Picking up business with pixels

Facebook pixels take their name from an old tracking technology used in emails and web pages, which contained HTML code that downloaded a tiny single-pixel image from a remote site. By recording the IP address and other details of the requesting computer, the pixel server could keep track of who had opened the email or visited the target page.

Today, a Facebook “pixel” is actually a few lines of code that you insert into your own web pages; these capture contact information for visitors to your site, and link them together with interactions on your Facebook page (“events”).

CyberSmart’s CEO Jamie Akhtar and social specialist Frankie Baesa explained that, armed with this information, “Facebook can prepare reports on the impact of your advertising campaigns and other online content, and generate analytics and insights about people and their use of your apps, websites, products and services.”

This data can add a whole new level of intelligence to your promotions: “A popular audience product on Facebook is custom audiences,” said Akhtar and Baesa. “These are groups of Facebook users based on event data, which can be used to improve ad targeting and delivery optimisation.”

If you’re squeamish about using a tool like this, there are safeguards in place. “Facebook processes contact information solely to match it against Facebook user IDs, and to combine those user IDs with corresponding event data. Facebook claims it deletes contact information following the match process.”