Meta's Event Quality Match Score: What Advertisers Need to Know

If you're running ads on Meta (Facebook), you've likely encountered the mysterious "Event Quality Match Score" – a metric that often leaves advertisers scratching their heads.

What is Meta's Event Quality Match Score?

At its core, the Event Match Quality Score is Meta's way of evaluating how effectively you're sharing customer information that can be matched to Meta accounts. This isn't just a vanity metric – it directly impacts your advertising performance.

Meta calculates this score on a scale of 0 to 10, based on two critical factors:

1. The quality of customer information you're sending for server events
2. The percentage of event instances successfully matched to Meta accounts

Key Insights:

• The score is calculated using the last 48 hours of data
• It applies to both standard and custom web events (page views, add to cart, purchases)
• Regularly sending events helps keep your score up to date

Why It Matters

Critically, the Event Match Quality Score does not directly translate to the percentage of conversions being attributed. A high score reflects the completeness of customer information you're sharing, but it does not indicate the success of conversion attribution.

Matched events are crucial because they:

• Help deliver ads to users more likely to take desired actions
• Improve conversion attribution potential
• Potentially lower your cost per action

It's important to understand that a lower Event Match Quality Score may be entirely appropriate for certain funnel types and does not necessarily indicate problems with sales attribution. The score is primarily a measure of data completeness, not a definitive indicator of advertising performance.

How to Improve Meta Event Match Quality

Tip 1. Always Send Click ID and Browser ID When They're Known

All conversions, including server-side and offline ones should include Click ID from the click URL and browser ID set by Meta Pixel if installed. These are most important parameters: Meta can always determine which user the click belongs to using the click ID, but the attribute rate would fall to 50% or less when other parameters are used (such as customer's name and an email from a CRM used alone).

Adding the fbp Browser ID is helpful as it helps Meta to link multiple different conversions that belong to the same user, especially where multiple paid clicks are involved or the user interacted with ads from different accounts.

For example, Able CDP Facebook (Meta) Server-Side Tracking records these details on the first interaction on the website and associates them with the customer identity such as email or phone upon lead form completion or sign-up. This allows to extend any server-side conversions such as qualified CRM deals or subscription recurring payments and upgrades to be attributed to the original click ID, ensuring that Meta Conversions API receives complete attribution information for all events.

How much difference does including extra data to the conversions make? Here's what one of Able CDP customers is saying:

"You guys are absolutely life-changing. We were crushing $200K a month until January this year—then boom, everything went south. Down to $30K every single month.

It wasn’t until I signed up with you a few weeks ago that I discovered health and wellness restrictions had kicked in back in January, tanking our match quality to a measly 5/10.

Now? We’re scaling back up, and it all makes so much sense. Your custom event quality is consistently over 8.5—sometimes even 9!

It’s hilarious, really. We obsess over creatives, landing pages, and upsells... but something as “small” as event quality can send everything spiraling. You fixed that—and it’s a game-changer."

Tip 2. Include Hashed Customer Data

While this serves more as a fallback in practice, providing hashed customer information in addition to click identifiers—especially unique identifiers such as phone numbers and email addresses—is substantially helpful in improving both the reported Event Quality Match Score and the actual match rate by closing rare gaps where online tracking data may be incomplete, often increasing reported conversions by 5–10%.

Under the Hood of the Metric

You won't always get 10/10 Meta Event Quality Match Score. Consider a typical scenario:

• Browser Details: For recurring purchase events, around 35% of conversions might have missing browser information, affecting customer journey tracking. This isn't necessarily a problem if these customers were acquired long time ago.
• Click ID Tracking: A 50% Click ID presence could represent 100% of tracked website traffic - the other half might be organic or be coming from a different ad platform.

The reported score in such circumstances would be noticeably below 10 (as Meta would be concerned the conversions from other sources might've been from it but are missing data) but the actual attribution in Ads Manager would be very close to actual sales.

Meta's Real Motivation: Encouraging Data Transparency

The primary goal of this score appears to be incentivizing advertisers to provide more detailed customer data. It's less about immediate reporting improvements and more about building a richer advertising ecosystem.

When Does This Matter Most?

The score becomes marginally more relevant in specific scenarios:

• Campaigns with numerous view-through conversions
• Advertisers looking to understand their data collection depth on Meta's platform
• Businesses with subscription models or frequent repeat purchases, where consistent browser tracking is crucial for attribution

A Smarter Approach to Tracking Quality

Do make sure that all available attribution data are shared with Meta. But, instead of getting fixated on the Event Quality Match Score alone, focus on more actionable metrics:

1. Compare Meta Ads Manager conversions with your independently tracked campaign numbers. For example, Able CDP ad tracking and marketing attribution reports provide independent conversions reports that are fully transparent.
2. Understand the limitations of Meta's reporting windows
3. Account for variations in attribution models

Pro Tip for Meta Advertisers

Don't panic over small discrepancies. The Meta Event Quality Match Score is a guide, not a definitive judgment of your tracking effectiveness.

Conclusion

Meta's Event Quality Match Score is more of a gentle nudge towards better data practices than a precise tracking measurement. While it provides insights, it shouldn't be your sole indicator of advertising performance.