TL;DR
Sonar Optimize sends enriched first-party customer and conversion data from Triple Whale to supported advertising platforms. It does this through two capabilities: conversion data enrichment, which gives platforms a more complete view of what happened on your site, and attribution passback, which tells supported platforms how Triple Whale assigned credit. Together they give those platforms more useful information for campaign reporting, audience creation, bidding, and delivery optimization.
Overview
Advertising platforms rely on conversion signals to understand which people are taking valuable actions after seeing or clicking an ad. However, browser restrictions, disconnected data sources, and incomplete customer information can limit what an advertising platform knows about those conversions.
Sonar Optimize uses data collected by Triple Whale to enrich conversion events before sending them to supported advertising platforms through their Conversions APIs. Depending on the platform, Sonar Optimize may also send Triple Whale attribution information that helps the platform understand which conversions Triple Whale credited to its ads.
The result is a more complete conversion signal that advertising platforms can use when optimizing your campaigns.
What is Sonar?
Sonar has two products. Sonar Optimize sends data to advertising platforms, and Sonar Send sends data to lifecycle marketing platforms.
Sonar Optimize includes two capabilities.
Capability | What it does | Where it sends data |
Conversion data enrichment | Sends enriched first-party customer actions and conversions server-side, so the platform sees more of what happens on your site | Meta Google Ads TikTok Twitter/X AppLovin Realize ChatGPT Ads |
Attribution passback | Sends information about how Triple Whale assigned credit for a conversion, so supported platforms can optimize using Triple Whale attribution | Meta (Custom Attribution) Additional platforms in development |
The simple way to think about it:
Conversion data enrichment fills the gaps in what advertising platforms can see.
Attribution passback changes what those platforms optimize toward.
Sonar Send puts the same enriched data to work in your email and SMS programs.
You can use Sonar Optimize, Sonar Send, or both, depending on the platforms and marketing workflows your business uses.
This article covers Sonar Optimize. For retention channels, see the Sonar Send setup guides.
How Sonar Optimize works
Triple Whale collects customer journey and conversion data from your website and connected ecommerce platform.
Sonar Optimize uses that information to:
Identify an eligible customer action, such as a page view, add to cart, checkout, or purchase.
Enrich the event with available first-party customer and conversion data.
Send the enriched event to the connected advertising platform through a server-side integration.
Deduplicate the event when the platform's own pixel already captured it. Triple Whale includes a deduplication key so the platform merges the two views rather than counting the conversion twice.
Deliver the event for the advertising platform to use in reporting, audience creation, or campaign optimization.
The events and enrichment options available to you depend on the advertising platform you connect.
What is conversion data enrichment?
Conversion data enrichment adds first-party customer and business information to an event before sending it to an advertising platform.
For example, instead of sending only a standard Purchase event, Sonar Optimize may be able to provide additional information about the purchase or customer. This can help the platform better understand the type and value of the conversion.
Depending on the platform, Sonar Optimize can support events such as:
Page View
View Content
Search
Signup
Add to Cart
Initiate Checkout
Add Payment Info
Purchase
New Customer Purchase
Returning Customer Purchase
Initial Subscription Purchase
Custom conversion events
Available events vary by platform and business configuration.
Triple Whale delivers conversion data enrichment through each advertising platform's Conversions API. It tells the platform that an event occurred and provides the available event and customer information.
What is attribution passback?
Attribution passback is the second Sonar Optimize capability. It sends information after Triple Whale has evaluated the customer journey and assigned attribution credit.
Where conversion data enrichment tells a platform that an event occurred, attribution passback tells the platform how Triple Whale credited it.
Capability | What it sends | Primary purpose |
Conversion data enrichment | Customer actions and conversions with additional first-party data | Give the advertising platform a stronger server-side conversion signal |
Attribution passback | Information about how Triple Whale assigned credit for a conversion | Help a supported advertising platform optimize using Triple Whale attribution data |
Diagram showing one customer journey across a Meta ad click, a Google search, an email, a direct visit, and a purchase. Two separate sends go to Meta. First, conversion data enrichment fires at the moment of purchase and tells Meta a purchase happened, with order value, hashed identifiers, product details, and new or returning customer status. Then Triple Whale evaluates the full journey and assigns credit. Second, attribution passback fires afterwards and tells Meta how Triple Whale credited the order. Meta uses the first for reporting, audiences and bidding, and the second as an optimization input surfaced as Custom Attribution.
For example, Sonar’s attribution passback powers Triple Whale’s integration with Meta's Custom Attribution.
Attribution passback is not supported by every Sonar Optimize destination. The available attribution models, windows, and performance goals also vary by platform.
What you will see when attribution passback is active
In Triple Whale, passback events appear in your Sonar Optimize event log as Attribution Passback.
In Meta Events Manager, they appear as Custom Attribution within your Purchase event rather than as a separate event.
Triple Whale sends one passback event for each supported attribution model on an attributed order, so passback event counts are expected to be higher than your order counts. This is not a duplicate conversion, and it does not affect the Purchase events used for reporting.
Availability and eligibility
Attribution passback support varies by advertising platform, and the Meta integration has its own eligibility requirements.
Meta. The Triple Whale integration with Meta Custom Attribution is available to all Meta advertisers. You do not need a managed account or a dedicated Meta contact.
