Google phasing out third-party cookies, the iOS17 and the other data privacy updates are making it difficult to collect user data for marketing and advertising. These data privacy updates caused loss in data that Meta’s pixel collects and syncs with its Ad platform (signal loss). This resulted in a dip in the Facebook’s Event Match Quality or the EMQ score. Read on to improve your event match quality.
Facebook recommends marketers to increase their event match quality to increase their ad campaign performance. Even when the EMQ is good, few marketers do not see improvement in the ad campaign performance. Let’s delve in and find out the reasons for poor EMQ, how to improve the event match quality, tools and technologies needed, and best practices.
Why Does FB EMQ Drop To Poor / Ok?
Meta calculates EMQ (Event Match Quality) in a very simple way –
The data you send is matched with the event instances to a Meta account within its database.
So, when you do not send enough parameters, Facebook will not be able to match them to any account in its database. This results in a poor / ok Event Match Quality.
There is also another instance wherein you might have a low EMQ because you are sending more parameters. Check why your EMQ is low and take necessary actions to safeguard your ad performance. Read on to understand both the scenarios in detail.
Why Does Facebook Event Match Quality Matter?
Poor event match quality signifies that the event you synced is not matching any account in the Meta’s database. And great event match quality means Meta is able to match your data to the accounts in its account center. Event is nothing but the action a user takes on the website – page view, or a product view, or purchase.
When you send broken event data (signals) to Meta, it results in a poor event match quality.
In the first scenario where your event match quality is poor due to insufficient parameters,
With poor event match quality on Facebook, even if you increase your ad budget, the ad campaign performance does not boost proportionally. It is because Facebook is not able to find the required target audience limiting the scalability of your ad campaigns.
Meta has multiple times iterated –
To improve the ad campaign performance, you need to have a better EMQ score, which is Good/Great.
When the event match quality is great, it means Facebook is able to match the accounts in its Meta Accounts Center. Once Meta identifies the user, it will show the right ad to the right person who performed a specific action on your website. When this happens, personalization kicks in and boosts the ad campaign performance giving you better ROAS.
Now, in the second scenario,
Even when you have the low event match quality due to you sending more parameters to Meta, your ad campaign performance does not drop. It instead boosts your campaigns as the ad algorithms have better signals about your audience. Having signal resilience in place will always help the algorithms with complete picture about your audience and boosts your ad campaign performance.
What Factors Play In Improving EMQ?
There are multiple tools that help you improve EMQ. All these tools drill down only to one thing – “giving better signals without any loss to Meta”. Below are the 4 factors that play a crucial role in improving your event match quality or the EMQ score.
1. First-party Data
Sending high-quality first-party data, especially the known information is what improves the event match quality because Facebook is able to match that data accurately with the users. That is because you give data that Facebook is able to match. Having said that, the more parameters you send, the better. First-party data is not just known user information. It also consists of unknown users* for whom you do not have name, email address, and phone number.
2. The Basic Pixel
Meta’s pixel is the first and foremost tool that sends signals from the browser side to Meta Ads. This helps in getting the complete customer journey and information. However, due to the data privacy updates that happened, the effectiveness of Pixel dipped down.
3. Advanced Matching
Meta’s pixel has an option to enable advanced matching inside the events manager. It offers two methods of advanced matching: a) automatic advanced matching; b) manual advanced matching. Meta recommends manual advanced matching for better matching.
4. Conversions API
Meta’s Conversions API (CAPI) is one of the best tools that any marketer will use for sure without any second thoughts. FB CAPI gives better data amidst the ongoing data privacy updates. It is because Conversions API works on the server-side promoting user data privacy.
*For anonymous website visitors, who do not share their name, email address, phone number, etc., tools like CustomerLabs CDP will help you collect various parameters such as fbc, fbp, external IDs, etc., that helps Meta with more parameters allowing it to match them with the users in its database. Sending these parameters help you activate anonymous website visitors on Meta Ads.
How To Check EMQ Score?
To check your current event match quality, navigate to Meta’s event manager by clicking on all tools > events manager and check the score beside every event. That gives the event match quality for every event. EMQ score is shown on a scale of 10 or as a rating – Poor, Ok, Good, Great. Meta says, “have an event match quality of at least 6”.
