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This Thursday, November 12, Meta changes how it counts the sales your ads bring in.
A Pixel setting called “Measure conversions on customer devices” is already switched on by default.
So on Thursday, your reported conversions may climb, your CPA may drop, and your ROAS may look better, while your store sells exactly what it would have sold anyway.
That lands 15 days before Black Friday, the week your team will be quickest to read a better number as proof the holiday ads are working.
I think Meta is mostly catching real sales here. The risk is in how you read your numbers afterward, and the fix takes about two minutes today.
For a long time, I judged an ESP by its feature list… But for Q4, it’s backwards. Let me explain:
A feature list is what you compare in a demo. Operations are what you live with once peak starts.
Four things decide how that stretch goes:
1. Creative that stays current, with designs synced in from Figma or Canva and a countdown timer built into the email builder
2. Segments that update in real time and sync to your Meta and Google audiences
3. Reporting you can read while a send is still going out, with email, SMS, and push in one place
4. A person who answers when something breaks, at any hour of the sale
Omnisend is the platform where all four sit in one account.
Meta Is Changing How It Counts
To give an ad credit for a sale, Meta has to connect two things: the person who saw your ad and the person who bought on your site.
Today it makes that match mostly on its own servers, using data your site sends through the Meta Pixel, the tracking code on your store.
Some sales never get matched. Ad blockers, privacy settings and cleared cookies can stop that data from reaching Meta, so the purchase happens and no ad gets credit.
The new setting adds a second way to make the match, on the shopper’s own phone or computer.
It uses details the shopper already gave your store, like an email address, plus temporary data from the device.
Meta says all it learns is that a purchase happened and which campaign should get credit.
The rules for how long after an ad a sale can be credited, and which ad gets it, stay the same. Your Pixel and server-side tracking keep working as they do today.
Check two limits. The setting doesn’t run for shoppers in the EU or the UK.
Meta’s help pages also say it only works on sites where shoppers log in with an email or phone number, so if a big share of your orders come through guest checkout, it may barely touch your numbers.
To see whether it’s on, open Events Manager, click Data sources, choose your pixel and go to Settings.
Same Sales Can Look Like Growth
Here’s the problem Meta won’t spell out for you.
When Meta catches more sales under the same crediting rules, your results improve on their own. Spend stays flat. Real orders stay flat.
Here’s an illustrative example of how that plays out:
Before November 12
Spend: $22,000
Meta-reported purchases: 400
CPA: $22,000 ÷ 400 = $55
After November 12
Spend: $22,000
Meta-reported purchases: 440
CPA: $22,000 ÷ 440 = $50
Same budget. Same orders in your store. CPA looks 9% better.
If your team scales budgets off CPA targets, that 9% could push more money into ads that didn’t change at all.
Meta hasn’t said whether these recovered sales carry their order value, which decides whether ROAS moves too. It also hasn’t said whether these purchases feed the algorithm’s bidding or only show up in your reports.
This is the second setting Meta has switched on by default in under a month, after in-app product browsing turned on in running ads on October 28. Both land right before the busiest buying weeks of the year.
A jump in ROAS during the week before Black Friday is exactly what your team wants to see.
Without a clear before-and-after marker, nobody can tell whether the ads got better or Meta started counting differently.
Two Steps Before Thursday
The setting can stay on. What you need is a baseline from before it starts.
> Step one: record where you stand today. Check the toggle on each pixel and write down whether it’s on. Then pull the last 30 days of Meta-reported purchases and the actual orders in your store for the same period.
Divide the first by the second:
Meta-reported purchases ÷ store orders = your ratio
Illustrative example:
400 ÷ 1,000 = 0.40
That ratio is your starting point. Save it in a spreadsheet with today’s date in the file name, since a dashboard someone edits later can’t prove what it showed before.
> Step two: split your reporting on November 12. Mark which numbers come from before that date and which come after. When December budget decisions come around, judge Meta on that ratio over the raw purchase count. The ratio is the one number that still means the same thing after the counting changes.
Whether you keep the setting on is your call. These recovered purchases are plausibly real sales your ads drove, and I’d expect plenty of brands to reasonably leave it on.
Decide on purpose, and mark the date so your before and after stay separate.
Do This Today
Four things, and none of them take long:
1. Check the toggle on each pixel and note whether it’s on.
2. Write down your 30-day ratio of Meta purchases to store orders.
3. Add a November 12 note to the dashboards your team checks.
4. Tell whoever reviews your Black Friday results that Meta’s purchase count works differently starting Thursday.
Meta’s about to give your ads credit for sales it couldn’t see before. Save today’s number so you can still tell which growth is real.
If you want a growth partner aligned with your real business goals, let’s chat.
I appreciate you reading and as always if there's anything I can do to help you in anyway just respond to this email. I personally respond to every email I get.
- Kody ✌️
