Facebook's Pixel Helper Tool

The Value of Facebook Pixel Helper

The Facebook Pixel is an extremely powerful tool that brands can use to build remarketing audiences and seed audiences for lookalikes. It also enables the ability to leverage Dynamic Ads. It is important to QA pixel setup so that these tools work properly when running ads on the Facebook platform, and Pixel Helper allows brands and agencies to do just that.

Setup

1. Install Facebook Pixel Helper Chrome Extension for Google Chrome.

2. Ensure extension is visible in Chrome toolbar. It will appear gray until you go to a website that has a Facebook pixel on it-at that point it will turn blue and become clickable to open up the box below.

Using the Tool to QA Pixel Setup

First, make sure the Pixel ID matches the pixel attached to your ad account.

There are a few standard events that should be placed in specific places. The full list is called out here, but a few key ones are listed below. The name of the event with a green circle next to it confirms that the event fired correctly.

1. PageView: Fire on all pages.

2. ViewContent: Fire on product pages, as it’s the event that allows us to pull in content_id for dynamic product ads.

3. AddtoCart: Fire on the click to add a product to cart. Similar to ViewContent, this should include product information such as content_id.

4. Purchase: Fire on order confirmation page.

A yellow or red triangle indicates errors. A few typical errors and what they mean are below:

1. Pixel Did Not Load:

• This error means that the Pixel Helper found what looks to be Facebook pixel code on your site, but the actual HTTP call was never made.
• This could typically be due to an error in the code, but could also occur if the pixel fires on a dynamic event (e.g. on a button click).
• In that case, the error will disappear upon clicking on the button.

2. Encoded Characters:

• This error means that the Pixel Helper found what looks to be double-encoded characters.
• This could typically be due to a tag or CMS system encoding already encoded information. For example, encoding & into &. Please confirm that characters are not being encoded twice, for example, try changing & to &.

3. Not a Standard Event:

• This warning means that the Pixel Helper found an event that is not one of the Standard Events.
• For example, the event is named Purchased instead of Purchase. Please use one of the standard events.

4. Pixel Activated Multiple Times:

• This error means that a pixel with the same ID and event name was sent multiple times to Facebook.
• This is typically an error. The same event should only occur once upon page loading.
• If it is sent with different custom data parameters, those parameters should be aggregated into a single pixel event.

5. Invalid Pixel ID:

• This error means that the sent ID for the pixel did not match a known pixel ID in our system. Sign into your Ads Manager and go the Events Manager to find your pixel's ID.

6. Can Not Find Product Catalog:

• The Product Catalog ID which was passed in the field product_catalog_id in the pixel fire could not be found on our system.
• You can find your Product Catalog ID in Business Manager under Settings > Product Catalogs.
• Alternatively to associate a Product Catalog to a pixel follow the steps below.

For details and more troubleshooting recommendations visit Faebook’s help page.