Custom Events
Think of custom events as you setting up a "Hey, look at this!" moment on your site or app. You decide what specific actions you want to track—like someone clicking that shiny “Sign Up” button, submitting a form, or watching a video. You add a little code (the Facebook Pixel), and boom, you’ve got data rolling in about those specific interactions.
Why You’d Use It: You want to track unique behaviors that go beyond the standard stuff (like purchases or page views). Maybe you want to know how many people are clicking a special link or playing your product demo video.
How to Set It Up: It’s a custom code snippet added to your site to track those particular moments. You can use this data for building audiences or optimizing your ads.
Example: Track when users click “Play” on a video.
Curious about how to set up a custom event in Meta? Check out this article
Custom Conversions
Now, custom conversions are your "I need to track something super specific from this" tool. Instead of manually adding new code, you build on top of an existing event or URL. Let’s say you’re already tracking purchases—now you want to track just the purchases that are over $100. That’s where custom conversions come in. You make a rule that says, “Show me purchases that are more than 100 bucks,” and Meta does the rest.
Why You’d Use It: You want more granularity. It’s like taking existing tracking data and making it work for very specific outcomes (without adding more code).
How to Set It Up: Go to Meta Events Manager, create a custom conversion based on an existing event or URL, and define your rule. Done and done.
Example: Only track purchases over $100.
Curious about how to set up a custom conversion in Meta? Check out this article
Quick Recap:
Custom Events: You’re setting up a whole new interaction to track.
Custom Conversions: You’re getting more specific about what matters within an existing event.
How to find your custom event and custom conversion metrics in Motion
You'll just need to scroll down to your table chart in your report, hit "custom" > "customize columns" > type in the metric name in the search bar > select the metric you want to add > hit "apply" to save your changes > hit "save" in the top right of your report to ensure the changes are set on the report level as well!
While Motion does currently support custom event and custom conversion metrics within our reporting solution, due to Meta’s API limitations we do not support visibility on custom metrics at this time.