Troubleshooting Facebook Ad Tracking

What to do if you have setup Facebook Ad Tracking with Wicked Reports and you think there might be an issue.

This document is for anyone that has followed the steps to setup Facebook ad tracking with Wicked Reports and feels there are some tracking issues. 

The Facebook & Wicked Reports tracking troubleshooting has 7 possible issues to focus on:

1. WickedIDs put on your ad links
2. Verification that the WickedID makes it to a landing page with our tracking script installed
3. Verification that all optin and order form technology has our tracking script installed
4. ROI Report data that seems to indicate an issue
5. The Variance between Facebook & Wicked Reports conversions and ROI
6. Rare occasional error messages from Facebook
7. Source system conversion data integration interruption

Click above to jump to the section that is relevant for you.  Remember, in a nutshell, if a click with a WickedID hits a page with our tracking script installed, and the tracking script is also on optin and order forms, we generally track everything without issue.  If you are at this page, something in that "happy path of tracking and attribution" has been disrupted and can be fixed.

WickedIDs put on your ad links

Wicked Reports automatically tags your Facebook Ads with a WickedID if you have chosen to use "auto-tagging" with your Facebook integration. Over 90% of our customers use auto-tagging.  To double-check your auto-tagging:

• Click on Tracking Tools => Facebook Ad Tracking
• You should see a list of all your ads, and that they are all successfully updated with
  WickedSource and WickedID.
• It is possible that for some live ads the Website URL will not be visible but the tagging would have been done correctly. The reason for this is that url is located on the post page from which the AD was created and our access token does not have permission to read the content of the post page via API.
• If there are ads with errors, you can filter to just view those ads so that they can be corrected

WickedID Error Messages

• "Request aborted. This could happen if a dependent request failed or the entire request timed out."
  
  Next steps:
  
  • Make sure there are no other errors related to this campaign
  • If this is the only error related to this ad, then follow these instructions to manually add your WickedID to the Facebook ad
  • If there are other errors related to this ad, correct those issues first, then follow these instructions manually add your WickedID to the ad.
• "The AxB crop key will no longer be available in the newest Ads API version. The recommended crop key will be 100x100"
  
  Next steps:
  
  • Follow these instructions to manually add your WickedID to the ad

• • Then, follow these instructions by Facebook to crop your image
    You do not need to fix the crop in order for the manual placement of your WickedID to work. However, it may be best to crop the image now to avoid having this error come up in the future. If you create a new ad with the same crop issue, you will have the same issue of being unable to automatically deploy your WickedID onto the ad.

Other Common Reasons for Ads To Fail the Auto-Tagging Update Process

• The user account that integrated with Facebook with Wicked Reports does not have Admin access on the ad account.  The error will read something like "Managing advertisements requires an access token with the extended permissions for ads_management". 
• Your Ad account does not have a proper connection to Instagram, but the ad is set to show on Instagram

Fix account access issues and then come back and run the auto-tagger.

Verification that the WickedID makes it to a landing page with our tracking script installed

The vast majority of Facebook ad URLs will go directly to the page indicated in the Facebook URL field.  When our tracking code is installed on that URL, and any forms that might appear during the visitor's session, Wicked tracks just fine.

There is often a lot of cutting edge marketing technology being used in your marketing funnel.  So please make sure the following "gotchas" are not occurring with your link:

1. Link Shortener URLs in your ad copy or URL field.
   
   Make sure that you append the text “?WickedSource=Facebook&WickedID={{ad.id}}” to the link and that the link passes the parameters through to  a page with our tracking script.
2. Link redirects
   1. Your links can redirect all they want, they just have to preserve and pass the WickedID to a page with our tracking script when all the redirection is completed. 
   2. If you are using link redirects, test this out by adding “?utm_source=quick-test” to the end of your redirecting link. 
   3. When redirection is complete, the website address box in your browser should still have “?utm_source=quick-test”, else you need to adjust your redirect settings to allow pass-through parameters (most popular redirect services have this option).
3. Boosted Posts - they track, if you read and follow this: https://help.wickedreports.com/tracking-facebook-boosted-posts
4. ManyChat / messenger ads - they might track, if you do either of these strategies:
   1. https://help.wickedreports.com/tracking-facebook-messenger-ads-to-manychat-bots-to-external-website-urls
   2. https://help.wickedreports.com/tracking-facebook-ads-to-manychat-bots-that-capture-email-addresses
5. Facebook Ads to "Like Your Page" are not tracked

Once you can say "none of that is happening", you can verify your tracking using the Tracking Code Validator.  

Paste in the URL, test the tracking you need to test, and wait for a "Passed!" confirmation:

For a deeper dive into installing the tracking code, in the event you need further info: https://help.wickedreports.com/complete-guide-to-installing-and-testing-the-wicked-reports-tracking-code

Verification that all optin and order form technology has our tracking script installed

If you have verified tracking but it seems like leads or sales seem way off, or you can't seem to track any, it is likely that you have some sort of optin form, lead capture, or sales form process that is not being tracked.  You can test this out:

Go to the Tracking Validation tool

Choose either Optin or Sales Tracking.  Make sure to use testing@wickedreports.com as the email address.

