Help Centre › Guides

Connect Meta ads to your competition

When you put money behind a Facebook or Instagram post, the clicks are easy to see and the entries are not. This connects the two, so your ad account can tell you which advert actually sold tickets and Meta can start finding you more people like the ones who bought.

It takes about ten minutes and you only do it once.

Before you start

• A Meta ad account with a dataset (Meta used to call it a pixel). If you have ever run a paid advert you almost certainly have one.
• Admin access to it in Meta Business Manager, so you can read its ID.
• A plan that includes it. Advert tracking is on every plan except First Competition.
• Five minutes with your own privacy notice, because once this is on you are the data controller for what lands in your dataset. More on that below.

You do not need a developer, and you do not add any code to anything.

Step 1: find your dataset ID

1. Open Meta Events Manager.
2. In the left-hand list, choose Data sources.
3. Click the dataset you use for your competitions.
4. The ID is the long number shown under its name. It is 15 or 16 digits, for example 283773670485665.

Copy the number itself, not the name. If you see several datasets and are not sure which is live, pick the one your ad account is already using: Events Manager shows recent activity against it.

Step 2: open the Integrations tab

1. Sign in to Team Aretas.
2. Go to Organiser profile from the menu in the top right.
3. Choose Integrations in the left-hand list.
4. Stay on the Meta ads tab, which is the one it opens on.

Step 3: accept the responsibilities

Before the switch will do anything you have to tick the box confirming the commitments listed on that page. They are short, they are on screen in full, and they are worth reading rather than skimming, because the arrangement is a real one:

• You are the data controller for your dataset and everything sent to it. Meta is a joint controller with you under the Business Tools terms you accepted when you created the dataset.
• You need your own privacy notice covering this use, and a lawful basis.
• The data is for measuring your own advertising, for your own competitions, and nothing else.
• Data protection requests come to you, and you tell us promptly if one reaches you that concerns Team Aretas.

Ticking the box records who accepted and when. Nothing is sent before that.

Step 4: paste the ID and turn it on

1. Turn on Track ticket purchases in my Meta dataset.
2. Paste your dataset ID into Meta dataset (pixel) ID.
3. Save.

That is the whole setup. Your next sign-up is reported.

Optional: a different dataset for one competition

Most organisers want one pixel across everything they run, which is what the organiser profile sets. If a single competition has its own ad account, open that competition, go to Edit competition, find the Advert tracking section, and set it to use its own dataset. That competition reports there and the rest keep using your default.

You can also switch tracking off for one competition without touching the rest.

What you should see

Within a few minutes of the next completed sign-up, Events Manager should show a Purchase event against your dataset.

It will show as deduplicated, and that is correct. We report every purchase twice on purpose: once from the athlete's browser and once from our server, both carrying the same event ID. Meta merges them into one conversion. The second copy is the one that matters, because it still arrives when a browser blocks the pixel, or when the athlete closes the tab the moment the payment goes through.

Give it a full day before judging the numbers. Entries arrive unevenly and one quiet afternoon tells you nothing.

What gets sent, and what does not

Sent, for a completed purchase only:

• That a purchase happened, with its value and currency
• Which competition
• A hashed version of the athlete's email, phone, name, city, postcode and country, so Meta can match them to an account

Never sent:

• Anything about someone who browsed and did not buy
• Anything in the clear. Names, emails and phone numbers are hashed before they leave us, and we cannot un-hash them any more than Meta can.
• Anything at all about an athlete who declined advertising cookies. The consent banner decides this, not us.

The value reported is the entry's face price, not the cash taken. An athlete who used a full-value voucher still reports at the ticket price, because the point is to tell Meta what kind of person to go and find, and that person is worth the same either way.

When it does not work

Nothing in Events Manager at all. Check the switch is on and the ID saved, then check you are looking at the right dataset. The commonest cause is a dataset ID copied from a different ad account.

Some entries missing. Expected, and not a fault. Athletes who decline advertising cookies are never tracked, so your reported conversions will always be lower than your real entries. Treat it as a sample for comparing campaigns, not as a count of sign-ups. Your Payments page is where the real total lives.

"Deduplicated" against every event. That is the system working. See above.

Switched on but on the First Competition plan. Advert tracking is not part of that plan. The page will tell you, and nothing is sent while you are on it.

Turning it off

Switch it off on the same page. Reporting stops that day. Everything already in your dataset stays there, because it is yours, and deleting it is done in Meta rather than here.