The difference in clicks between Facebook Ads and Google Analytics is not a new issue, I’ve always heard that there were discrepancies between tools president and chief executive officer email list, but I never imagined it would be so much. I’ve been managing more than $ 30,000 in traffic campaigns in FB Ads for months and I’ve seen up to -70% of Analytics clicks on Facebook! Remember that we are talking about competing companies … will this have to do?
These numbers are chilling and could speak very badly of the Zuckerberg giant model, a model that is quite opaque in terms of how it works and how it gets its results. We have to keep in mind that both FB and GA have different “click attribution models” and therefore there is always going to be a discrepancy, but where is the limit?
In this article I analyze four points that may be the culprits of this excess difference between tools.
Errors when entering links with UTM
The first thing that we should review are the UTM links that we have in our campaigns, if we have chosen the FB Ads parameters option or if we are introducing the link in “URL of the website. common, especially if done manually. In my article how to include UTM parameters in Facebook Ads I explain step by step how to do it correctly
Do not look at the right metric
Facebook offers a lot of metrics in its reports. An example that we can find and that can lead us to confusion is: “clicks”. Far from thinking that it only offers us the clicks that our campaign has achieved, it will also show us those who have clicked on the icon (image) of the fanpage to access it, have displayed the ad, etc.
We can use “clicks on the link” to pick up those clicks on our link, but if for example the user X clicks twice on an ad it will have 2 clicks for FB and 1 for Analytics. Therefore, in my opinion, the most correct metric is “unique clicks on the link”.
Some Facebook subdomains delete the parameters
It seems strange, but I have already found this case. Some subdomains (such as m.facebook.com or l.facebook.com) eliminate the parameters when they deliver the url of a campaign. In this way FB would account for them and Analytics also, but as social traffic not paid.
Errors generated by the Audience Network group
This option was proposed to me by the Metriplica analytical agency. After doing a test (with several thousand dollars) I have to agree with them. A major culprit of this difference in clicks are the campaigns with the Audience Network segmentation. For those who do not know this segmentation, Facebook offers basic information about Audience Network.
In the test I did, it worked, but unfortunately I had to re-activate those audiences in the segmentation because the had had significantly decreased and the costs (evidently) had skyrocketed. In the end between getting to match the FB metrics with GA or get a good CPC, I was left with the second option for business necessity. I hope you have clarified a bit the reason for this difference in clicks.
If you know any other point of relevance to understand this difference, do not hesitate to tell me.
