Ever visited a website only to have ads for the business magically follow you as you browse other sites and social media platforms? To know exactly how that works, you need to get acquainted with marketing pixels (also known as tracking pixels).
But what is a tracking pixel? It’s a minute tracking code that allows you to gather valuable information about website visitors. Use them properly, and these tiny bits of code can transform your digital ad campaigns, optimise your website, and even increase online conversions.
To get the best return on investment, you need promotional campaigns that work. Tracking pixels highlight which marketing messages are performing best and which are less effective – meaning you can spend your budget more wisely. Now you know the benefits, it’s time to learn more about marketing pixels – are they all the same? What are the benefits of each? And how does a tracking pixel work? Read on for answers to these and other questions.
Table of contents
What is the difference between a marketing pixel and a cookie?
What are the most common types of tracking pixels?
What are the most common ad platforms using pixel tracking?
Why do marketing pixels matter?
What are the benefits of pixel tracking?
What are the downsides of pixel tracking?
How can you track pixel performance?
What are marketing pixels?
Marketing pixels are 1×1 images placed into the code of a webpage, email, or banner ad. They may be small, but these codes do a lot of work – from measuring campaign performance to tracking conversions. Knowing what actions visitors make allows you to automatically build audiences based on behaviour and send people ads that are most relevant to them.
Pixel tracking identifies webpage views after an ad or other marketing campaign. In other words, it can tell you which ads attendees viewed before registering for your event. These minuscule pieces of code tell you where users are and if they’re on their phones or computers.
With tracking pixels, you know if more of your registrants are coming from Facebook, Twitter, or paid search on Google. Plus, they enable you to break it down further to see which time of the day provides the best return on investment and which audiences engage the most.
What is the difference between a marketing pixel and a cookie?
You may have heard of both of these terms and wondered if they refer to the same thing. Pixels and cookies do similar jobs, but there are crucial differences.
Both marketing pixels and cookies track behaviour, and activity, across websites, and serve ads based on user data. A vital difference is, tracking pixels allow your marketing to work seamlessly across various platforms by following customers across devices. Cookies can’t do that. Being saved in an individual’s browser, such as Google Chrome, users have the choice to block or clear them. The stored information in cookies can make logging in faster, but if a person decides to delete the cookies from their browser, all that data is lost.
The beauty of pixels is they send information directly to the server, meaning they can’t be easily disabled, blocked or cleared. Targeting your advertising to your audience’s behaviour gets the correct information to the right customer. And it can happen quickly. Not only does your advertising follow users across social platforms and devices, but the tracking pixels enable you to learn more about your audience – a priceless asset in your marketing campaign.
What are the most common types of tracking pixels?
Essentially tracking pixels can be broken down into three major categories. Each has important properties.
Retargeting pixels
Have you ever seen those trainers you were checking out start to appear on websites and social platforms when you browse? That’s retargeting!
Retargeting pixels track visitors to your website. If they leave without taking the desired action, like making a purchase, retargeting pixels allow you to send ad campaigns as a reminder.
Conversion pixels
These kick in once a purchase is complete. Conversion pixels track sales (or any other defined conversion metric) from your ad campaign, helping you to evaluate its success. To optimise data collection, conversion pixels sit in the code of the order confirmation page.
Facebook pixel
A Facebook pixel is a unique code placed on your website that interacts with your Facebook Ads. It allows you to track Facebook ad conversions, build your target audience, and remarket visitors to your website.
By tracking users as they interact with your business, a Facebook pixel reminds them to revisit their shopping baskets and make a purchase. In addition, it monitors a wealth of analytical data gleaned from activity on your website, like searches made, successful purchases, registration forms completed, and free trials started.
What are the most common ad platforms using pixel tracking?
There are many platforms out there using pixel advertising, but here are some of the most notable players:
Website analytics (Google & Adobe)
Adding analytical tracking codes to your website collects data on your audience and their behaviour. Metric reports provide information including, who’s visiting your site, where they live, the devices they use, which channels bring them to your site, and the action they’re taking.
Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads pixels help you target your adverts to specific people or groups based on pages they did or didn’t visit and when they visited them. They also measure the number of people who completed the desired action on your website.
You can track users’ actions after they see or engage with your ads on Twitter. This lets you see conversions via the last link click of your Twitter ad and other types of ad engagements, such as retweets, likes, and impressions.
Email tracking
These tracking pixels, embedded in the header or footer of an email, are designed to understand how recipients behave. The codes help you identify which subscribers are more likely to take action. It’s a simple way to make your email marketing campaign more personalised.
How does pixel tracking work?
