Event Match Quality

Event Match Quality (EMQ) is a score in Meta Events Manager that rates, on a scale from 0 to 10, how well Meta can match the events from your Conversion API to a specific Facebook or Instagram account. The higher the score, the more conversions Meta can attribute to its ads – and the better the algorithm learns.

How the score works

For each event, Meta evaluates which customer information parameters you send and how often they match an account. Typical parameters are:

• Email address and phone number (protected by hashing)
• First and last name
• fbc (derived from the ad's fbclid) and fbp (the Meta Pixel browser ID)
• IP address, user agent, external ID

An event that only contains IP and user agent usually scores low. Add email, phone number and fbc, and the score goes up significantly.

Example

A coaching business sends its Lead event through the browser pixel only. Meta receives fbp, IP and user agent, and the score sits at 4.2. After the business also sends the Lead event server-side with hashed email, phone number, name and fbc, Event Match Quality rises to 7.8. Meta can now match far more leads to the right ads.

Event Match Quality in lead generation

A high score is especially valuable in lead generation: forms collect exactly the data Meta needs for matching. It gets even better when you send back not only the lead but also later deals from your CRM – those events are matched via email and phone number as well.

The LeadMetrics Conversion API sends events to Meta with SHA-256 hashed email, phone number and name, plus the click IDs fbc and fbp. These are exactly the parameters Event Match Quality rates. You can see the score itself in Meta Events Manager.

Common mistakes

• Data not normalized: ‘Max@Company.com ’ with capitals and a trailing space produces a different hash than ‘max@company.com’ – the match fails.
• Phone number without country code: ‘(555) 123…’ instead of ‘1555123…’ often isn't recognized.
• Only watching the score: A high score on an unimportant event like PageView doesn't help if your Lead event matches poorly.