Most brands spend all their time in Ads Manager and almost no time in Events Manager.
But did you know that when your Events Manager data is bad, everything in Ads Manager is wrong too? Ads Manager just will not tell you that.
Before getting into the specific numbers, let’s understand what Events Manager measures.
Events Manager tracks your tracking quality how accurately and completely your pixel and server-side integrations are capturing customer behavior on your site and sending it to Meta for targeting algorithm.
It is not your ad performance dashboard. That is one Ads Manager.
When you open Events Manager and click on your pixel, you land on the Overview tab.
The chart at the top shows the volume of events received over your selected time period. Each line represents a different event type PageView, ViewContent, AddToCart, InitiateCheckout, Purchase. What you are looking for is consistent volume and logical funnel ratios. Your PageView volume should be the highest and should drop progressively through AddToCart and InitiateCheckout to Purchase.
Day-to-day volume fluctuations is fine as traffic varies so no need to panic if Tuesday looks lower than Monday.
Event List and Integration Column
Conversions API = server-side events are reaching Meta. This is what you want to see for your Purchase event specifically.
Meta Pixel only = your purchase data is coming entirely from the browser. This means it is vulnerable to iOS restrictions, ad blockers, and browser tracking prevention. You are likely missing 20 to 40 percent of your conversions.
Multiple (or both) = both browser and server-side sources are active. Good only if deduplication is also working correctly (more on that below). And you don’t need to have both if you have ability to de-duplicate before sending data to Meta (e.g. Aimerce).
The number that matters most: EMQ
The EMQ score is the single most important number in Events Manager for most Shopify brands. It is a score from 0 to 10 that measures how well Meta can match your event data to actual Facebook users. To target effectively, it needs to be able to match your site visitors and purchasers to Facebook profiles. EMQ measures how well that matching is working.
Healthy EMQ ranges by event type:
Event | Healthy | Concerning |
|---|---|---|
Purchase | 8.8 to 9.3 | Below 8.0 |
AddToCart / InitiateCheckout | 7.5 to 8.5 | Below 7.0 |
ViewContent / PageView | 6.0 to 7.5 | Below 5.5 |
Higher funnel events naturally have lower EMQ because you have less customer data at those stages. A PageView EMQ of 6.5 is fine but a Purchase EMQ of 6.5 is a serious problem.
If your Purchase EMQ is below 8.0, either your setup is not enriching events with customer data from the Shopify order, or there is an issue in your email collection. The only scenario case when it is okay is when you have a lot of purchases that aren’t coming from the website, e.g. POS, Amazon etc. Those offline purchases usually don’t contain clickID or browser ID etc.
Email address and Click ID (fbc) are the two highest-impact parameters for EMQ. Everything else is secondary.
Common diagnostics in Events Manager you will see:
"Pixel hasn't received events recently" This means your Pixel is not firing. Go check whether your Pixel is still installed correctly, or whether a Shopify update or app change has disrupted it. Or do you actually have no data. The trick is to select “TODAY” when you check the pixel data.
"Event match quality can be improved" This is Meta's way of saying your EMQ score is lower than it could be. Click through to see which parameters you are missing. Almost always it comes down to email address not enough. You should collect more emails in popup or quiz or newsletter.
"Possible duplicate events detected" This is a deduplication warning. Meta is seeing what look like duplicate Purchase events same purchase counted multiple times. This means your event_id values are not matching between your browser Pixel and your CAPI/server-side tracking.
“Invalid Purchase/Add to Cart value”
It’s mostly caused by $0 purchases and products. Make sure you remove those events. Aimerce has a simple toggle that can let you skip $0 Purchase (Exchange) Events.
What to check in each event payload:
For a Purchase event, click through to see the full event data. You want to confirm:
event_name: Purchaseevent_id: matches what your CAPI is sending. This is what dedupes the server event against the browser pixel, so a mismatch double-counts or drops the event.email: the single most important parameter for EMQ. Lowercase and trim before SHA-256 hashing.Click ID (fbc): carries the Meta click that drove the visit and is critical for attribution. No fbc usually means the conversion can't be tied back to an ad.Browser ID (fbp): browser cookie that helps stitch session identity across events.phone number: format to E.164 (country code, digits only, no symbols) before hashing.External ID: a stable unique ID from your side, usually the customer or order ID. Helps Meta link repeat purchases to one person.Country, City, Zip or Postal Code, First name, Last name: each is a weak match key alone, but together they lift the match rate when email or phone is missing. Lowercase and strip spaces and punctuation before hashing.value: send it as a number, not a string, with no currency symbol. It should equal the order total and match the value on the browser pixel event so dedup lines up.currency: a three-letter ISO 4217 code in uppercase (USD, GBP, EUR) that matches both the store currency and the browser event. A missing or mismatched currency gets the event rejected or misvalued.contents: an array with one object per product, each carryingid,quantity, anditem_price. Theidhas to match your product or variant IDs in the Meta catalog, otherwise Advantage+ catalog ads and dynamic retargeting can't map the purchase back to a product.num_items: an integer for the total quantity across all line items, reconciling with the quantities insidecontents.
If any of these are missing from events, you know exactly what your EMQ and attribution issues are.
If you have not opened Events Manager in the last 30 days, go look at three things today:
Compare your Purchase event volume in Events Manager to your actual Shopify order count for the same period. They should be within 5 percent. A bigger gap means your tracking has a hole.
Check your Purchase EMQ. If it is below 8.0, you have a data enrichment problem almost certainly missing email parameters on your server-side events.
Look at the Diagnostics tab. If there are any "Issue detected" flags (not just "Update recommended"), address those before anything else.
Better EMQ scores let Meta's algorithm target more accurately, reducing your customer acquisition costs while improving sales. Every point increase in EMQ directly impacts your profitability.
We’ve seen stats from customers when EMQ improves from 8.6 to 9.3:
Cost per acquisition drops by 18% ($42 → $35)
Customer match rate increases by 24%
ROAS improves by 22% on average
Ad spend efficiency increases by ~$2,100/month at $1,000 daily spend
If you're using Aimerce, we automatically handle:
Real-time event processing
Parameter formatting and validation
Deduplication across all events
Express checkout tracking
Cross-device user stitching
Email Popup/Quiz/Lead-gen form tracking
Edge case optimization
You can focus on scaling your ad spend while these technical elements are managed automatically. Essentially, all the call-outs in this article has already been automated on your behalf.
Here to help you win! ✌️
Yiqi
