[Meta x Stape webinar] Meta Ads for eCommerce: trends, features and tracking to boost ROAS

Watch Meta and Stape live webinar to discover what’s working in 2025 for eCommerce advertisers.

We explore the latest trends and tools in Meta Ads, how to improve catalog quality, measure true performance with incremental attribution, and improve tracking using server-side setup.

Get actionable strategies to increase ROAS, lower CPA, and make your Meta Ads setup more accurate and scalable.

Speakers: 

• Rohith Bhatia, Global Partnerships Marketing Manager @ Meta
• Dan Murov, Data Tracking Lead @ Stape

00:02 Intro

01:51 Meta Ads new solutions for eCommerce

15:32 How Stape simplifies proper data tracking setup for eCommerce

27:53 Live demo | Step-by-step Meta Conversions API setup using Stape

52:50 Q&A session

• Meta Ads solutions & trends: why personalized experiences and catalog quality matter more than ever
• Incremental Attribution: how to optimize and report based on real impact
• Catalog strategy: setup tips to boost ROAS and reduce CPA
• Server-side tracking: improve attribution and event accuracy with Meta Conversions API
• Live demo: step-by-step Meta CAPI setup using Stape’s pre-built template

• eCommerce marketers and brand owners running Meta Ads
• Performance agencies managing ecommerce campaigns
• Media buyers working with DTC or retail clients
• Marketing teams looking to scale while improving efficiency

✨ Ensure your Meta Ads are future-proof, accurate, and scalable.

Catalog campaigns can be effectively used for both remarketing and new customer acquisition by leveraging Meta’s AI-driven personalization and automation. While catalog ads may have less creative control than single image ads, features like catalog product videos, generative AI backgrounds, and partnership ads help make them more engaging and suitable for broader audience targeting.

Start with an initial budget allocation between catalog ads and other ad types, then leverage Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO) to dynamically adjust spend based on real-time performance. Continuously monitor campaign results and optimize budget splits to maximize efficiency and meet your specific goals. This test-and-learn approach ensures flexibility and data-driven decision-making for better outcomes.

For budget split, allocate a significant portion of retargeting budget (40-60%) to catalog ads due to their strong conversion efficiency - but this will depend on your business goals.

If you’re seeing fbclid in your server-side GTM debug but not in Meta’s Event Debugger, make sure _fbc is included in the outgoing request to Meta. That’s what Meta actually looks for to link events to click data.

Also, keep in mind that the Meta Event Test tool isn’t always reliable. It can sometimes fail to show certain fields (like _fbc) or deduplication parameters, even if they’re correctly passed. It's always a good practice to wait for an update of displayed data, 24h usually.

To achieve best possible results Meta recommends to utilize pixel and CAPI and deduplicate such events. Pixel is still able to collect 3rd party cookies, which are still supported in Chrome, so that’s the biggest benefit.

Using Stape gives you more control and reliability compared to the standard Meta Shopify app. The key benefits are:

- Full control over your tracking setup and data — no black boxes or limited configurations.

- Better protection from ad blockers — server-side events aren’t blocked like client-side scripts often are.

- Improved attribution on Safari and iOS — bypass limitations from Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), which shortens cookie lifetimes.

In short: Stape gives you stronger, more accurate tracking, especially useful for scaling and optimizing Meta Ads.

If you want maximum flexibility and efficiency across placements, start with a square ad that can be cropped or adapted. If your campaign prioritizes vertical placements like Stories or Reels, invest in dedicated 9×16 creatives for better performance.

You can also test both formats to see which performs better for your specific audience and goals, then optimize accordingly.

Leveraging Advantage+ Creative will further enhance your strategy by improving the diversity and performance. This tool uses dynamic video, generative AI backgrounds, and partnership ads to create more engaging and diverse content. By improve test-and-learn outcomes and more efficient budget utilization.

In summary, while incremental attribution and server-side tracking offer more precise measurement of ad impact, correlational attributed ads remain in use due to simplicity, familiarity, broader measurement scope, data and technical constraints, and ongoing transition to newer methods.

