Blog
Pixel, sales, and match quality
Practical notes on server-side tracking for Meta — what to send, what to measure, what still leaks.
Agentic commerce
AI shopping agents break Meta attribution — here's what actually changes
Agentic commerce starts in a chat window, not an ad click. What that breaks in your Meta tracking, what still works, and what to instrument today.
Aug 30, 2026
Architecture
Conversions API without Google Tag Manager: when a tagging server is the wrong tool
Server-side GTM is the standard answer for CAPI, but it is not the right answer for every store. An honest comparison of the tagging-server route and the managed-API route.
Explainer
_fbp and _fbc cookies explained: the browser half of Event Match Quality
What the _fbp and _fbc cookies are, how they raise Meta match rates, why they are fragile, and how to keep their value when browsers and checkouts strip them away.
AI visibility
llms.txt for e-commerce stores: what it is and whether you need one
A plain-English guide to llms.txt for store owners: what the file does, what it doesn't do, what to put in it, and an honest take on whether it's worth publishing.
How-to
How to measure ChatGPT-referred purchases (without guessing)
Identify ChatGPT referrals, persist first-touch attribution across the session, and stamp it on your server-side Purchase event so you can segment in analytics and Meta.
Meta ads
Meta Andromeda: why signal quality decides your CPA now
Andromeda is the AI retrieval engine behind Meta ad selection. It learns from the conversions you send — thin or duplicated signal now costs you real money.
Shopify
Shopify Checkout Extensibility: what died on August 26, 2026 and how to keep tracking Purchases
Shopify auto-upgraded every non-Plus store to Checkout Extensibility. Additional Scripts stopped executing, and Meta Purchase tracking broke silently. Here is what changed and the three ways to fix it.
Debugging
Meta Purchase events missing on Shopify: 7 causes, in checking order
A diagnostic checklist for Shopify stores whose Meta Purchase events dropped or disappeared. Seven causes, ordered by likelihood in 2026, each with how to check and how to fix.
Explainer
Shopify's Web Pixels sandbox, explained for advertisers
Custom Pixels run in an isolated worker with a restricted API. Here is what the sandbox can and cannot do, why Shopify built it that way, and what it means for your Meta tracking.
Match Forecast
Know if Meta will recognize this sale — before the campaign spends
Meta’s match score arrives late and averaged. Caply scores how likely Meta is to recognize this sale the moment we send it — plus dollars sitting in unmatched checkouts.
Radar
See how a competitor tracks ads — next to yours
Agencies screenshot competitor source like it’s 2014. Caply fetches the public page, flags tracking helpers, and stores the last scan per URL.
Ads Coach
Ads Coach tells you what’s breaking tracking. ChatGPT does not.
A score from whether sales arrived, whether checkout had email, and whether purchases have a dollar value — then optional prose on top of those numbers. Not a wrapper around an Ads Manager export.
Match quality
Meta cannot find buyers it cannot recognize
If a purchase has no email or phone, Advantage+ is guessing. Here is the order to fix it — and how Caply scores the same sale before Events Manager wakes up.
iOS
iOS did not “break Facebook ads.” It hid the Pixel.
Privacy prompts, Safari, and blockers still drop browser purchases. Server-side tracking with hashed email is what still reports. One-click Meta tracking that only mirrors the Pixel inherits the hole.
Debug
Pixel not firing: stop starting in Ads Manager
Empty Events Manager is a site problem first. View source, then the network tab, then duplicates. Caply’s scanner does the first two.
Deduplication
Stop Ads Manager counting the same sale twice
When the thank-you page still loads, Meta can count the Pixel and the server event as two purchases. Give both sides the same checkout ID.
Next.js
Meta sees the sale once in Next.js — not twice, not never
One setup: the Pixel in the browser, the purchase from the server. Developers: the App Router install is in /docs.
Architecture
Server-side tracking is not ‘more tags.’ It is checkout truth.
When server-side tracking is mandatory, when the Pixel still matters, and why a webhook with no email is worse than an honest Pixel.