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. [tip]Don’t have a Littledata account yet? Sign up here for a free 30-day trial on us![/tip] 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. [subscribe]

One of the biggest marketing areas hit by iOS14 updates, and tracking prevention in general, is social ads. As Meta’s main moneymaker, the company of course wasn’t going to stand by and have their best feature for brands become unusable. Enter Facebook's Conversions API (CAPI), a solution that complies with new tracking and privacy laws by letting Facebook and Instagram Ads users share customer actions from the servers directly to Facebook. Facebook Ads via Conversions API work alongside Facebook Pixel to help you improve the performance, measurement, and data collection of your campaigns for Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads. But Facebook CAPI isn’t a replacement for Facebook Pixel. Instead, it’s an enhancement that enables deeper first-party data to help you understand performance in more detail and run more effective ads. Using Littledata to set up CAPI on your store makes this data more accurate and reliable so that your campaigns reach the right shoppers at the right time. When using Littledata and Facebook CAPI together, you can: Automatically improve Event Match Quality Score Run dynamic product ads based on accurate shopping data Make revenue data in Shopify match revenue data in Facebook In this post, we’ll share six reasons why you need to add this powerful advertising tool to your toolbelt ASAP. Why use Facebook CAPI? 1. Facebook CAPI solves for VPNs and ad blockers Originally, Facebook Pixel provided us with all the information we needed to build powerful audiences for our ads. Then, VPNs, ad blockers, and other privacy software began causing some discrepancies in the data. This is where the Facebook Conversions API came in. Facebook CAPI sends events “server-side” instead of “client-side” through the third-party browser a customer is using to access your site. That means they aren’t interrupted by the web browsing and privacy trends mentioned above. Even better, you can share almost 100% of purchases from your store with Facebook via CAPI. [tip]Learn how to use Facebook CAPI to run dynamic Facebook ads and target your top buyers.[/tip] 2. Facebook CAPI is iOS14-friendly With iOS 14 privacy changes, we’re not just dealing with discrepancies in the data, but gaps. Those gaps negatively impact Facebook ad targeting because iOS 14 limits what data advertisers can collect through client-side (pixel) tracking and allows users to turn tracking off entirely through app tracking transparency (ATT). Facebook CAPI sends user data directly from your server (not the user’s device) to Facebook instead of relying on the cookie and browser data the Facebook Pixel collects. Even if the customer has opted out of marketing cookies — meaning the purchase cannot be attributed via Facebook’s Pixel ID — Facebook CAPI can send some extra user identifiers like email address, physical address, and phone number. These give Facebook a better chance of linking the purchase to a user, and from there to the ad the user clicked on. We’ll talk more about user data below. 3. Facebook CAPI captures important lower-funnel activity Facebook CAPI allows you to send more than just website behavior to Facebook. Not all server-side events happen and/or are recorded directly on your site. They may happen on your app, a free tool, a third-party payment tool, a support hub, or offline (like through phone calls). If you record this data in your CRM, you can send additional data to Facebook through Facebook CAPI. Events in payment and shopping cart tools are often lower-funnel, making them particularly important to track. 4. Facebook CAPI will be necessary when cookies are gone Perhaps most importantly, when third-party cookies are gone, Conversions API will be our only source for conversion tracking and ad performance data. Google has already announced the phase-out of third-party cookies, and as the market leader, every other service using them will almost surely follow suit. Enabling Facebook CAPI on your store now protects the accuracy of your data, even after third-party cookies have been thrown out. 5. Get a complete picture of your conversion data Facebook Conversions API helps you to see information that the Facebook Pixel can’t see as a result of ad blockers, iOS 14, ATT, and cookies. This includes website events, offline events, and ad CRM data. On the other hand, Facebook Pixel helps you to see information that Facebook CAPI can’t, such as demographic, psychographic, and other behavioral data from around the web. That’s how they work together and why each covers gaps the other has. 6. Get more out of your budget With both Facebook Pixel and Facebook CAPI working together to give you the most accurate data possible, you can: Understand exactly who is interacting with your ads Better understand the customer journey Build strong audiences and generate leads on Facebook, even with iOS 14 Make data-driven optimizations and allocate the budget accordingly Now that you know why you need Facebook CAPI, it's time to get it set up on your store. Get in touch with our data experts and they’ll help you set it Facebook CAPI, show you how to track events, and ensure you get accurate data on your ads in the new age of first-party data. [subscribe]