Simplicity & familiarity: correlational attribution is well-known and easy to use.

Broader attribution: It credits all conversions after ad exposure, including those that would have happened anyway.

No need for experiments: incremental attribution requires experiments; correlational does not.

Data & technical constraints: some advertisers lack resources or technical ability to implement server-side tracking or incremental attribution.

Transition phase: advertisers may still be transitioning to newer methods.

Business goals: some prefer measuring overall ad exposure effects rather than just incremental impact.

Despite newer, more precise methods, correlational attribution remains common due to these practical reasons.

Catalog product video: https://www.facebook.com/business/news/catalog-product-video-a-new-solution-to-maximize-automation-performance

Adjust aspect ratios: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/856291093299815

Sitelinks: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1127018781828932

Highlight your promotions: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1467642254076258

Highlight details about your event: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/830182955765159?ref=search_new_107

Use background generation in an Advantage+ catalog ad: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/981940746195135

In one of our previous webinars (watch here https://youtu.be/7ASTO--LNLE?feature=shared), Dan walks through installing the Stape app and setting it up to generate the dataLayer for Shopify.

Once the dataLayer is in place, you can follow this guide for setting up Meta Conversions API: https://stape.io/blog/facebook-conversion-api-and-shopify

Our default dataLayer follows the GA4 specification, which recommends using the full value (including tax and shipping) for consistency across platforms. This is the standard practice for most analytics and advertising setups. However, if you want to customize the value, for example, to pass only the net amount, you're free to use other dataLayer sources like GTM4WP or customize the setup using server-side logic.

This won’t negatively impact your tracking or results if done correctly. As for your second point: we do encourage measuring Profit on Ad Spend (POAS) in some cases, especially for more advanced advertisers who want to go beyond revenue-based optimization.

That’s why we offer margin-based value overrides using margin lookup functionality.

Here are resources where we explain this approach in more detail: 
- https://stape.io/blog/profit-on-ad-spend-why-it-matters-and-how-to-set-it-up-via-stape-store
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yA4weITT4k

You can start here: https://stape.io/academy

Also you can find all our past webinars on our youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Stape

For broad targeting, the best practice is to set up one CBO campaign optimized for the purchase conversion event, including a mix of single image and catalog ads. Running multiple broad targeting campaigns can cause them to compete against each other, driving up costs and reducing efficiency. Consolidating into one campaign allows Meta’s algorithm to optimize budget allocation and performance effectively.

No worries, the event_time parameter is added automatically by the tag when the event is sent. You don’t need to set it manually.

We recommend using a transformation whenever possible. It allows you to inject restored values (like fbclid, gclid, fbc, fbp, etc.) globally into all your event tags without having to manually add them one by one. This keeps your setup cleaner, more scalable, and easier to maintain, especially if you have multiple tags relying on the same restored data.

To prevent duplicate events while still using Facebook for WooCommerce for catalogue sync:

- Go to your WooCommerce → Facebook settings.

- Disable all automatic event tracking options (e.g. purchase, view content, etc.).

- This stops Facebook for WooCommerce from sending events that could overlap with what’s already sent via Stape.

You can safely keep the catalogue sync active, it won’t affect event tracking handled by Stape. Just make sure deduplication keys (event_id, fbc, fbp) are properly passed in your Stape events to avoid further duplication.

No worries, we’ve got you covered! For custom websites like those built with React, Astro, or other frameworks, we offer pre-built templates and detailed setup guides.

You can follow this guide to implement Meta CAPI via server GTM: https://stape.io/blog/meta-capi-for-a-custom-website-via-server-gtm

It walks you through capturing events, sending them to server GTM, and configuring everything properly.

Send content_ids as an array, in line with Meta’s recommended format. This helps ensure accurate matching, particularly for dynamic ads and catalog campaigns.

If you want to double-check, you can inspect the outgoing request in the server GTM debugger or in Meta’s Events Manager debug tool.

• How to set up Meta Conversions API
• Meta CAPI via server GTM templates
• Facebook tracking guide for 2025