Differences between Facebook Attribution and Ads Manager

With Ads Manager, you can view and analyse ad performance for your campaigns across Facebook's family of apps and services. With Facebook Attribution, you can measure conversion performance for your ads on Facebook's family of apps and services, as well as across different publishers you've added. If you notice differences in your Facebook Attribution reporting and your Ads Manager reporting, we recommend that you first check your default settings:

• Date ranges: Check that your reporting period in Facebook Attribution is the same as your date range in Ads Manager.
• Attribution windows: Check that you've selected the same attribution window in both Facebook Attribution and Ads Manager. Ads Manager only offers three attribution windows, while Facebook Attribution offers more options.
• Attribution models: Check which attribution model you're using in Facebook Attribution. Bear in mind that Ads Manager uses a last-touch attribution model.
• Conversion events: In Facebook Attribution, you can select which conversion event you'd like to measure in your attribution reporting. Check that this conversion matches the conversion event displayed in the Results column in Ads Manager.

In addition to differences in your settings, there are other potential reasons why Facebook Attribution reporting may differ from Ads Manager reporting:

• Non-Facebook touchpoints: Facebook Attribution takes into account paid, organic and direct touchpoints, in addition to Facebook-only touchpoints considered by Ads Manager. Learn more about paid, organic and direct touchpoints in Facebook Attribution.
• Multiple ad accounts: Facebook Attribution uses lines of business, which may include multiple ad accounts. Ads Manager only considers one ad account at a time.
• Conversions across multiple sources: Facebook Attribution reports conversions that happened on websites and apps, as well as conversions based on offline data you provide. Your attribution reporting includes data from multiple sources, combining your event data from the Facebook pixels, apps and offline event sets included in your line of business. If you optimise for conversions in Ads Manager, you'll have to select a single data source and conversion event from that source for reporting.

Bear in mind that Facebook Attribution and Ads Manager measure conversion performance for your ads in slightly different ways. In Ads Manager, clicks or conversions are reported based on the time that the associated click or impression occurred. By default, conversions in Facebook Attribution are reported based on the time that the conversion itself occurred. For example, let's say that an impression on your ad occurred on 15 January and the resulting conversion occurred on 30 January. If you were to view your Facebook Attribution reporting and your Ads Manager reporting for 15-20 January, Facebook Attribution would report one impression and zero conversions while Ads Manager would report one impression and one conversion.

Differences between Facebook Attribution and third-party measurement tools

You may be using other measurement tools in addition to Facebook Attribution, many of which have different approaches to reporting. It's possible that you may notice differences in how conversions are reported, or differences in how clicks or impressions are reported.

Differences in how conversions are reported

Facebook uses people-based measurement to help you better understand the steps people take leading up to a conversion after seeing an ad. This approach is different from other measurement tools that may measure ads based only on cookies or device advertising IDs. Cookie- or device-only measurement can lose its effectiveness when used alone to measure people, as they may miss different touchpoints in your conversion paths. Learn more about Facebook's people-based measurement.

For example, if someone first sees your ad while on a mobile device and later makes a purchase on a desktop computer, cookie- or device-only measurement may not be able to attribute this conversion to the initial interaction that this person had on mobile. With cookie- or device-only measurement, some of your conversions may be unattributed, or attributed only to a partial path, leading to a less accurate understanding of how your ads may be driving conversions and differences in reporting of your conversion performance.

Bear in mind that Facebook may be able to more accurately attribute conversions to impressions on Facebook, which other third-party measurement tools may not be able to capture. If someone sees a Facebook ad for your product but doesn't click on it, and then later navigates to your website before making a purchase, Facebook is able to attribute this conversion to the initial Facebook ad that they saw.

In addition, you may also want to check your default settings:

• When conversions are reported: By default, conversions in Facebook Attribution are reported based on the time that the conversion itself occurred, and not when their associated touchpoints occurred. Check that your third-party measurement tools are reporting conversions in the same way.
• Date ranges: Check that your reporting period in Facebook Attribution is the same as the date range (including time zones) being queried in your other measurement tools.
• Attribution models and windows: Facebook Attribution offers several different options for attribution models and windows that you can apply to your attribution reporting. Check that your measurement tools are using the same attribution models and windows.

Differences in how clicks and impressions are reported

If you've added third-party platforms to Facebook Attribution and applied click and impression tags to your off-Facebook media, you'll be able to get a more complete picture of how your ads are driving conversions across different publishers, channels and devices. We often expect differences in reporting between third-party measurement tools to occur as a result of differences in counting and delivery between various third-party platforms and ad servers. For example, different platforms have different ways of filtering out invalid clicks or impressions.

In addition, you may want to check that you've properly been able to add click and impression tags to all of your off-Facebook media. Bear in mind that some third-party platforms restrict tagging on certain placements. If you notice differences in reporting for your off-Facebook media on a specific advertising platform, it may be due to the fact that you were unable to apply all relevant click and impression tags. We recommend that you make sure to apply any tags that might have been missing. If you're unable to add these tags, try drilling down into your reporting for only the ads and media that have been tagged to see if the differences in reporting persist.