When I presented at an event two weeks ago, I asked the audience—a group of serious spenders, agencies, and media buyers—if they were implementing comprehensive tracking.
Not a single person was.
This surprised me because these were the kinds of people who invest heavily in advertising and media.
The truth is, many business owners and media managers are juggling multiple responsibilities.
Writing ads, managing teams, and handling a myriad of other tasks often push comprehensive tracking down the priority list.
But if your business relies on media buying and lead generation, you can’t afford to ignore it.
Tracking may seem like something only the most “nerdy” marketers or web analytics managers would bother with.
However, many don’t realize how crucial it is for reducing your cost per acquisition (CPA).
The actual money you make from ad networks greatly depends on comprehensive tracking.
Given the significant costs involved in acquiring customers through ads, whether it’s SEO or paid traffic, precise tracking becomes imperative.
For those running paid ads, this is especially relevant. Every dollar spent needs to bring a tangible return.
Let’s say for argument’s sake, you’re getting a 30% discount, and that’s serious money.
While saving 30% on a $500 spend might not seem significant, for larger sums, the savings add up quickly.
Simply put, if you’re in the game, you need to do this.
Even those who run their own funnels rarely implement comprehensive tracking.
Many are preoccupied with what new technologies like OpenAI and ChatGPT can do, while neglecting the “101 stuff” that offers immediate benefits.
What does good tracking mean and why it matters?
Good tracking is sending as much data as possible to the ad networks, which usually means employing the following tech stack:
- Clientside tracking
- Server-side tracking
- Deduplication
Client-Side Tracking
Client-side tracking is essentially adding pixels to your website.
This could be the Facebook pixel, Google pixel, or using tools like Google Tag Manager (GTM) to manage multiple pixels efficiently.
If you’re unfamiliar with GTM, it allows you to streamline the addition and management of various tracking pixels.
Most traditional tracking methods rely on client-side technologies such as JavaScript.
However, these can be easily blocked by browser settings, ad blockers, or privacy-focused users. Which brings us to…
Server-Side Tracking
Server-side tracking, on the other hand, involves sending information directly from your server to the ad networks via an API call, instead of through the user’s browser.
This ensures that crucial data points, like user behavior and conversion events, are accurately recorded, even if JavaScript is disabled.
Deduplication
Deduplication is the process of ensuring that the ad network recognizes that the data from both client-side and server-side are from the same user.
Without deduplication, the system might count a single user twice—once from the client-side pixel and once from the server-side API call—leading to inflated visitor counts.
Effectively, deduplication removes these duplicates to provide a true picture of user interactions.
Why comprehensive data is crucial
Beyond just monitoring actions, good tracking involves differentiating between various types of conversions.
If you’re running an online business you probably want to know everything that’s happening in your sales funnel.
And some people are just not the right fit.
So we have our bad conversion versus our good conversion.
Maybe they’re from a location that doesn’t work for you, or they have a budget that’s too low. These are your non-qualified leads.
Unqualified leads could be fraudulent traffic or just non-ideal customers who are unlikely to result in sales.
You want to fire a different conversion event for them.
This way, you can separate the junk from the good conversions even if both reached the thank you page.
They’re not equal because one segment isn’t as qualified as the other.
Using Conversion Events to Weed Out Junk
Once you’ve identified junk leads, you can use these insights to filter your audience better.
Here’s how:
- Exclude Junk: When setting up your ad campaigns, you can exclude these junk leads by defining specific parameters like location or keywords.
- Save Money: This helps you avoid spending money on ads targeting people who won’t convert into valuable customers.
So, when building an exclusion for your audience, you would:
- Pick your source, pixel, or lead event.
- Define the parameters (e.g., content type contains “junk,” “bad,” or specific locations like “Nebraska” or “Texas”).
This exclusion helps you eliminate this group of people at the ad targeting level, saving you money.
High-quality tracking for Facebook (or any ad network) (the only one you NEED to master)
Mastering high-quality tracking isn’t just essential for Facebook; it applies to virtually every modern ad network.
While we’re using Facebook as an example due to its widespread usage, these principles are equally applicable to other platforms such as Pinterest, Snapchat, Google, and even Twitter.