Run the test, optin with that email, come back and stop test - should receive "Passed".

If you do not, review the Wicked Reports Tracking Code troubleshooting.

ROI Report data that seems to indicate an issue

• I see $0 in costs but also leads or sales
  • This could be a good thing - there are sales happening from Facebook leads that were acquired earlier than the start date of the ROI report.
  • Verify that you did not actually spend on this campaign within Facebook ad manager during the report time period.
  • Custom UTMs on ad links within the Facebook ad copy that are not in sync with the campaign, adset, or ad can throw off click tracking to ad costs - do you have those?

• I don't see costs on any campaign
  • Verify that Facebook is integrated.
  • Verify your permissions with your Facebook ad account.
  • Verify costs per campaign in the Facebook Ad manager for the report's time period.
• My costs don't match the costs in Facebook Ad manager
  • If you changed the campaign, adset, or ad name during the time period, this can cause costs to aggregate to different names than what Ad Manager says.
  • Occasionally, Facebook updates costs up to a week after they first report them.  This can cause a very small variance of a few dollars.  If the number seems large, enter a support ticket - we can re-pull the ad costs to sync them back up.  This is rare but does happen on occasion.
  • Seeing your margins match after a two day delay?
    • Facebook has a known delay with their API that impacts any 3rd-party integrator, Wicked Reports included. When our software recognizes this delay, Wicked Reports requests the data, once again, after two days to catch any of these Facebook delays.
    • This is known to happen most frequently with international clients. However, it can occasionally happen to U.S based clients (if your Facebooks chosen one).
    • If you are being impacted by these delays, then we can change your daily processing time to 10am E. We have found that giving Facebook's API more time to process has fixed most delay issues. If you would like this solution, please email support@wickedreports.com informing our team that you would like your daily processing time changed to 10am ET to fix Facebook cost delays.

• I have costs but no leads or sales
  • Run the tracking page validator for that campaign under the Wicked Tools menu of that campaign's report row. Use the Optin tracking option first. If that passes, use the sales tracking option.
  • If tracking passes, Is Wicked tracking the lead or sales to different channels or campaigns? 
  • Check the date & time stamps on your leads and sales - are they accurate?

• I have leads but no sales
  • Check the multi-touch attribution models (Linear or Full Impact) for sales.
  • Look at the Predictive Behaviors report - how long do your leads take to buy?  Is the ROI report being run for a time period long enough for some of the leads to convert by now?
  • Run the tracking page validator for that campaign under the Wicked Tools menu of that campaign's report row.  Use the Sales Tracking option.

• I have leads and sales, but less than Facebook says
  • Read or watch this: https://help.wickedreports.com/wicked-conversions-do-not-match-facebook-or-google-conversions
• My Last Click ROI results show 0 in the FB Offline Conversion columns.
  • You need to integrate the Facebook Offline Conversion feature.
• My campaign, adset, or ad name is [Not set].
  • Wicked was able to detect a click that had the utm_source=Facebook, but it did not have a value for the UTM indicated "[Not Set]". This will not occur with Facebook Auto-Tagging turned on.  You need to go to the ROI details report, find the UTM combination that has the [Not Set] values, and update those incoming links to have all 5 UTM values (or use the auto-tagging feature!).

Variance between Facebook & Wicked Reports conversions and ROI

Wicked Reports conversion tracking will vary significantly from Facebook conversion tracking - that's the point!  However, we want you to be comfortable and confident with this variance.

We have a document specifically related to the differences (along with a video) here: https://help.wickedreports.com/wicked-conversions-do-not-match-facebook-or-google-conversions

The key factors:

1. Do you see conversions inside of Wicked Reports to different channels instead of Facebook?
2. If it's your 1st 30 days of Wicked Reports, Facebook is still grabbing conversion credit for the days prior to Wicked Reports tracking.
3. Can you validate and reconcile your orders to your conversions?  We can validate and prove our conversion journeys if you wish.

Rare occasional error messages from Facebook

• When you see this error message in your reports:
  It could mean some other Facebook application that has been authorized with the same User token might be exhausting the limit for the number of requests that can be made in an hour window to Facebook’s API. Subsequently, we can’t hold enough of this limit before getting into a throttling error. 
• Re-authorization error:  Wicked might email you, or you will see an alert across the top of your Wicked Reports, that there is a Facebook authorization error.  From time to time, Facebook makes users reconnect integrations for security reasons (this pains us, but it is what is is).  Simply go to Setup->Authorizations, and reconnect Facebook to Wicked Reports.  This will trigger any auto-tagging that has to be done on new ads since the disconnection, and then recalculation of your ROI reporting since the disconnection.

Source system conversion data integration interruption

If your CRM or Order system temporarily stops sending leads or orders, Wicked Reports will not be able to auto-detect those conversions for you.  You will have an alert at the top of Wicked Reports stating you need to reconnect those systems.

API users unsure of lead and sale conversion data can use the API Verification screen to confirm lead and/or order API data flow is occurring as expected.