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Sonar: Data Enrichment for Meta

Sonar sends enriched first-party customer and conversion data to your marketing platforms to improve targeting and boost campaign ROI

Chaim Davies avatar
Written by Chaim Davies
Updated over 2 months ago

Overview

With Sonar, Triple Whale integrates directly with Meta to send enriched, first-party data for improving your campaign performance. By running Sonar in parallel with your Meta Web Pixel, Sonar gives Meta a complete picture of the customers, interactions and web conversions of your website, leading to better Event Match Quality scores, more accurate in platform reporting, improved campaign targeting, and boosted campaign performance.

How Sonar Works

The Triple Pixel already captures every website interaction and conversion and uses its best-in-class returning visitor recognition to connect the dots on who is doing what on your website. Sonar enriches every Triple Pixel event, whether it is a visit, a website interaction, or a conversion, with additional first-party data from your other connected sources (such as Shopify, BigCommerce [Beta], or WooCommerce [Beta]), and then transmits this data back to Meta, server-side via the Meta Conversions API (CAPI).

In cases where the Meta Web Pixel has already captured the event, Triple Whale provides a deduplication key with each event, so that Meta can combine the data it has captured with the data provided by Triple Whale. The net result is a richer, more complete set of event and customer data that Meta can feed to its ad targeting algorithm to inform its optimization of your campaigns.

Before You Begin

Before we are ready to configure Sonar, make sure you confirm that the Triple Pixel is properly installed on your site.

To send all Standard events, including checkout funnel events, participants must have the following pixel installation configuration:

  • Theme App Embed installed and enabled ✔️

  • Web Pixel Extension enabled ✔️

    • The Web pixel extension is required in order to send Checkout funnel events like "Initiate Checkout" or "Add Payment Info".

Sonar for Headless Shopify stores, BigCommerce stores, and WooCommerce stores

Please note that Headless Shopify stores as well as stores built on BigCommerce or WooCommerce will require developer implementation in order to enable Sonar. See the relevant documentation:

To verify this setup, visit your Pixel Settings page and review the “Installation Status” section. In the “Online Store” section, you should see the Theme App Embed enabled:

Then, in the Checkout section, you should see the Web Pixel Extension enabled:

Configuring Sonar

  1. Head to your Sonar settings page.

  2. In the Meta CAPI tile, click Set Up.

    1. Note: To grant Triple Whale the proper permissions for sending data through Meta's CAPI, you may be prompted to disconnect and reconnect your Meta account if you had previously connected Meta before having access to Sonar.

      1. After re-authenticating the Meta connection, return to the Sonar configuration to continue.

  3. On the Settings tab, Select the Meta Pixel dataset you wish to enrich with Triple Whale data.

  4. Next, select which events you'd like Triple Whale to send to Meta. By default, Triple Whale will send all events. For optimal results, it is recommended you send every event back to Meta.

  5. Excluding Recurring Subscription orders: If your shop offers subscription orders, you can map first subscription orders and recurring subscription orders back to Meta. By doing so, recurring subscription purchases will be excluded from being sent to Meta.

    1. Indicate whether your shop offers subscription products.

    2. If the answer is Yes, identify the respective order tags for each.

  6. Other Exclusions: By default, Triple Whale excludes certain Sales Channels from the conversion events that it transmits (draft orders, PoS orders, returns, meta shop orders, and shop app orders). You can also choose to exclude certain conversion events from being sent to Meta based on order tags and/or sales channels.

    1. To add a custom Sales channel, you must provide the channel name and the channel code. If you aren't sure about your channel code, reach out to Triple Whale support.

  7. Once you are satisfied with the configuration settings, click Save & Enable. If you aren't ready to go live with Sonar but would like to save your configuration settings for another time, click Save Configuration.

Delivery Overview

Once Sonar is enabled for Meta, you can easily monitor the data transmission via Meta's CAPI within Triple Whale. In Sonar Settings, click View Details to access the Delivery Overview page. Here, you will see a data table that displays the total number of enriched events, broken out by event type over the chosen time frame. This tells you what data Triple Whale is broadcasting to Meta.

Finding the Data in Meta

To see how many events Meta has received from both the Web Pixel and CAPI, visit your Events Manager Page in Meta. Locate the Meta Pixel dataset for the connected pixel.

The Overview tab will report how many events Meta has received, as well as report on Event Match Quality. By clicking the Event Match Quality value, you can drill into a specific event to understand deduplication rates, and view samples of the data being received by Meta.

Monitoring Results

Sonar will feed Meta better data about your conversions so that it can improve campaign targeting, leading to better campaign performance. After connecting the integration and sending data for a few days, a good integration should see the following results in Triple Whale's Pixel attribution dashboard:

  • Lowering CPAs

  • Improving ROAS

  • Closer alignment between Meta In-platform Reporting and Triple Whale Reporting

You can also use that dashboard to graph your Pixel ROAS and Pixel CPA over time. Happy scaling!


Frequently Asked Questions

1. What event types does Sonar enrich?

  • Sonar will send and enrich only standard Meta web pixel events:

    • Page View

    • View Content

      • To send this event you must use the Triple Pixel Theme App embed

    • Search

    • Signup

    • Add to Cart

    • Purchase

    • Initiate Checkout

      • To send this event you must use the Triple Pixel Web Pixel Extension

    • Add Payment Info

      • To send this event you must use the Triple Pixel Theme App embed

2. What are the main differences between Sonar and Shopify's Native CAPI?

  • When it comes to sending conversions back to Meta, we will send the same ones. The greatest difference is in our ability to connect anonymous visits to return visitors and customer profiles and then share that info back with Meta for better site-wide audience profiling, lookalike audience building, deduplication, and retargeting (based on our proprietary approach to return visitor identification and ID graph). Additionally, unlike Shopify's CAPI, Sonar will successfully send events and customer info on headless sites and custom landing pages back to Meta, including in situations when the Meta Pixel was implemented via GTM (additional configuration of the Triple Pixel is required in these scenarios).

3. Should I enable Sonar if I already have another CAPI enrichment provider?

  • In general, we do not recommend running multiple CAPI services. Using multiple CAPI setups can result in duplication of events, minimizing Sonar's effectiveness to boost your marketing performance.


Troubleshooting: My Pixel Dataset Isn't Available on the Sonar Settings Page

If you are trying to configure Sonar for Meta and the Pixel/Dataset you want to connect isn't listed in the dropdown list:

  • Ensure that your Meta business account is connected to the pixel dataset you are trying to connect

  • Ensure that your personal Meta profile has the following permission for the relevant Meta Pixel Dataset: Full control: Manage events dataset

Once you have confirmed that you have Full Control for the Dataset, you may need to go through the following steps to adjust the permissions scopes granted to Triple Whale:

  1. Go to your main Meta integration and click "Disconnect"

  2. Once disconnected, click "Connect"

  3. When the OAuth flow appears, click edit previous settings

  4. Select the Meta business account that has full access permissions to the Meta Pixel/Dataset you wish to connect to Sonar and click Next

  5. On the next step, select Opt in to All Current and Future Pages

  6. On the final step, review the permissions and ensure that you see the permission Manage Your Business. Click Save.

  7. Finally, reconfigure your attribution settings and the Pixel you want to connect to TW for reporting.

After completing these steps, you should now be able to select your Meta Dataset within the Sonar configuration page.

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