Meta will count more sales from Nov 12. Check it first.

From November 12, Meta will count more of your sales unless you tell it not to. Your ads won't change that day, but your reported sales may jump, and the extra sales won't show up in your bank account.

What changed

A new setting in Events Manager, labelled "Measure conversions on customer devices", switches on by default for every Meta Pixel dataset that already sends events. The Pixel is the small piece of code on your website that reports visits and purchases to Meta. The new setting matches an email address a customer gave you with temporary device data, then sends back only the fact of a purchase and the campaign credited with it. Meta says this will recover purchases that never reach its reports today. You have to opt out if you don't want it. PPC Land has the details.

The eligibility rules are narrower than the default suggests. According to MetricMaven, citing Meta's help pages, the feature does nothing for people in the EU or UK, the Pixel must sit directly on the page rather than inside an iframe or image pixel, and the site must require a login with an email address or mobile number.

Some things are still open. Attribution windows and models stay the same. Meta hasn't said whether the recovered conversions feed its bidding systems, whether purchase values are included, or how consent is handled.

What it means for you

Care if you run Meta ads, your Pixel reports sales, your customers are mostly outside the EU and UK, and your site has a login. If any of that doesn't fit, the setting probably won't touch your numbers.

The realistic cost of doing nothing is a higher reported count from November 12, right in the run-up to Black Friday on November 27. If you plan spending around a number you can't reconcile, you'll be guessing. There's also a bidding angle. Meta's peak-season guidance says ad sets need about 50 conversions a week to leave the learning phase, and those below that ran 28% more expensive per purchase. A higher count can push more ad sets over that line, which helps only if the extra sales are real.

What to do

1. Check whether it applies. Go through the three rules above. If you have no login, or most of your buyers are in the EU or UK, you can skip most of this.
2. Record a baseline now. For the last four weeks, write down Meta-reported purchases and your store orders (Shopify or otherwise) each week, plus the ratio between them.
3. Keep server-side tracking on. Don't switch it off to simplify things.
4. Find the setting. Open Events Manager, choose your Pixel dataset, and look for "Measure conversions on customer devices". The article doesn't give an exact menu path, so if you can't find it, check Meta's help pages.
5. Decide and write it down. Either leave it on and reconcile weekly, or opt out. Yiqi Wu of Aimerce put it this way: "I wouldn't opt out by default." His advice was to opt out only if the numbers stop agreeing with your orders.
6. Compare every week through Black Friday. If the ratio drifts, opt out and note the date so you can explain the change later.