Solved: Facebook Ads Events Not Appearing on Reports

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! I had a look at your question and I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts.

It's a common and bloody frustrating problem to have, seeing events fire in the Events Manager but not having them show up in your reports. The short answer is that you're not missing a simple toggle or setting. The issue is a bit deeper and is a direct result of Apple's big privacy changes a while back. But the good news is, understanding why this happens actually reveals a much better way to think about and structure your campaigns for proper growth. Let's get into it.

We'll need to look at... why your data went missing (Hint: Blame Apple)

A couple of years ago, the world of digital advertising got a proper shake-up. Apple rolled out its iOS 14.5 update, which included a new feature called App Tracking Transparency (ATT). In plain English, it meant every app (including Facebook and Instagram) now has to explicitly ask users for permission to track their activity across other apps and websites. And, no surprise, a huge number of people said "no, thanks".

This was a massive blow to Meta, as it meant they lost a huge amount of data they used to rely on for targeting and reporting. Their workaround is something called Aggregated Event Measurement, or AEM. This is the root of your problem. AEM is a system designed to measure web events from people on these newer iOS devices, but it comes with some serious limitations.

The biggest limitation is that for each domain, you can now only configure and prioritise a maximum of 8 standard or custom conversion events. And here's the kicker: when a user who has opted out of tracking visits your site and performs several actions, Meta's system will now only record and report on the one event that you've ranked as the highest priority.

Think of it like a hierarchy. Let's say your event priority is set up like this:

1. Purchase (Highest Priority)
2. Initiate Checkout
3. Add to Cart
4. View Content (Lowest of these four)

If a user lands on your site, views a product, adds it to their cart, and then completes the purchase, the old pixel would have reported all three actions. But under AEM, because 'Purchase' is your number one priority, that's the only event that gets sent back to your Ads Manager for that user's journey. The 'View Content' and 'Add to Cart' events are essentially invisible in your reports for that specific user. Your campaign is optimised for one event, and that's the main one Meta will focus on showing you. It's not a bug; it's a feature of this new, privacy-first landscape.

I'd say you... should stop caring about the vanity metrics anyway

So, now you know the technical reason. But here's the more important strategic point: you shouldn't really be worrying about seeing those lower-funnel events in your main conversion campaign report anyway. This is a bit of a contrarian view, but it's one born from managing millions in ad spend. Obsessing over micro-conversions like 'Page Views' or even 'Adds to Cart' in a campaign designed to get sales is a distraction that can lead you to make poor decisions.

You have to remember how the Meta algorithm works. When you set a campaign objective to 'Sales' and choose 'Purchase' as your conversion event, you are giving the world's most powerful advertising machine one single, crystal-clear instruction: "Go and find me people who are most likely to buy my product." The algorithm then uses trillions of data points to find users who exhibit behaviours similar to your existing customers. It learns, it adapts, and it gets better over time at finding buyers.

If you were to optimise for 'Add to Cart' instead, you're giving it a different instruction: "Go and find me people who like to add things to their cart." And it will do exactly that. You might get a flood of 'Adds to Cart' and feel like the campaign is a massive success, but you'll likely find your actual sales numbers are poor. You've just paid to find a bunch of window shoppers. I've seen this happen time and time again. Tbh it's one of the most common mistakes people make.

The best brand awareness, the best engagement, the best of everything comes from a transaction. A sale is the ultimate signal of intent and value. Your primary goal should be to feed the algorithm with as many of those high-quality signals as possible. Everything else is secondary. Focusing on the final, most valuable action simplifies your reporting and aligns your ad spend with your actual business goals, not vanity metrics.

You probably should... structure your account by the funnel

"But I still want to know what's happening at each stage of the journey!" I hear you say. And that's fair. The solution isn't to try and track everything in a single campaign; it's to build seperate campaigns that are *designed* for each stage of the customer journey. This is the classic ToFu/MoFu/BoFu (Top, Middle, Bottom of Funnel) structure, and it works wonders for clarity and performance.