In simple terms, tracking pixels are embedded deep in the HTML code of a website, advert, or email. When a person loads this website, advert, or email into their browser, the tracking pixels’ code gets processed and links to the pixel server. Because all action is collected and reported, you can access valuable information on your visitors to better understand them. The server counts the number of times a pixel is retrieved by sending a tap to the user’s unique IP address and logging it.
It’s no mistake that tracking pixels are minute enough to be hidden in the background. Being so small, they’re not a part of the user experience and don’t cause a distraction from your website or email content.
Why do marketing pixels matter?
Pixels give you access to invaluable data. The information gathered helps you understand more about your website’s visitors, letting you test iterations and improve marketing efforts. Ultimately, having this insight into your audience and their behaviour leads to a more successful advertising campaign and generates new sales.
Pixels are a way to continue the conversation through paid ads after people have left your site – especially if they didn’t complete a desired or expected action, like making a purchase. In marketing, any continuity with a potential audience is a competitive advantage.
Tracking pixels have a range of uses. Examples include:
- Accurate reporting
- Analysing email data, including open rates and click rates
- Tracking ad impressions
- Highlighting behaviours and patterns
- Comparing conversion rates for ad campaigns
- Optimising ads across platforms
- Identifying bots
Retargeting pixels matter because they monitor what people pay attention to online. Keeping them interested in products previously seen allows you to tailor your ads based on their activity.
Conversion pixels matter because they allow you to see purchases made and actions completed. These could be:
- Filling in a form
- Watching a video
- Sharing a post on social media
- Clicking a Call to Action
What are the benefits of pixel tracking?
Get the most bang for your marketing buck
The beauty of digital marketing, especially using tracking pixels, is that you know when your audience takes action because of an ad. Then, you can compare channels to see which efforts drive the most traffic.
More importantly, you can see which channels result in the most purchases. Maybe Instagram has increased potential as a great traffic driver, but ticket sales remain static. With that information, you can make data-driven decisions to focus more of your budget on an alternative social media platform instead.
Experiment to get your content and messaging just right
Tracking pixels can also help you identify which marketing copy and images resonate with potential attendees. Is an ad with a GIF working well? Do you need to improve your CTA? Are your headlines grabbing attention?
Use A/B testing to understand which ads perform best. Once you have the answers to these questions, you can optimise your online ad spending.
Stay in the know
Choosing a ticketing platform with detailed reporting about your tracking pixels means you can see marketing performance in real-time and make quick adjustments.
In seconds, you can see:
- How many impressions a digital ad received
- How many purchases were driven by your emails
- If Facebook or Google is driving more sales
This data helps you provide a more personalised user experience. It can also help power retargeting campaigns since you can reach back out to users who visited your page, but haven’t completed a conversion.
What are the downsides of pixel tracking?
Pixel tracking needs to be used correctly. Because pixels gather information about a user without their knowledge, there could potentially be issues around data protection. Some people feel they violate user privacy and give spammers easier access to personal data. The key is to respect your users and always give them the option to opt out of tracking. And remember, you only need to collect information that you’re actually going to use.
Every time a user visits your website, the pixel needs to be loaded and embedded into your page – potentially affecting website speed. Limiting the number of pixels you use, making them smaller, or placing them near the bottom of your page reduces the impact on site speed. Focus on quality, not quantity.
As with most digital marketing tools, pixel tracking is affected by changing technologies. Advertising platforms usually give instructions for installation, but check they’re suitable for your system. Issues like piggybacking, where a third party tags their tracking pixels onto yours, may affect website performance. Getting advice from an experienced website developer on which pixels to insert and how they can be added, removed, and audited will save you time and money.
How can you track pixel performance?
Ad platforms allow you to track and analyse the success of your paid advertisements. These reports show how your paid advertisements perform so you can determine:
1) if they target the right audience
2) if the budget allocation is accurate for each ad you run
With conversion pixels, you can see all purchase data reported in the dashboard of the ad platform you use, including post-click and post-view.
- Post-click refers to users who clicked your ads and made a purchase. It can be in the same session as the click or within a set period after the click.
- Post-view refers to users who viewed an ad, failed to click through, but then made a purchase later.
With your retargeting pixel, it’s imperative to evaluate the size of your retargeting segments to understand how many prospective users you can go after to bring them back to your site.
Time to get tracking
Now that you know why these tiny snippets of code are so important, it’s time to reap the benefits of marketing pixels. Look forward to a better understanding of your website visitors, smarter choices with your marketing efforts, and the potential for increased sales. First, you need tools to accurately track your marketing channels. Check out how Eventbrite Boost can help you market your event.
