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This guide is not an endorsement to send custom events or use Elevar for the purpose of ignoring Meta's restricted events. This guide is for those who understand the risks and are complying to Meta's terms of service.

Overview

If you believe your ability to track conversions or optimize Meta campaigns is being disrupted by Meta’s Health and Wellness category restrictions, follow the steps below to enable custom events through Elevar. This setup may help mitigate those disruptions by supplementing standard events with server-side custom events.

Understanding Meta’s Restricted Events:

Meta's restriction focuses on those in the Health and Wellness category and their lower-funnel events. When these events are restricted, you may lose the ability to optimize ads for them.

Read this guide to learn more about data source categories in Meta Events Manager.

What Custom Events Will Be Sent?

After enabling this setting, Elevar will send a set of custom events that mirror your lower-funnel standard events. These events are sent server-side and follow the same triggers used in Elevar’s standard Meta integration.

These events are not based on alternate triggers like thank-you page views. Instead, they fire from the same dl_ Data Layer events Elevar uses for its standard server-side tracking.

You can confirm whether these events are being received by checking your Meta Events Manager. If a warning appears next to any custom event, follow the steps in Events Manager to verify it.

Here is a list of custom events and how they appear in your Meta account:

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Prefer to Watch a Video?

Watch this video for an in-depth discussion around the Meta event restrictions and a detailed walk-through of the two options outlines below.

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Key Considerations Before Proceeding:

Before attempting any of the following options, ensure that you understand the following:

• Legal Compliance: Any decision to modify event tracking should align with Meta’s Terms of Service and data policies.
• Risk of Account Suspension: Sending custom events that circumvent restrictions may result in penalties, including ad account bans.
• PII (Personally Identifiable Information) Risks: Consider stripping out sensitive customer data is important to avoid violating Meta’s policies.

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Send Custom Events in Addition to Standard Events

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Learn More about Meta's Standard Events:

Follow this guide to learn more about specifications for Meta Pixel standard events.

Access Facebook Destination:

• Begin on your Elevar homepage and use the left-hand navigation menu to click on the "My Tracking" Tab.
• Navigate to your list of destinations and click on the Facebook destination.
  • (See Figure 1)

_Figure 1_

Select Advanced Options:

• Once in the Facebook destination, navigate to the "Setup Steps" box and click the "Facebook Settings" tab.
• On the settings page, locate and click on the “Advanced Options” to expand this section.
  • Use the check box to enable the "Send custom events in addition to standard events" option. This will send custom server-side events in addition to standard events. This may help if you've been impacted by Meta's event restrictions for Health & Wellness.
• Once you have selected the required settings, be sure to save your changes by clicking on the "Save" button located at the bottom of the page.
  • (See Figure 2)

_Figure 2_

Update Web Container Setup:

• After enabling the correct settings, navigate to the "Setup Steps" box.
• Locate and click the step titled "Web Container Setup" and select the button labeled "Download Pre-Built Web Tags".
  • Once downloaded, reimport the container into your Google Tag Manager web container. Follow this guide to learn how to do this.
  • After importing the container into Google Tag Manager, publish the new tag.
• Once you have updated your web container setup, click on the "Mark as Complete" button located at the bottom of the page.
  • (See Figure 3)

_Figure 3_

Optimizing Campaigns with Custom Events:

Once Meta begins receiving these custom events, you have two options for campaign optimization:

• Direct Optimization: Use the custom event (e.g., custom_p) directly as the goal in your conversion campaigns. This approach typically provides the most reliable performance and trains the Meta algorithm effectively.
• Custom Conversions: Alternatively, create Custom Conversions in Meta based on the new custom event names. This allows for more granular filtering and attribution configuration if needed.

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We reccomend testing both approaches to determine what yields the best results for your account.