Here's how you'd set it up:

• ToFu (Top of Funnel) - Prospecting: This is where you find new people who've never heard of you. Your goal here is introduction. You'd use broad audiences, interest targeting, and maybe lookalike audiences built from your best customers. The objective for these campaigns should still be your final conversion event (e.g., Purchase), because you want to teach the algorithm from day one what a good customer looks like. Don't expect amazing returns here; the job of this campaign is to feed your other funnels.


• MoFu (Middle of Funnel) - Consideration: This campaign is for people who've shown some interest but haven't taken a key action yet. You'll be retargeting people who have visited your website, watched a certain percentage of your videos, or engaged with your social media profiles. You exclude anyone who has already purchased or reached the checkout page. Here, you might show them testimonials, case studies, or different product angles to nudge them further down the path.


• BoFu (Bottom of Funnel) - Conversion: This is where the money is made. This campaign is exclusively for people who are on the verge of buying. You'll retarget people who have added a product to their cart, initiated checkout, or added their payment info but didn't complete the purchase. The messaging here is direct: maybe a reminder, a small discount, or a message about scarcity to get them over the line. These audiences are small but incredibly valuable.

By structuring your account this way, you gain full visibility. You no longer need to see 'Add to Cart' in your prospecting campaign report, because you have an entire campaign dedicated to people who added to cart. It's a much cleaner, more scalable, and more logical way to manage your advertising. You can see exactly where users are dropping off and allocate your budget to the part of the funnel that needs the most attention.

You'll need... to understand the maths that actually matters

Once you have this structure in place, the final piece of the puzzle is to shift your mindset from "What's my cost per click?" to "How much can I profitably afford to spend to acquire a customer?" The answer to this lies in calculating your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

Most people get scared by this, but the basic formula is straightforward. You just need a few numbers from your business:

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): How much does a typical customer spend with you per month?
• Gross Margin %: What is your profit margin on that revenue?
• Monthly Churn Rate %: What percentage of customers do you lose each month?

The calculation is then: LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

This concept was critical for a subscription box client of ours. By focusing on profitability metrics like Return On Ad Spend, we helped them achieve a 1000% return on their Meta Ads campaigns. The key was understanding what they could afford to spend to acquire a customer. Let's walk through a similar example. Say a subscription box costs £50/month, your gross margin is 70%, and you lose 5% of your customers each month. Your LTV would be (£50 * 0.70) / 0.05 = £35 / 0.05 = £700. Each customer is worth £700 in gross margin to your business over their lifetime.

This number is your superpower. A healthy business can typically afford to spend about one-third of its LTV to acquire a customer. This is your target Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). In this example, your target CAC would be £700 / 3 = ~£233. Suddenly, seeing a £100 cost per purchase in your Ads Manager doesn't seem so scary, does it? It looks like a bargain, just as it did for our client when they realised they could spend more to acquire a customer and still be highly profitable.

I know this is a lot to take in, especially when you started with what seemed like a simple reporting question. But the reality of paid advertising today is that the technical details are often symptoms of a deeper strategic issue. The advertisers who succeed are the ones who understand the platform's limitations, structure their accounts for clarity, and focus relentlessly on the business maths that drives profitability.

To sum it all up, here are the actionable steps I'd recommend based on everything we've covered.

This is the main advice I have for you:

Implementing these changes will take you from being confused by your reports to having a clear, scalable system for growing your business with Meta Ads. It's not just about fixing a reporting issue; it's about building a proper advertising engine.

Navigating all this can be complex, and getting it wrong can be expensive. This is where professional expertise can make a huge difference. We specialise in implementing these kinds of advanced strategies for our clients, taking the guesswork out of the process and focusing on what drives real results.

If you'd like to discuss how we could apply this thinking to your specific business, I'd be happy to offer you a free, no-obligation consultation call. We can go through your account together and identify the biggest opportunities for growth.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh