Facebook App Events Destination

Destination Info
Components
Connection Modes
Device-mode Cloud-mode
Web Web
Mobile Mobile
Server Server

For new implementations, Facebook no longer recommends using App Events. Instead, they suggest switching to Facebook Conversions API (Actions) for all server-side data tracking needs.

Facebook App Events collects required information from one of Segment’s mobile SDKs (iOS, Android, or Swift) and sends it from Segment’s servers to Facebook App Events servers.

The iOS device-mode connection for the Facebook App Events destination is open source and available on GitHub.

Segment also has an Analytics Swift Facebook App Events Plugin for the Facebook App Events device-mode connection available. You can view the open-source integration code on GitHub.

Other Facebook Destinations Supported by Segment

This page is about the Facebook App Events. For documentation on other Facebook destinations, see the pages linked below.

Facebook Destination Supported by Engage
Facebook App Events Yes
Facebook Offline Conversions Yes
Facebook Pixel No
Facebook Custom Audiences Yes
Facebook Conversions API Yes

Getting Started

  1. From the Segment web app, click Catalog.
  2. Search for “Facebook App Events” in the Catalog, select it, and choose which of your sources to connect the destination to.
  3. In the destination settings, enter your Facebook App ID which can be retrieved from your Facebook Apps dashboard.
  4. After you turn on the Facebook App Events integration in your app’s Segment project, we’ll start sending track data to Facebook’s App Events endpoints.

Screen

If you’re not familiar with the Segment Specs, take a look to understand what the Screen method does. An example call would look like:

[[SEGAnalytics sharedAnalytics] screen:@"Photo Feed"
                            properties:@{ @"Feed Type": @"public" }];

Our integration also supports using Segment screen events as track events. For example, if you had a screen event named Confirmation you could map the invocation of this to a Facebook app event as you would with Segment track events.

To use this functionality you must opt into it using the integration setting named Use Screen Events as Track Events. After enabling, you should start seeing screen events populate in Facebook App Events. The screen name you provide will be bookended with the words Viewed and Screen. So, if you have a screen event with the name property set to Welcome, it will show up in Facebook as an event called Viewed Welcome Screen.

Note: the integration will not automatically translate screen events to spec’d Facebook events as our track method does. If you would like to map these events to specific Facebook events you can do this using the Map your events to Standard FB App Events setting. Be sure to specify the event as Viewed name Screen where name is the name property of the screen event.

Track

If you’re not familiar with the Segment Specs, take a look to understand what the Track method does. An example call would look like:

[[SEGAnalytics sharedAnalytics] track:@"Article Completed"
                           properties:@{ @"title": @"How to Create a Tracking Plan", @"course": @"Intro to Analytics" }];

When you call track Segment automatically sends that event and it’s properties to Facebook. In the Facebook analytics interface you’ll be able to use the event properties to segment your data.

Facebook App Events doesn’t like events with periods in the name so if you send us an event with periods in the name, we’ll convert all periods to underscores. So if your event is friend.added, we’ll send that to Facebook as friend_added. We also truncate events that are longer than 40 characters long due to Facebook’s API constraints.

Facebook Parameters

We automatically translate our spec’d properties revenue and currency to the appropriate Facebook parameters (valueToSum and FBSDKAppEventParameterNameCurrency), and also send events with revenue to Facebook’s purchase logging method (logPurchase).

If you don’t provide a currency explicitly, we send USD. If any properties don’t match the below, we’ll pass them on as they were sent to us.

Revenue _valueToSum
Currency fb_currency
name fb_description
product_id fb_content_id
category fb_content_type
query fb_search_string
timestamp _logTime
quantity fb_num_items

Facebook Events

Segment automatically translates any of your events that match one of our spec’d events that map to Facebook’s spec’d events. The below table shows the out of the box mappings in our integration:

Application Installed MOBILE_APP_INSTALL
Application Opened fb_mobile_activate_app
Products Searched fb_mobile_search
Product Viewed fb_mobile_content_view
Product Added fb_mobile_add_to_cart
Product Added to Wishlist fb_mobile_add_to_wishlist
Payment Info Entered fb_mobile_add_payment_info
Checkout Started fb_mobile_initiated_checkout
Order Completed fb_mobile_purchase

If you send a track event that doesn’t match one of the above events, we’ll send it along to Facebook with the name you provide Segment.

Facebook Recommended Events

The most important events that can help advertisers improve campaign ROI are the conversion events or events closest to the conversion. Those events are marked with an “*” within Segment’s Facebook App Events settings page.

In addition, there are special requirements for dynamic ads. These events are marked with “m” for dynamic ads for mobile, and “t” for dynamic ads for travel within Segment’s Facebook App Events settings page.

