What is an fbclid?
An fbclid is the click identifier Meta adds to your landing URL when someone clicks a Facebook or Instagram ad. Captured at the enquiry, it lets a later booking or payment be sent to Meta and matched to the click.
Updated
The fbclid for gyms
Click a Facebook or Instagram ad and the landing URL arrives with ?fbclid= and a long code on the end. Meta generated it for that one click. It is the Meta equivalent of Google’s gclid, with one difference that matters: Meta does not publish what the code means, so nothing on your side can decode it. It is a key, not a label.
Why the pixel must see it: the fbclid lives in the landing URL for the length of one page load. Something has to read it there and store it against the visitor before they submit the form or leave. Lose it to a redirect, a link shortener or a form hosted somewhere else and the click cannot be recognized later. The Meta pixel reads it automatically for its own purposes; your tracking needs its own copy, stored against the enquiry.
For a gym the payoff comes weeks later. The consult gets booked, the person shows, the membership is paid for at the desk. Sent to Meta through the Conversions API with the fbclid attached, each of those becomes a conversion Meta can match to the original click, so the campaign is credited with a member and Meta’s delivery learns from it. Without the fbclid, Meta relies on matching the person’s hashed email or phone, which works when the details are consistent and fails when they are not.
One limit: the fbclid does not carry the campaign name. To know which campaign and ad the click came from, the ad-level URL parameters have to be set as well; see UTM parameters.
Where this sits in Adsu
Adsu’s pixel records the fbclid on the visit alongside the campaign parameters, and the send-back exists: Booked, showed and paid go back to Google as offline conversions and to Meta through the Conversions API. Adsu counts verified stages only: if a stage cannot be verified, it is not counted.
How Meta matches an event to a click is Meta’s business. Adsu’s part is that the stage is true before it goes, and that every campaign at every location reports the same way. Every report is one line per campaign per location.
Questions, answered.
Both are click IDs added to a landing URL, one by Meta and one by Google. The gclid can be imported back to Google Ads with a conversion attached; the fbclid plays the same role for events sent to Meta through the Conversions API. Neither identifies a person; both identify one click.
You can strip it, and some redirect tools and CMS plugins do so by default, but the click then cannot be recognized later. Leave it on the landing URL, make sure the page loads with it intact, and have your tracking store it at the enquiry. It does no harm to the page.
Not on its own. It is an opaque key that only Meta can decode. To see the campaign, ad set and ad in your own records, add URL parameters at the ad level so they land alongside the fbclid. The fbclid identifies the click; the parameters describe it.
Related
A gclid, Google click ID, is the unique code Google Ads adds to your landing URL when someone clicks an ad. Why the pixel must see it and how Adsu uses it.
Meta pixelThe Meta pixel, formerly the Facebook pixel, is a piece of code on your website that tells Meta what visitors do there. Why it stops at the form for a gym.
Meta Conversions APIThe Meta Conversions API, CAPI, is the server-side way to send events to Meta, from your systems instead of a browser. What a gym sends through it.
UTM parametersUTM parameters are five tags added to a link that tell your tracking where a visit came from. The five keys, and how a gym sets them for Google and Meta.
The proof
- Net members
- +21
- Lifetime value added
- $67,000+
Bobby & Maria Gasdia, Big Day Fitness, 2 locations
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