All these networks offer server-side tracking capabilities, and understanding how to implement tracking effectively across different platforms can dramatically improve your ad performance.
When it comes to Facebook most people won’t even go the extra mile to track their view content properly.
But the more information you send back to your ad network, the better.
I shared an article about Facebook tracking, where someone struggled with deduplication.
And I looked at the setup, and the setup looked perfect.
Despite having a well-set-up system, the deduplication wasn’t working, and I couldn’t work out why.
The issue? They were only using fbclid and fbp but hadn’t included other important data fields like:
And I didn’t think it was that important.
In fact, the Facebook documentation does not tell you that these are mandatory in any way.
They just say, “Hey, these are extra things you can send. It’ll help us get a better match rate, but that’s it.
And that’s the only different thing.
Now, in my testing, I’ve never had a deduplication problem
But in my testing, I’m sending everything all the time, because I’m trying to test at the max level—not like just get away with the minimum.
So I was like, “You know what? It’s a long shot. Let me try it out. I don’t know.”
So I added all these in, and all of a sudden, deduplication works.
But not just that. As a result, now they have a 100% match rate. I have never seen anybody tell me they have a 100% match rate.
If you do this, you get a 100% match rate on Facebook, and therefore you get a massive benefit on the media buy side.
Facebook just starts sending you cheaper traffic, I guess, because it’s able to align—it’s got a better understanding of who your target customer is.
I know someone who tested this and got a 30% discount on their cost per lead (CPL).
Now, I’m not going to suggest by any means everybody’s going to get 30%. In his test, it was 30%.
Even if you only get a 10% reduction, that’s still significant. For a million-dollar spend, that’s $100,000 saved.
So, don’t cut corners with your tracking.
By sending comprehensive data, you’ll get better ad performance, save money, and scale your campaigns more effectively.
The challenge with Facebook CAPI tracking
Many tracking solutions out there will claim they provide server-side tracking, and technically, they’re not wrong.
They do offer some level of server-side tracking. However, there’s a critical distinction that often gets overlooked.
While most solutions cover the basics of server-side tracking, they usually fall short in passing the comprehensive data necessary for high match rates.
So everybody does this part:
And perhaps elements of this part:
Hardly anybody does this part here:
In fact, I’ve never seen anybody who does that.
Passing detailed data ensures higher match rates, which directly translates to better campaign performance.
And I can see why they don’t do it, due to two main reasons:
- Data Privacy Concerns: Sending detailed user data to a third-party tracking system involves significant privacy risks or outright violations, making many platforms hesitant.
- Technical Complexity: Hashing and converting data to lowercase, as required by platforms like Facebook, adds a layer of complexity. Many solutions avoid this due to the difficulty involved.
Another technical challenge in server-side tracking is dealing with incomplete data.
For example, if your funnel only collects an email without a phone number or first name, you need to adjust your tracking setup for each scenario.
This adds complexity and can become cumbersome.
Consider a scenario where you want to fire an event but don’t know the user’s city, state, or zip code.
You’d need to adjust your tracking setup accordingly.
This issue becomes more complex if you have different funnels or quizzes that collect varying sets of data.
LeadsHook offers a streamlined solution to handle incomplete data efficiently.
Here’s how it works:
Most LeadsHook users utilize built-in fields to manage missing information. Instead of requiring you to collect every piece of data manually, LeadsHook can automatically fill in gaps using geo data obtained from IP addresses.
Custom Fields for Geo Data:
- Country Code: Automatically collected if not provided by the user.
- Region/State Code: Similarly auto-filled based on IP data.
- City and Zip Code: Also derived from the IP address if not collected during the interaction.
This approach ensures that irrespective of the data you collect directly, you always have a complete set of information to send to your server-side tracking endpoint.
High-Quality Tracking for Google
Most Google conversion tracking relies on parameters like gclid and wbraid.
Enhanced conversions, however, don’t use these tracking IDs. Instead, they try to match users based on first name, last name, email, and phone number.
Because almost everyone has a Google account, it tries to find a match using the other data that it has.
It’s a non-tracking ID version of tracking, so it’s able to find more people than you would otherwise.