Limited Data Use

In July 2020, Facebook released Limited Data Use feature to help businesses comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). This feature limits the way user data is stored and processed for all California residents who opt out of the sale of their data. You can send Limited Data Use data processing parameters to Facebook on each event so that Facebook can appropriately apply the user’s data choice. Segment recommends that you first familiarize yourself on this feature and the Data Processing Options Facebook accepts.

This destination supports the following parameters:

  • Data Processing Options
  • Data Processing Options Country
  • Data Processing Options State

You can enable the feature using the Use Limited Data Use destination setting and control it using Data Processing Initialization Parameters.

The Use Limited Data Use destination setting is disabled by default for all Facebook destinations except for Facebook Pixel. This must be enabled manually from the destination settings if you’re using other Facebook destinations.

Data Processing Destination Setting

You can change the Use Limited Data Use destination setting to enable or disable Limited Data Use. This must be enabled (set to “on”) if you want to send data processing parameters as part of the the Limited Data Use feature.

Data Processing Initialization Parameters

The Data Processing parameters you set are the Data Processing Options Segment uses when sending data to Facebook. By default, Segment uses the following Data Processing Parameters:

Data Processing Parameter Default Value What it means
Data Processing Options ["LDU"] Use Facebook’s Limited Data Use processing
Data Processing Options Country 0 Use Facebook’s geolocation to determine country
Data Processing Options State 0 Use Facebook’s geolocation to determine state

Facebook uses the context.ip to determine the geolocation of the event.

You can manually change the Data Processing parameters by adding settings to the integrations object.

Server-side library

The example below shows how you might set custom Data Processing parameters for a Segment server library.

// node library example

analytics.track({
  event: 'Membership Upgraded',
  userId: '97234974',
  integrations: {
    "Facebook App Events": {
      "dataProcessingOptions": [[], 1,1000]
    }
  }
})

iOS Device Mode

You must use the Facebook App Events integration SDK version 2.0.0 or later to call setDataProcessingOptions when you enable the Use Limited Data Use destination setting. Events sent from earlier versions of the Facebook App Events integration SDK cannot call setDataProcessingOptions, but Facebook still has access to the IP address in the events to process LDU based on geolocation.

When you use Segment’s mobile libraries, you must set the Data Processing Options when you declare the destination in your app delegate’s instance. The example below shows how you might set custom Data Processing parameters in an iOS project.

// Add the bundle FB integration SDK
// Set data processing values.
SEGFacebookAppEventsIntegrationFactory *fb = [SEGFacebookAppEventsIntegrationFactory instance];
[fb setDataProcessingOptions:@[ @"LDU" ] forCountry:1 forState: 1000];
[config use:fb];

Android and iOS Cloud Mode

To send the Data Processing Parameters in cloud mode on iOS or Android, you can set them in the integrations object. The example below shows how you might set custom Data Processing parameters in Android.

Object[] dataProcessingOptions = new Object[3]
dataProcessingOptions[0] = {'LDU'} // options
dataProcessOptions[1] = 1 // country
dataProcessingOptions[2] = 1000 // state

Analytics.with(context).track(
  "Purchased Item",
  new Properties(),
  new Options().setIntegrationOptions(
    "Facebook App Events", new ImmutableMap.Builder<String, Object>().put("dateProcessingOptions", dataProcessingOptions).build());
)

Additional iOS Cloud Mode Set up for iOS 14

With the release of Segment’s latest Analytics-iOS SDK, which includes support for upcoming iOS 14 tracking changes, you must decide if you need to collect the user’s IDFA or not. If you do not need to collect IDFA, you can update your Analytics-iOS SDK to the next version, and Segment sets device.adTrackingEnabled to false, and starts deleting the device.advertisingId from the context object in your payloads. If you do need to collect the IDFA, you must import the IDFA closure as a config to the library, or import the Ad Tracking Transparency framework from Apple.

Facebook returns a 4xx error due to lack of required parameters if the device.advertisingId key does not appear in the payload. To work around this, enable the Fallback to Zeroed IDFA when advertisingId key not present destination setting for Facebook App Events from the Segment web app. When you enable this setting, Segment checks for the device.advertisingId key, and if none is present, sets the advertiser_id in the outbound payload to '00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000'.

Other Features

Facebook Login and Facebook Dialogs

The integration does not automatically support Facebook Login and Facebook Dialogs out of the box (you’d need to write code here regardless!). To use these features you’ll need to set up Facebook’s app delegate hooks by accessing the Facebook SDK directly.

Packaged Integration

In addition to the integration available for both iOS and Android, there is a client-side packaged integration available on iOS. We recommend integrating with the Segment server-to-server integration, but you can use the packaged integration on iOS if you want.

Pre-defined Events and Parameters

The integration currently only supports the FBSDKAppEventNameActivatedApp pre-defined event (via the activateApp handler). All other events are forwarded as custom events. If other pre-defined events are important to you, contact us.

Troubleshooting

Not seeing events?

You will have to be sure that the IDFA is working within your app, which involves adding the AdSupport and App Tracking Transparency frameworks.

Similarly, on Android, you’ll need to include the Play Services Ads library as mentioned here in order for the advertisingId to populate.

After you’ve added these, you will start to see the context.device.advertisingId populate and the context.device.adTrackingEnabled flag set to true unless the user has ad tracking limited or is using a mobile ad blocker.

Facebook requires that payloads include the following:

  • context.device.id
  • context.device.type
  • context.os.version

The value of context.device.type must be either ios or android.

For example:

{
  "anonymousId": "507f191e810c19729de860ea",
  "event": "Event Name",
  "context": {
    "device": {
      "id": "B5372DB0-C21E-11E4-8DFC-AA07A5B093DB",
      "type": "ios"
    },
    "os": {
      "version": "8.1.3"
    }
  },
  "messageId": "bbac-11e4-8dfc-aa07a53436b09b45567i8245237824",
  "type": "track",
  "userId": "97980cfea0067"
}

Missing custom events

Facebook will only accept custom events with alphanumeric names (you can include spaces, “-“ and “_”) that are between 2 and 40 characters in length. Otherwise, Facebook will reject the event payload with a 400 status.

Engage

You can send computed traits and audiences generated using Engage to this destination as a user property. To learn more about Engage, schedule a demo.

For user-property destinations, an identify call is sent to the destination for each user being added and removed. The property name is the snake_cased version of the audience name, with a true/false value to indicate membership. For example, when a user first completes an order in the last 30 days, Engage sends an Identify call with the property order_completed_last_30days: true. When the user no longer satisfies this condition (for example, it’s been more than 30 days since their last order), Engage sets that value to false.

When you first create an audience, Engage sends an Identify call for every user in that audience. Later audience syncs only send updates for users whose membership has changed since the last sync.

Real-time to batch destination sync frequency

Real-time audience syncs to Facebook App Events may take six or more hours for the initial sync to complete. Upon completion, a sync frequency of two to three hours is expected.

Settings

Segment lets you change these destination settings from the Segment app without having to touch any code.

Setting Description
Map your events to Standard FB App Events map, defaults to {}.

Enter your events on the left and the Facebook standard event to map to on the right. Facebook recognizes certain standard events that can be used across Custom Audiences, custom conversions, conversion tracking, and conversion optimization. When you map an event to a standard Facebook event, we’ll send the event by that name. Any unmapped events will still be sent as Custom Events. Facebook Recommended Events The most important events that can help advertisers improve campaign ROI are the conversion events or events closest to the conversion. Those events are marked with an *. In addition, there are special requirements for dynamic ads. These events are marked with “m” for dynamic ads for mobile, and “t” for dynamic ads for travel.
App ID
(required)
string. Your Facebook App ID can be retrieved from your Facebook Apps dashboard.
Event Parameter Allowlist array, defaults to .

Facebook App Events limits the number of event parameters to 25. You may choose to put an allowlist of properties which we will send to Facebook instead. This allowlist will be respected exactly (or not at all, if you choose not to use it), the only exception being that we will automatically send _eventName to ensure all events are valid. Top-level properties will be mapped exactly. (For example, if you allowlist someProp then we will send someProp’s value). We otherwise make the following conversions for Facebook-spec’d events. Use the value on the right-hand side if you wish to send these properties as we calculate them. revenue: _valueToSum price: _valueToSum currency: fb_currency name: fb_description id: fb_content_id product_id: fb_content_id productId: fb_content_id category: fb_content_type The version of your app: _appVersion The timestamp of the event: _logTime query: fb_search_string quantity: fb_num_items number of items in products: fb_num_items list of ids in products: fb_content_id
Limited Data Use boolean, defaults to FALSE .

The Limited Data Use (LDU) setting controls whether or not Limited Data Use mode is set in Facebook’s Data Processing Options. When enabling LDU, Segment will send default user geography options to request that Facebook geolocate the event. To override the default geography options set the values in the Facebook App Events integrations object under the dataProcessingOptions key.
Use Screen Events as Track Events boolean, defaults to FALSE .

This setting allows you to track your Segment screen events as though they were track events. If enabled, we will being routing screen events from this source to Facebook App Events formatted as Viewed name Screen (where name is the screen name you specify).
Fallback to Zeroed IDFA when advertisingId key not present (Server-Side Only) boolean, defaults to FALSE .

With the update to use analytics-ios v4.x SDK if adTrackingEnabled is set to false, the advertisingId key will be deleted from the event. These events will fail when sent to Facebook App Events API. To prevent these event failures in this scenario enable this setting to default to set the IDFA to be zero’d out (ie. ‘00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000’) when sent to Facebook App Events.

This page was last modified: 24 Apr 2024



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