If you click on the rating, it gives you a clear detailed review of why your event match quality has a certain rating and suggestions as to how you can improve it. Below is the example of how the event match quality is calculated by Meta and the suggestions it gives:
The event match quality is calculated cumulatively for the entire data you send. For example, let us assume that you have sent the event data of 100 known website visitors with the parameters only email address, name, and phone number. Facebook is also able to match that with the accounts in its ad center. It shows an event match quality of around 5/10.
Now, let’s say, you sent data of 500 website visitors wherein 100 are known website visitors and you sent parameters beyond name, email address and phone number. For a few users, especially the known users Meta will be able to match the name email address and phone number. You cannot send other parameters directly as there is difficulty in collecting the data.
Whereas, for unknown website visitors, Meta will not be having name, email address and phone number and when you send more parameters than Facebook can take, it will give you a low event match quality score.
That does not mean your ad campaign performance drops. So, low event match quality is because of two reasons. For the second reason, you need not worry but when it is due to you not using Conversions API and not sending more parameters, you have to worry and try to improve your EMQ score.
How to Improve EMQ score?
To improve your EMQ on Meta, you need to pass on valid parameters of the user to Meta for it to match that data to any of the Meta accounts in its account center. There are a certain parameters that carry a greater priority and help you increase your EMQ.
Below is the updated table that shows the order of priority Meta recently released.
| First Party User Parameter | Priority given by Meta to determine Event Match Quality (EMQ) |
|---|---|
| Email address | High |
| Click ID | High |
| Facebook Login ID | Medium |
| Birthdate | Medium |
| Country | Medium |
| Phone number | Medium |
| External ID ( a unique ID from the advertiser) | Medium |
| Browser ID | Medium |
| Lead | Low |
| First name | Low |
| Last name | Low |
| City | Low |
| Zip or Postal Code | Low |
The following order was considered by Meta previously. Above is the updated priority.
As Meta suggests, the highest priority to match any account is the hashed email followed by client IP address / user agent, and hashed phone number.
Other hashed contact information, Facebook login ID, and external ID are of medium priority. Browser ID, Click ID, Lead ID, and Subscription ID are the least priority parameters.
Now, for this to happen, and improve your event match quality, you need to have all the crucial factors –
- First-party data with behavioral data,
- The Meta’s pixel with advanced matching, and
- Conversions API.
This robust setup will improve your event match quality and help you enhance your ad campaign performance by reaching the right target audience.
How CustomerLabs CDP Helps You Improve Event Match Quality:
CustomerLabs CDP helps you collect data from multiple sources – your website, CRM, your offline store and any other data warehouse you have, unifies all that data into one single profile with all the behavioral data of that user across your website and multiple touch points.
Segment the audience as per your marketing strategy – product viewed twice, page viewed, added to cart but did not purchase in the last 60 days, viewed the product more than 3 times but did not purchase in the last 45 days, etc.
Send this event data to Meta directly with a single toggle on.
The data sent via an API call using CustomerLabs sync numerous parameters that helps Meta match with real user profiles. With more parameters Meta will be able to target more audience even with the least of the least prioritized parameters such as browser ID.
More parameters and data will train the ad algorithms to target the high-intent audience and boost the ad campaign performance to get the desired results.
Best Practices To Improve Your Event Match Quality (EMQ score)
Pixel + Advanced Matching + CAPI
To get a better event match quality, you need to send as many events with more parameters. The ideal integration to improve the event match quality is – pixel with Manual Advanced Matching + Conversions API.
Conversions API
When you send the event details through pixel and Conversions API, the event data loss is mitigated. The signal loss is mitigated using proper Conversions API setup.
Connect More Pixels
Connect more than one pixel to improve the event match quality. Optimize the ad campaigns with data collected using more pixels and sync more events.
Monitor Continuously
Conversions API is not a set-it and leave it. Monitor it continuously to ensure the setup is proper and all the event data is synced into the Meta Ad platform.
Conclusion
In conclusion, have a robust setup to increase the EMQ score or the event match quality in Facebook. The setup includes proper pixel setup with manual advanced matching turned on and Conversions API to give Facebook the complete picture of the user through the events. CustomerLabs helps you improve your event match quality and boost your ad campaign performance with the help of first-party data. So, what are you waiting for? Get your event match quality to at least 6 and more by sending more data effectively to Meta’s ad platform.
