Conversions API

Conversions API Gateway: AWS App Runner

The Conversions API Gateway is a self-serve configuration option in Events Manager. It enables businesses to integrate following best practices guidance and send events with the Meta Pixel and the Conversions API in a redundant set up, without dedicated developer resources, so no third-party partners or coding is necessary.

Additionally, the Conversions API Gateway offers incremental efficiencies, such as:

  1. Speed: Brings down the potential Conversions API integration time from weeks to hours.
  2. Cost: The Conversions API Gateway may incur a lower cost to clients due to lower technical resources or requirements. The only cost of the Conversions API Gateway is the associated cloud resource fees.
  3. Low technical lift: Performance marketers with some technical expertise can set up and configure the Conversions API themselves with minimal support from their IT or developer teams.
  4. Low maintenance costs: Unlike manual direct integrations, the Conversions API Gateway will auto update (with client consent) whenever new features become available, reducing long-term maintenance costs.

The Conversions API Gateway is a cloud-based product and requires a cloud hosting solution to set up. During setup, you’ll be given the option to either use your own cloud account, or to have your account hosted by a partner service. If you wish to host your own account, a cloud setup using Amazon Web Services App Runner can offer a lower fixed monthly cost and can be implemented in about 15 minutes by following the steps below.

If your account will receive more than 2.4 billion events per month, consider using an Elastic Kubernetes Service based Conversions API Gateway setup during the setup flow.

Architecture

The Conversions API Gateway is configured by self-provisioning a server instance in your cloud environment, which is used to send web events through a reliable server to server connection to Facebook.

Below is a high level diagram of the major components involved in Conversions API Gateway:


In this diagram:

  • A Meta Pixel configured with the Gateway endpoint will also send events to the Gateway by the pixel script.
  • The Conversions API Gateway receives events data from browsers and then sends events data to the Conversions API.
  • The event_id deduplication key is automatically generated and propagated to help with deduplication between both channels.

Conversions API Gateway Components

The Conversions API Gateway requires a non-Meta third-party managed cloud provider (for example, AWS) account to allow businesses to automatically deploy the underlying infrastructure without the need of a developer as well as to have a predictable cost.

Software Components

Meta Pixel

The Meta Pixel is a standard JavaScript library loaded on an advertiser’s website that allows the business to share data about customer actions, referred to as Business Tools Data in the Business Tools Terms. For businesses that enable the Conversions API Gateway, this JavaScript tag will send events to both Meta and the Conversions API Gateway through a secure connection (HTTPS) every time the Meta Pixel is fired from the browser.

Conversions API Gateway

The Conversions API Gateway is a standalone Meta product hosted on a cloud provider's App Runner instance. It is provisioned within a cloud provider's account owned by the business. It is composed of two main modules:

  • One middleware module in charge of receiving incoming events from browsers, transforming those browser events to Conversions API events, sending events to Meta through the Conversions API connection
  • One admin portal (web UI) where businesses can administer, maintain and monitor their Conversions API Gateway server instance

Conversions API Gateway Admin UI

The Conversions API Gateway provides a user interface with the product. You can access this UI from “https://<Conversions API Gateway Endpoint>/hub/capig” (i.e., the Conversions API Gateway endpoint that you have configured in DNS).

From this UI, you can see:

  • Connected Pixels: You can close and open connections for different Meta Pixels.
  • Event Activity: You can see event volume received by Meta from both channels, pixel and the Conversions API Gateway.
  • Conversions API Success Rate: You can see what is the percentage of events received from browser published to Meta.
  • Notifications: Be notified of product updates and update the Conversions API Gateway software.

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