Using enhanced conversions can give you a 20-30% discount on your acquisition costs. It’s definitely worth the effort to set it up.
A lot of people don’t use it because, as you can see, it’s a bit of a hassle to set up.
But here’s the good news: if you’re using LeadsHook—or hopefully you are—setting this up becomes super easy.
Just click that “Add Google Conversion” button and fill out the details we provide, like name, email, and phone number.
Cross-Platform Audience Commonality
Another reason I’m a big fan of turning on all these additional ad networks is the commonality between audiences across platforms.
Take Facebook, for example. Only about 6% of people use just Facebook.
However, 71% of those Facebook users are also on YouTube, 76% on Instagram, and so on.
So if you use your Facebook data to populate your audiences on Google, TikTok, Microsoft, and Twitter, your audiences are already built for you.
You’re essentially using your Facebook ad spend to find audiences across other networks, from TikTok to Pinterest and beyond.
Turn On Data Sharing Across Networks
Even if today you have no desire or decision to want to run traffic elsewhere, so let’s say you’re only a TikTok guy, well, you know what?
It’s smart to send your data to Facebook, Google Analytics, Microsoft, and Twitter.
We’re continuously adding more integrations, so your pre-built audiences will be ready when you decide to expand.
Tracking ROI
Let’s talk about the big question: what’s the return on investment (ROI) when it comes to tracking?
In simple terms, good tracking lets you optimize your campaigns much faster because it feeds all the necessary data to the machines (like your ad platforms).
This means you can scale your campaigns quickly—from spending $10 to potentially a million dollars per day.
That’s the kind of numbers we’ve seen inside LeadsHook.
We’ve seen clients scale massively because they know their cash flow numbers and can catch fraud and fake traffic early.
This allows them to send different conversion events for these junk leads, ensuring they don’t waste money.
Horizontal Scaling and Audience Insights
Good tracking also helps you find more niches by giving you a better understanding of your audience.
You’ll know the answers they’re providing, which lets you scale horizontally.
With every interaction being tracked, you can pinpoint exactly where you’re failing.
This level of detail helps you adjust your strategies and improve your campaigns effectively.
The Cost of Not Tracking Properly
So, what’s the cost if you don’t track properly?
You might kill campaigns prematurely because the tracking data required by Facebook, Google, and other platforms wasn’t there.
This means these platforms couldn’t find the right audiences for you.
Imagine how many opportunities you missed due to slow or inadequate tracking.
And this is the main part here: tracking is the only part of your marketing that you know works before spending a single dollar on traffic.
You can test both client-side and server-side setups to ensure everything is working perfectly.
Any new ad you create can’t be guaranteed to work.
Experience and past performance improve your odds, but it’s never 100%.
However, tracking is something you can be certain about, so why take unnecessary risks by not setting it up properly before launching your campaign?
Case Study: High ROI from Proper Tracking
Here’s a case study to illustrate the point.
On a $4 million ad spend, a client used both client-side and server-side tracking, plus deduplication and enhanced tracking (for Google and Facebook campaigns).
This improved performance by about 6.5%. Which on a 4 mill spend is $300.000—equivalent to the cost of one and a half Ferraris!
In conclusion, good tracking means more than just knowing who visited your site; it means understanding the quality of those visits and making informed decisions based on comprehensive, accurate data.
If all of this feels overwhelming, I completely understand.
Comprehensive tracking can seem like a labyrinth of pixels, APIs, and data de-duplication.
But let me assure you, mastering these tracking methods is not just a technical necessity; it’s an essential strategy for maximizing your return on investment.
Imagine you’re negotiating not just with potential clients but with the very platforms you advertise on.
Each piece of data you track is like a valuable piece of intel you can use to refine your strategy, just as you would in any negotiation. When you know exactly where your money is going and what is delivering results, you’re no longer guessing—you’re making informed, strategic decisions.
Now, if this still feels like too much to wrap your head around, I suggest you take a step back and explore our full course on tracking.
This course is designed to break down these complex concepts into manageable, actionable steps.
Remember, knowledge is your most powerful tool—whether in negotiation or advertising. Equip yourself with the right tools and insights to achieve the best outcomes.
