How to Track eCommerce Purchases on Facebook Ads

Understand the role of Facebook Ads in your eCommerce sales and overall marketing plan.

If you’re in eCommerce, you already know how important it is to stay on top of what’s selling and where those sales are coming from.

Facebook Ads is a popular tool for getting products in front of customers right in their feeds.

But when you’re juggling multiple marketing channels, figuring out exactly how Facebook fits into the mix can get confusing.

In this post, we’ll walk you through tracking eCommerce sales, specifically from Facebook, and show how it all ties into your overall marketing mix.

How to get started with tracking purchases on Facebook

Setting up tracking can feel like a chore—there are a few pieces to manage, but breaking it down makes it way easier.

So, whether you’re starting from scratch or just want to improve your current setup, we’ve got a simple walkthrough coming up to help you track Facebook’s impact on your ecommerce efforts without the usual headache.

💡 Important note

If you’ve already dipped your toes into Meta’s tracking options, you might be feeling a bit limited. With privacy updates like Apple’s App Tracking Transparency and Meta’s own attribution models, it’s tough to get a full picture of what’s really going on. But don’t worry—there are ways around these roadblocks. We’ll dig into alternative tracking methods throughout this guide.

1. Setup tracking pixel

Setting up the Meta Pixel is your first big step. The Meta Pixel is essentially a little code snippet that sits on your website.

Once installed, it starts placing cookies in visitors’ browsers, allowing you to track important actions they take on your site—things like viewing pages, adding items to their cart, or even making a purchase.

Beyond tracking, this data can power smarter, more targeted advertising campaigns.

Installing the Meta Pixel isn’t too hard, but there are a few steps involved:

In the left-side menu, click Connect data sources.
Choose Web and click Connect.
Give your Pixel a descriptive name and click Create pixel.
Enter your website URL to check for setup options, then click Check.

After creating your Pixel, you’ll need to install it on your site through the Meta Events

First, select your Pixel and click Continue Pixel Set Up.

Here, you can choose one of two options:

1. Manual Installation (requires adding the code yourself)

2. Partner Integration (uses a platform like WordPress or SquareSpace)

We’ll stick with the first option—manual installation—because it’s the most popular choice. If you want to learn more about partner integration, we’ve got a whole guide on Meta’s tracking that breaks it down for you.

Choose Install Code Manually.
Copy the Pixel’s base code.
Locate the header section of your website, or find the header template in your CMS.
Paste the Pixel base code right before the closing </head> tag in the header.
Click Continue.
You’ll have the option to enable Automatic Advanced Matching to verify and send customer data.
Click Continue.
relevant event code to your site.
Review your Pixel setup in the Pixel Overview section. If everything is working, click Done.

Before we dive into the next step, it’s important to highlight a few caveats about Meta’s Pixel:

It mostly tracks clicks, so if someone just views your ad but doesn’t click it, Meta might miss that conversion.
Meta does offer a one-day attribution window for ad views, but realistically, buying decisions often take more time.
With iOS privacy changes, Meta Pixel can’t track data from users who have opted out of tracking on their devices.
The Pixel focuses on activity from Meta ads specifically, which means you won’t get a full picture of the customer journey across other channels.

First-party click tracking helps get around these challenges by adding a cookie to the user’s browser.

Unlike Meta, which mainly tracks clicks and conversions on its own platform, tools like Ruler capture clicks from all kinds of channels.

Ruler pieces together full user journeys and gives a clearer view of how Meta fits into the bigger picture alongside everything else.

It can send attribution data directly to your CRM, giving a clear view of how much revenue Meta brings in, which makes it easier to calculate ROI and ROAS.

And here’s the best part—Ruler can send this valuable conversion data back to Meta.

This helps improve ad targeting and enhances Meta’s algorithm for better bidding, allowing you to optimise your ads based on real sales data instead of just clicks.

💡 Pro Tip

Ruler is an excellent tool for monitoring your leads, opportunities, and revenue generated from marketing activities. It provides valuable insights by tracking touchpoints and attributing revenue, enabling you to make more informed budget decisions. Book a demo to see firsthand how it works and the impact it can have on your business.

2. Determine what events to track

Once you’ve got the Facebook Pixel installed, you’re ready to start tracking events that really matter for your business.

If you’re running Facebook ads, one of the best things you can do is set up event tracking, especially for actions that lead to purchases.

