Question from user:
Anyone have experience with running FB/Meta ads to drive ticket sales via Eventbrite?
It looks like you can’t track conversions/ticket sales which seems crazy, the options are either:
- Run a traffic campaign from FB > Eventbrite
- Use EB’s 3rd party ads platform
Curious if anyone has used Eventbrite’s ad platform… I searched for previous threads about this and folks mentioned that the targeting options were bad but the posts are all a few years old.
TIA!
Answer from Nabil:
The short answer is:
You absolutely can and should track conversions for your Eventbrite events from Meta/Facebook Ads, and the fact that the native integration doesn’t automatically allow for full, granular tracking is a major limitation that will hurt your ad performance.
Running a traffic campaign is the wrong approach because it doesn’t give Meta’s algorithms the crucial conversion data needed for optimization.
The ultimate, modern solution is to implement the Facebook Conversions API (CAPI) alongside client-side tracking, using a server-side solution like Stape or Google Cloud Platform.
This method allows you to capture the purchase event and send it directly from the Eventbrite confirmation page to Meta’s server, providing superior data quality and ensuring that Meta’s algorithm can optimize for actual ticket sales, not just traffic.
The long answer is:
Your observation is correct: relying on a simple Traffic campaign or Eventbrite’s internal ad platform (which often has limited, outdated targeting capabilities) is a suboptimal way to run paid social ads for ticket sales.
Conversion tracking with the Meta pixel is fundamentally important for Eventbrite events because it allows Meta’s machine learning algorithms to move beyond simple link clicks and optimize your ad delivery toward users who are most likely to purchase a ticket.
Without this conversion data, your ads are essentially guessing, leading to wasted spend and poor results.
To maximize your ad performance, you need to track the full-funnel journey, not just the Pageview and final Purchase standard events that Eventbrite’s basic pixel setup offers.
As you noted, Eventbrite provides the necessary tracking points for additional, crucial standard events, which include Event listing (equivalent to ViewContent), Event register (equivalent to InitiateCheckout), and Event order confirmation (the Purchase event).
You should configure these additional events within the Eventbrite pixel setup to track the entire user journey.
However, the superior, resilient solution involves the Facebook Conversions API (CAPI).
The issue with relying solely on the client-side Meta pixel, even when properly configured on Eventbrite, is that the purchase event is highly vulnerable to being blocked by ad blockers, browser restrictions, and privacy settings on the user’s side, leading to underreporting.
This is where the Conversions API comes in.
By using Google Tag Manager to set up a server container on Stape or Google Cloud Platform, you can send the same conversion data from the thank you page to your server-side environment.
From there, your server sends the data directly to Meta’s server via CAPI.
This is a first-party data exchange that is far more reliable and resilient than the browser-based pixel.
You should still keep the client-side Meta pixel running (in a process called deduplication) so you get the benefits of both client and server data.
This dual setup ensures that nearly every single ticket sale is tracked and attributed back to your ad campaigns, giving Meta the high-quality, full-funnel conversion data it needs to accurately optimize your ads, leading to a much better Return on Ad Spend than a simple traffic campaign.
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