Hi there,
I am wondering what the pros and cons are of the Meta CAPI Gateway versus the Facbook & Instagram app that Meta is providing which also sends through web and CAPI events. Does anyone of you know? This will help me in making the proper choice for my clients.
Thanks in advance!
I assume you’re referring to Shopify?
If so - then there isn’t much difference between applying Meta and using Gateway.
With Gateway you have a bit more protection from adblockers + control over the events you send and their payload. In Meta you can only turn tracking on or off - there is minimal control and management.
But if Meta (or any other platform) is a large and important source of traffic - it’s definitely worth investing in sGTM tracking implements - it provides full protection from adblockers, bypasses ITP (Safari) restrictions and gives you full control over what and with what payload you send.
Hope this helps.
Sorry, I was indeed referring to Shopify! Thanks for the answer!
So if I understand correctly you can fully control the payload when using the Gateway? So more more customer /event parameters could be sent along?
Why does Gateway give you more protection from adblockers?
Quite some traffic is indeed coming from Meta. Why does sGTM give you better protection from adblockers/ITP then the Gateway/Meta app?
Thanks again!
So if I understand correctly you can fully control the payload when using the Gateway? So more more customer /event parameters could be sent along?
All Gateways work on a web event basis. That is, if you have configured somewhere (in GTM / in the site code / etc.) web events for Meta - with their help you can control what and how it is sent including through Gateway + GW has a separate interface where you can track additionally the collection of events and a small number of settings on them.
Why does Gateway give you more protection from adblockers?
You can proxy fbevents.js and thus protect it from being blocked. In the application you don’t have any options at all.
Why does sGTM give you better protection from adblockers/ITP then the Gateway/Meta app?
Gateway and Meta app are not helping you in any way with ITP at this point. Maybe this will change in the future, but for now it is. With sGTM you have many options to bypass ITP restrictions: CookieKeeper / own CDN / same origin, etc.
Adblockers, especially advanced ones, will block any application, including Gateway since it uses known patterns.
With sGTM you can use custom loader power-up which gets rid of patterns completely, i.e. blocking such requests through adblocker is actually not possible.
Gateway is a great solution if you don’t have the resources to do full CAPI integration and is generally designed for small businesses.
But if you invest large budgets in Meta advertising or Meta is an important source - tracking is extremely important for its effectiveness and it is better to do it with full-fledged CAPI integration.
This way you will provide the maximum amount of data in Meta → your ads work and are optimised more efficiently.