Pixel Measurement
Measuring specific events in a subscriber's journey with the Facebook Pixel for your articles (both mobile web and desktop) is a requirement of the Instant Articles Subscription program. While the Account Linking process includes some of these events, this document covers the other relevant events and their parameters. Without the additional events you will not be able to reliably measure the value the integration brings to your publication.
Setup your Facebook Pixel
Please refer to the Facebook Pixel Events documentation for information on how to set up Facebook Pixel base code, which is a pre-requisite for any of the events to function properly. Use of the Facebook Pixel is covered under the Facebook Business Tools Terms.
Subscriber Journey Events
The full set of Pixel Events that cover the subscriber journey are:
- ViewContent
- ViewMeter
- ViewPaywall
- CreateAccount
- LogIntoAccount
- InitiateCheckout
- Subscribe
- Cancel
For the account linking events in bold, please refer to the Account Linking portion of the documentation. The table below details the non-account linking events to be included as part of your integration.
Unlike Account Linking events which require the use of the img tag, the events listed above can be sent using either the img tag or Javascript.
When using Javascript, the Standard and Custom event types provided indicate the first value of the fbq() function when firing the events, either with 'track' or 'trackCustom', respectively. More information can be found in the Facebook Pixel documentation.
Event Recommendations
This document classifies events as Critical vs Optional based on its significance in providing insights to your Instant Articles Subscriptions performance. Critical events are those that are essential in understanding the subscription workflows originating from Instant Articles. Optional events are useful for a more in-depth analysis of the funnels as well as for identifying points of optimization in your subscriptions workflows.
* Parameters in BOLD are required parameters** If you are already using the Purchase/Subscribe event to for marketing purposes, please use a separate pixel id for the IA Subscriptions workflow in order to keep the conversion event and parameters from conflicting with each other
Metered
| Event | Motivation |
|---|---|
| This enables the comparison of Paywall hits from IA vs mWeb |
| Enables the analysis of conversions specifically from IA |
| Enables measurement of drops during the checkout process and optimize improvements of the checkout flow |
| Helps filter out users who viewed the paywall but did not purchase since they were already a subscribed user |
| Useful in measuring retention and churn |
| Allows for analysis of the full funnel of user activity starting from the read event in addition to the paywall hits. Also enables in understanding what content type is helping drive users to paywall hits and beyond |
Freemium
| Event | Motivation |
|---|---|
| This enables the comparison of Paywall hits from IA vs mWeb |
| Enables the analysis of conversions specifically from IA |
| Enables measurement of drops during the checkout process and optimize improvements of the checkout flow |
| Helps filter out users who viewed the paywall but did not purchase since they were already a subscribed user |
| Useful in measuring retention and churn |
| Allows for analysis of the full funnel of user activity starting from the read event in addition to the paywall hits. Also enables in understanding what content type is helping drive users to paywall hits and beyond |
Testing your Pixel Integration
We recommend using the Pixel Helper Chrome plugin to validate your Pixel integration. You can also use the Event Debugger in Facebook Analytics.