Meta

The Meta Ads integration relies on adding audience excluded sessions to a custom audience that is then excluded from your ad sets. Here's how to set up ClickPatrol to protect Meta ads.

How it works#

When a visitor arrives from a Meta ad, the UTM parameters in your ad URL tell ClickPatrol the traffic came from Meta. The ClickPatrol Tag classifies the visit and pushes a ClickPatrol_Legitimate or ClickPatrol_Suspicious event into GTM. You then send those events to your Meta Pixel and build a Custom Audience, using the suspicious audience as an exclusion in your ad sets.

Step 1: Install the ClickPatrol tag in Google Tag Manager#

Before you start, make sure the ClickPatrol tag is installed and firing in Google Tag Manager, and that a Meta Pixel (conversion tracking pixel) is loaded on your page. If you have not set up the tag yet, start with the Google Tag Manager article.

Step 2: Get your UTM template#

Use the following UTM template for your Meta ads:

&utm_campaign={{campaign.name}}&utm_content={{ad.name}}&source=f&placement={{placement}}&campaign_id={{campaign.id}}&adset_id={{adset.id}}&ad_id={{ad.id}}

Note: this string is appended to your existing URL parameters, which is why it starts with &. If your ad has no parameters yet, remove the leading & so the string starts directly with utm_campaign.

Step 3: Add the UTM template to your Facebook ads#

1. Open your Facebook Ads Manager and go to the campaign or ad you want to edit.
2. Click on the ad level in the left-hand menu to view the individual ad details.
3. Scroll down to the Website URL section.
4. Below the Website URL field, click Build a URL Parameter.
5. Insert the UTM template from Step 2 into the URL parameters field.
6. Click Apply to add the parameters to your URL.
7. Press Publish to save and activate your changes.

Once saved, traffic from this ad will appear in your ClickPatrol dashboard.

Verify your setup#

After publishing, confirm the integration is working:

• Check your ClickPatrol dashboard for incoming Facebook traffic under Reports.
• If no traffic appears after 24 hours, confirm the UTM template is correctly added to your ads and that the ClickPatrol Tag is firing in GTM.

Note: ClickPatrol can only classify Meta traffic that passes through the UTM parameters above. Ads without these parameters will not be tracked.

Next steps: build and exclude the audience#

Tagging your Facebook ads lets ClickPatrol recognize the traffic, but it does not yet protect your ad sets. To actually exclude suspicious traffic, complete these two steps:

1. Meta - Events: send your ClickPatrol events (Legitimate / Suspicious) to the Meta Pixel through Google Tag Manager, and confirm them in Meta Events Manager.
2. Meta - Audiences: build a Custom Audience from those events and use the suspicious audience as an exclusion in your ad sets.