Here’s a quick guide to some of the most common events to track:

Purchase – This one’s a no-brainer. You’ll want to know when someone buys something after clicking or seeing your ad. Tracking purchases is key to understanding how well your ads are actually performing.
Add to Cart – Tracking when users add items to their cart gives you insight into what’s catching their interest. Even if they don’t end up buying, it’s useful to know what products are pulling them in.
Initiate Checkout – Adding to the cart is great, but it’s not a done deal until they start checking out. Tracking checkout initiations shows you how close people are getting to a purchase, giving you a chance to address any last-minute obstacles that might prevent them from finishing the process.
View Content – If you want to know which specific products or pages visitors are interested in, tracking page views is essential. You’ll get a better idea of what’s popular and where people are spending time on your site.
Add Payment Info – For those who make it this far, they’re pretty close to completing a purchase. Tracking this event shows you which users are on the verge of buying, but maybe just need a little nudge or reminder to complete their order.
Complete Registration – Whether it’s signing up for an account or filling out a form, tracking registrations helps you identify those high-intent users who are interested enough to share their info with you.

If you’re using platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce, you can take things up a notch with Enhanced eCommerce tracking.

This feature gives you even more details, from individual product performance to revenue insights.

3. Enable Conversions API

We briefly mentioned this earlier.

The rollout of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature made tracking users through cookies and traditional browser-based methods a lot trickier for advertisers.

Meta responded with the Conversions API (CAPI).

Instead of tracking through the browser, the Conversions API allows brands to share purchase and behaviour data directly from their servers to Meta’s platform.

By sending data through HTTP requests to Meta’s servers, CAPI creates a more direct, cookie-free connection that helps marketers see key user actions like clicks and conversions—even with ATT limitations.

It’s highly recommended to use the Conversions API (CAPI) alongside Meta’s Pixel for improved data accuracy.

But, CAPI isn’t the saving grace of Meta measurement.

It has its own set of flaws.

Like the pixel, it’s focused on showing how Meta’s platform impacts results.

It doesn’t provide insights into other channels or campaigns outside of its own ecosystem

And lets not forget the limited attribution window—one day for views and seven days for clicks.

Any actions outside of this timeframe are missed, limiting your understanding of long-term customer journeys.

Tools that give you a big-picture view of all your channels work better.

When cookies and regular tracking methods don’t cut it, impression attribution comes in handy by showing how each channel—even the top-of-funnel ones—helps drive conversions and revenue.

Ruler uses machine learning with advanced models like Bayesian stats and Shapley regression to link real impressions to actual conversions—offering insights beyond what pixel tracking or CAPI can deliver.

You can track the impact of individual campaigns and channels on purchases and revenue, or step back and get a big-picture view to see how everything works together, from top-of-funnel to conversion, to drive sales.

With Ruler’s insights report, for example, you can easily check how often tricky-to-track channels like LinkedIn and Instagram Paid show up in purchase paths and even see their average position.

These insights make it much simpler to confirm campaign impact, especially for upper-funnel efforts, and make budget calls based on solid data instead of guesswork.

💡 Pro Tip

Don’t forget, you can book a demo to see how Ruler’s click tracking and impression modeling come together to give you a clearer picture of what’s working (and what’s not).

Track insights in ads manager

Once you’ve set up your tracking and chosen the key events you want to monitor, don’t think you’re done.

This is where the real work starts.

Staying on top of what’s happening in your ads account is crucial. Meta makes it easy by letting you customise your reports with important purchase-related metrics like purchase conversion value, cost per purchase, and return on ad spend (ROAS).

One more thing to keep an eye on is ad frequency.

If your ads are showing up too often, it can lead to ad fatigue—people start tuning them out or even getting annoyed, which means a drop in performance.

Keeping that balance between visibility and overexposure can make all the difference in how your ads perform.

Need help tracking eCommerce purchases from Facebook?

Tracking purchases from Facebook ads can feel a bit daunting at first, but following this guide will make it way easier to get a solid read on your ad performance.

With the right tools, understanding how your campaigns are doing becomes a breeze.

Using Ruler’s first-party click tracking and impression modelling, you’ll get a clear picture of your customer journey. Its click tracking helps you see every touchpoint leading to purchases, like those Facebook clicks.

For trickier campaigns—like display or brand awareness ads where cookies and pixel tracking can’t always track impressions—Ruler’s impression modelling fills in the gaps.

With this setup, you’ll have all the insights you need to prove value and make smarter budget choices for consistent, reliable results.

Curious about how it all works together? Book a demo with us, and we’ll show you how Ruler can help you measure your purchases influenced from Facebook and beyond.