If you’re using Facebook ads, the Facebook pixel is a huge asset.
You should be using this key tool to realize the full potential of your social ad budget. With a little learning under your belt, you can use the pixel to gain major advantages for your results.
Facebook Pixel refers to code on a website that measures an advertising campaign’s effectiveness by interpreting the actions visitors take on the website.
In other words, the Facebook Pixel is an analytics tool that helps you track the conversion rate generated from Facebook ads and builds the target audience for future ads. Businesses can use it to ensure that their ads go to the right people.
It sounds a little weird, right? We train horses, dogs, sometimes dragons…
But a snippet of code is a whole other animal.
Training your pixel means that you don’t run a campaign with the purpose of getting a huge profit but rather to find the right audience. When you find the right audience, conversions should naturally follow.
The only conversion that you can optimize for without a pixel is link clicks. On the other hand, a pixel makes it possible for you to optimize a variety of conversion types in close alignment with the goals and aims of the business.
The Facebook pixel allows you to gain insight into how people interact with your website and allows you to track customers across the various devices. To put it simply, it can track whether the customers saw your ads on mobile and turned to the desktop before making a purchase, or the other way around.
It’s the real brains of your Facebook advertising operation.
To sum up, training your pixel is essential because it creates a customized audience that will most likely convert and turn into a lead by learning about your audience.
This brings us to the next point.
The Facebook ads delivery system uses machine learning to optimize for results. The delivery system collects more insights about the right target audience each time one of your Facebook ads is displayed (or as ad pros say, “served”).
You’ll know that your ad is in the learning phase because the Delivery column in your ads manager will indicate the ad set is “Learning.”
The learning phase is a critical time for Facebook’s machine learning to kick in and collect helpful information that will help you optimize your campaign. Thanks to the learning phase, you can get information that can take your ads from running on your assumptions to running on a data-backed hypothesis.
The learning phase is typically defined by 50 conversions that need to occur per ad set within one week’s time. Sometimes this number might be more, sometimes less, depending on your particular niche. We like to say 50 is a good rule of thumb, but not a magic number.
Now this part is important. It might go against your instincts to tweak and optimize, but during the learning phase you should avoid changing any of the following:
You can’t touch these!
Because if you do, Facebook will start the whoooole thing over again. Basically, by trying to tweak with variables during the learning phase you’re not allowing Facebook the chance to properly learn.
It would be like introducing a new topic in math class every day and expecting a student to master the information on the fly. Not fair.
At this time, Facebook has had the chance to explore all the best possible options to deliver your ad set.
Each time your ad was shown, the delivery system learned how to optimize your ad’s performance. This in turn helps you learn what ad strategies are working for your business and which ones you can toss out.
If you don’t get past the learning phase, Facebook will let you know that the ad set came back as “Learning Limited” — the ad set is not getting the required number of conversions for optimization or the system predicts that the ad set won’t be able to garner enough optimization events in the coming future.
It’s not the end of the world, but it does mean you’ll have to try again with a different ad set. We really value failure here, so even though Facebook comes back as “learning limited,” it’s definitely possible for you, the advertiser, to make educated adjustments to your ad creative to improve on future ads.
👍 If you’re not getting to that 50 conversion benchmark for purchases, try moving up the funnel and adjusting your ads for things like link click, page views, etc. That way you’re more likely to get the ad set through the learning phase and you’re getting more eyes on your ads (always a good thing). Once you’re optimized for top of funnel conversions, you’ll be better set up for bottom of funnel conversions.
👍 Run fewer ad sets in the beginning of your process. Remember: quality over quantity! If you have a limited budget, focus on a few key ad sets early on that you can really get through the learning phase as quickly as possible with a solid basis for scaling your ads for conversions.
👍 If you're not getting whatever the objective is that you’re going after, it could be that your ad creative just isn't hitting right with your target audience. So try testing new ad creative. Try out creating multiple ads, changing up the headline, making other bold changes to the ads before you enter the learning phase and see if any of these succeed.
Just like training a dog, training your Facebook pixel takes a lot of time, flexibility, and patience. But if you stick with it and make it through that learning phase to start optimizing, your pixel will be able to fetch you better results. 
With over 10 years of experience and 80 million in ad spend under our belts, we know how to guide businesses from fizzle to sizzle.
Founder of Xylem Woodworks
Founder of Fusion Belts
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Co-founder, Qeepsake
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Cofounder, Trust & Will
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Media and Marketing Coordinator at Altis
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