To use it you need:
A Triple Whale paid plan with Sonar Optimize
A connected Meta advertising account
After you enable attribution passback, plan for a data collection period of roughly 14 days before you evaluate results or apply Custom Attribution to a campaign, so the platform's model has enough signal to learn from.
For full setup instructions, see Quick Start Guide: Triple Whale ↔ Meta Custom Attribution Integration.
Other platforms. Attribution passback support on additional advertising platforms is in development. Check the setup guide for your platform to see what is currently available.
Why use Sonar Optimize?
Provide advertising platforms with stronger conversion signals
Server-side connections give Sonar Optimize another way to send conversion data to advertising platforms. This can provide a more complete signal than relying only on events captured in the browser.
Optimize for outcomes that matter to your business
Standard Purchase events do not always show whether an order came from a new customer, a returning customer, or another customer segment.
Where supported, Sonar Optimize can send more specific events, such as New Customer Purchase or Returning Customer Purchase. This gives you more control over the business outcome used for campaign optimization.
Create more specific conversion events
Some Sonar Optimize integrations support custom events based on criteria that you define.
For example, you may want to create an event for:
Orders over a selected value
Purchases of a specific product or category
Orders containing a certain number of items
Purchases using a specific discount code
Purchases associated with a particular order tag
Purchases from a selected traffic source
Custom-event availability and configuration differ by advertising platform. For Meta, see Sonar Custom Events for Meta.
Optimize toward your own attribution
Where attribution passback is supported, you can select the Triple Whale attribution model and window you use to evaluate performance and pass that back as an optimization input, rather than relying only on the platform's own view of which conversions it drove.
Monitor event delivery from Triple Whale
Sonar Optimize includes a Delivery Overview where you can review the events Triple Whale is sending to a connected platform.
Depending on the integration, you may also be able to review:
The number of events sent
Event types
Delivery status
Event health
Configuration errors
Individual event payloads
Successful delivery from Triple Whale does not always mean that the event will immediately appear in the advertising platform’s primary campaign reporting. Advertising platforms may apply their own processing delays, approval requirements, or conversion-action settings.
How is Sonar Optimize different from a browser pixel?
A browser pixel records events from a customer's browser. A server-side integration sends events from one system directly to another.
Sonar Optimize is designed to work with the Triple Pixel and your connected business data to send enriched events server-side.
In some configurations, the browser pixel and server-side integration send versions of the same event. The advertising platform must be able to identify that they represent the same customer action so it does not count the conversion twice. This process is called event deduplication.
The correct pixel and deduplication configuration varies by advertising platform. Review the setup guide for your selected destination before enabling Sonar Optimize alongside another server-side tracking provider.
Can I use Sonar Optimize with another CAPI provider?
It depends on which events you are sending.
Standard conversion events. Running multiple providers that send the same standard conversion events to the same platform and dataset can create duplicate events and interfere with reporting or campaign optimization. Before enabling standard Sonar Optimize events, review whether another provider is already sending those events.
Custom events and attribution passback. These events are unique to Sonar. They do not require deduplication against another provider's events and can generally run alongside an existing CAPI setup.
Follow the platform-specific setup guide to confirm which events can safely run together for your destination.
Supported Sonar Optimize integrations
The Help Center currently includes setup guides for:
Available integrations and features may depend on your Triple Whale plan, business configuration, advertising account, and the capabilities supported by each advertising platform.
Store platform requirements. Most Shopify stores can complete setup directly in Triple Whale. Headless storefronts, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce require a short developer implementation before Sonar Optimize can send events. Review the setup guide for your store platform before you begin.
What results should I expect?
Sonar Optimize is designed to provide advertising platforms with stronger and more complete conversion signals.
Depending on your setup and advertising platform, this may help with:
Conversion signal quality
Event Match Quality
Audience creation
Campaign targeting
Bidding optimization
New-customer optimization
Alignment between platform and Triple Whale reporting
How to verify the impact
You can check the effect of Sonar Optimize in tools you already use:
Event Match Quality. Review your Event Match Quality score in your advertising platform's event management interface before and after enabling Sonar Optimize.
Event volume. Compare server-side event counts against pixel-only counts to see how many events were previously going uncaptured.
Controlled testing. Where your advertising platform supports it, run a campaign-level or ad-set-level test to compare performance with and without the enriched signal.
Delivery Overview. Confirm in Triple Whale that events are being sent successfully and without configuration errors.
Performance changes are not guaranteed. Results depend on factors such as event volume, event quality, campaign configuration, learning periods, platform eligibility, and the events selected for optimization.
After setup, review both the Sonar Optimize Delivery Overview and the advertising platform's event-management interface to confirm that events are being sent and received correctly.
Getting started
Start with your highest-spend advertising platform. Most businesses begin with Meta. Follow the setup guide for your platform and complete the guided setup in Triple Whale.
Review which events to send. Confirm whether another provider is already sending standard conversion events to that platform, and select the standard and custom events that match how you measure performance.
Turn on attribution passback where it is supported. For Meta, review the eligibility requirements above and follow the Quick Start Guide.
Add Sonar Send for your retention channels. Sonar Send applies the same first-party data to Klaviyo, Attentive, and Omnisend so you can build more complete abandonment flows.
Monitor results. Check the Sonar Optimize Delivery Overview and your advertising platform's event management interface, and allow time for platform learning periods before evaluating performance.