In March 2017, Facebook began bet testing an attribution solution for marketers to analyze the impact of their campaigns both on and off Facebook. On October 19, company released Facebook Attribution out of beta to all advertisers. It also introduced a new “data-driven attribution model.”
The Facebook Pixel powers the free tool and can report on campaigns across Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network and Messenger. The reports are meant to show how Facebook ad campaigns are impacting actions throughout the customer journey and which channels are driving traffic, conversions and purchases.
Similar to Google, Facebook’s data-driven attribution model uses machine learning to account for incremental conversions driven by ads across its platforms.
“Using new data-driven attribution model, you can see how your ads on Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network and Messenger are contributing to incremental business results compared to if you were not running ads,” writes Facebook on its business blog.
The reports offer cross-device conversion visualizations (example shown below), insights into purchases resulting from paid, organic and direct sources, as well as conversion and visit metrics broken down by sources.
Here’s more on Facebook Attribution:
- It’s now available in Business Manager under the “Measure & Report” section in the tools area.
- To use it, you’ll need to group your ad accounts, pixels, apps and offline event sets. Because it relies on machine learning, the system will take time to gather and learn data before any reporting is available.
- A help center has some basic information about attribution metrics and setup tools.
- With its version of an attribution tool, Facebook has beaten Google and Amazon to the punch. Google’s free version of is still in beta and Amazon is reportedly testing its own. Unlike Google’s, however, Facebook Attribution is reporting only and does not plug back into Ads Manager to inform bidding.