1;h.src=g;t.parentNode.insertBefore(h,t)
})(window,document,'script','https://cdn.gsght.com/sdk.js');

/* Configuring both the Gamesight Web SDK and Meta Pixel */
gsght('init', 'GS_WEB_SDK_ID_HERE', 'web');
gsght('set', 'fb_enabled', true);
gsght('send');

gsght('onload', function(){
  fbq('init', 'FB_PIXEL_ID_HERE', {'external_id': gsght('get', 'gsid')});
  fbq('track', "PageView");
});
</script>

In the integration code above, please be sure to replace the following two placeholders with actual data.

  1. Replace GS_WEB_SDK_ID_HERE with your Gamesight Web SDK ID.
  2. Replace FB_PIXEL_ID_HERE with your Meta Pixel ID.

Once this code is placed on your landing or marketing page, ensure all of your Facebook ads drive traffic to this page. This should increase the match rates that you are seeing in Facebook utilizing our mapped external ID as well as automatically pulling in the fbp browser ID value.

Email Matching (Optional)

Additionally, you can pass hashed email data as an external ID with your event integration to enable email matching on conversion uploads into Facebook. Below is an example making this association in the Measurement API.

curl https://api.ingest.marketing.gamesight.io/events \
    -X POST \
    -H 'Authorization: SOMEAPIKEYHERE' \
    -H 'X-Api-Version: 1.1.0' \
    -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
    -d "$(cat <<-EOF
  {
    "user_id": "b91f8k5r",
    "type": "game_launch",
    "ip": "172.123.245.14",
    "external_ids": [
         {
              "external_id_type": "email",
              "external_id": "f1904cf1a9d73a55fa5de0ac823c4403ded71afd4c3248d00bdcd0866552bb79",
              "sha256": "client"
         }
    ]
  }
EOF
)"
  • Note that the external ID association only needs to be made once - it is not a requirement that you pass the email with every event.
  • The email format must be SHA256 hash of the email, lowercase, trimming whitespace as outlined in Facebook's Documentation
  • If you would prefer to send unhashed emails you can use "sha256": "server" to request email hashing

IP and Useragent (Optional)

Gamesight can be set up to transfer your users' IP addresses and User-Agent values to your Facebook Pixel, enhancing match rates. This integration involves sending an unhashed IP address to Facebook, which Gamesight typically doesn't store (we usually hash IPs upon receipt). If you're interested in using this integration, please inform your account manager so we can enable the preservation and transfer of raw IP addresses to Facebook.

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Completing Additional Match ID Integration

Once you have implemented one of the above strategies please reach out to your Gamesight account manager so we can validate the implementation and enable the data flow to your Facebook pixel. The additional IDs will not start being utilized until Gamesight confirms the implementation.

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iOS 14 ATT Update

Starting with iOS 14's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) prompt, Facebook is making several changes to their ads platform. Fortunately, most of these changes won't directly impact campaigns for PC/Console games!

The one change that may have an impact is Aggregated Event Measurement (AEM). Put simply, if your campaign targets iOS 14 users, you will be limited to optimize your campaign to no more than 8 unique Events on your Meta Pixel (or 4 if you enable Value Optimization). You can find settings related to configuring AEM through your Facebook Events Manager tools.

Additionally, iOS 14 users who opted out through ATT will have a maximum of a 1-day click through attribution window on the Facebook platform - this means that for opted out users you will only be able to optimize towards conversions that occur within 1 day of ad click. This has no impact on Gamesight's attribution windows or built-in reporting.

Note that in all cases, Gamesight's attribution will be unaffected by these changes and will continue to send all Goals and conversion events to your Meta Pixel. The only limitation will be restrictions on how those events are used for optimization in the Facebook Ads platform for certain types of campaigns.

Troubleshooting

In the table below, we go over some common questions surrounding Facebook campaigns, performance, etc.

IssueResolution
Campaigns report showing discrepancies in install/click volume/performance.Hovering over the "Clicks" number for each Facebook campaign will show you the number of clicks recorded by Gamesight versus the number reported by Facebook. The Gamesight number should be larger than Facebook (FB filters traffic that we do not).
Campaign shows few or 0 clicks from Gamesight.Double check that the Gamesight tracking link is set up in the Facebook campaign as the Destination URL.
Campaign name in Gamesight's reporting dashboard appears as {{campaign.name}}This is a result of Facebook's ad server (bots) checking the link automatically. Once you begin trafficking your ads and real/legitimate traffic is generated, macros will be replaced with your actual campaign names.
Attribution testing triggered the Install goal, but there is no activity on the Meta Pixel.Postbacks to Facebook will only work for real/legitimate Facebook ads traffic. Once you begin trafficking your ads, installs will begin to post back to Facebook.
Meta Pixel Error in Facebook Ads dashboard (external_ID parameter warning)The external_ID warning can be safely ignored. Gamesight provides an extra ID in the event that the Web SDK is integrated which causes this warning.
Facebook Ads Manager is not showing the same activity in Facebook Event ManagerThis can be resolved by setting up a Custom Conversion Event in Facebook.