Targeted ads have become essential for modern brands who want to find buyers in their niche and attract them with unique, engaging messaging.

There’s a wide range of content and delivery formats you can try, too. Video ads, carousel ads, dynamic product ads, user-generated content—the sky is the limit on how creative brands can leverage social ads to drive reach, conversions, and revenue. Just check out Facebook’s Ad Libary to see what we mean.  

But, due to many well-documented changes to third-party data, users of these ads have had to adapt to a new digital landscape and adjust the way they collect buyer data.

In this guide, we will walk you through how to set up a Meta Facebook Manager Account and create ads using Meta’s new first-party data solution—the Facebook Conversions API.

Follow these simple steps below and you’ll be ready to start tracking customer behavior and put that data to work for your Shopify store.

How to set up Meta Facebook Ad Manager

Step 1: Create your Meta Business Account

Head over to Meta’s Business Suite and set up your account by clicking “create account” if you have not already done so using your Facebook login. This will allow you to request and manage page permissions to create a Facebook Ad Account. You will need to have permission to the page to connect your store to Facebook Ads Manager. 

Step 2: Connect a Facebook Ads account to your Meta Business Account

Now that you’ve connected your business page from the dashboard, you can add, request access to, or create an ad account. This is where you’ll create ads for your business, monitor spending, and execute your overall ads strategy.

Step 3: Add Google Analytics to your Shopify store

Next, you’ll need to set up reporting to see the effectiveness of your ads. There are a couple of ways to add Google Analytics to your Shopify store, but we’ll be sharing a solution here that both works for store owners of any expertise level and is one of the fastest—using the Littledata Shopify to GA connection.

Setup for using Littledata’s Shopify to Google Analytics is as easy as signing up, installing the app from the Shopify app store, and following the self-serve onboarding flow to add Littledata’s tracking script to your store. We have a complete detailed guide you can follow as well.

Once you’ve connected, you will be able to see the following applicable events in your Facebook Ad Manager Account: 

Great job! You are on your way to starting to run your ads based on accurate data from your Shopify store. Next, we’ll set up the Conversions API to run those powerful dynamic ads.

How to set up Facebook’s Conversions API on your Shopify store

Once you’re set up in Ad Manager, have Littledata installed, and have your reporting ready in Google Analytics, adding the Conversions API only takes a few steps.

First, you’ll add the connection from the Littledata dashboard and approve the change to your plan. CAPI uses a combination of client-side and server-side tracking to increase event match quality and Facebook Pixel attribution, so the next step is to enter your Facebook Pixel ID into the app.

Finally, in your Business Manager account under the Events Manager section, you’ll generate an access token to include with your Pixel ID and finalize the connection.

And voila! You’re ready to start running dynamic ads and reach your ideal customers using Facebook CAPI.

Conclusion

Social ads might be changing in our new cookie-less world, but by leveraging the power of server-side tracking and first-party data through tools like Facebook’s Conversions API, you can still gain crucial insights about your audience and create ads that will delight them.

Now that you know how to get your Meta Business Manager and Facebook Ads accounts up and running, plus how to set up the new Facebook Conversions API, the only next step is to make sure you have the best possible reporting for your data so you can make decisions based on a single source of truth.

Try Littledata free for 30 days to see the difference it makes having a truly accurate data layer for your store, plus access to connections that help you manage subscriptions, paid ads, headless setups, and more.