Why Meta Doesn’t See Your Conversions (And What To Do About It)

You launch ads on Meta. Traffic flows, clicks happen — and yet Ads Manager shows zero conversions. Classic.

Meanwhile, GA4 or your BigQuery logs say conversions are happening. But Meta? Nothing. And if it doesn’t see data, it won’t optimize. No learning = no delivery = rising CPA = panic = “fire the copywriter.”

Usually, the issue isn’t the ad. It’s the tracking setup. Here’s what to check:

1. No CAPI (Conversions API). Pixel alone misses up to 60% of events post-iOS14. You’re flying half-blind.

2. Broken event_id. If client-side and server-side event_id don’t match — Meta won’t link them. No match = no conversion.

3. Wrong event structure. Meta’s picky. Wrong parameter names (like price instead of value) = ignored events.

4. Wrong Pixel ID or token. If your event is going to a random test account… guess what — Meta’s not going to optimize your real campaigns.

5. Consent issues. If users don’t accept cookies, and you don’t handle consent via CMP — Meta won’t get the data. GA4 will model. Meta? Won’t even try.

How to fix it:

Manually test Pixel + CAPI with matching event_id.

Check logs in BigQuery.

Confirm your IDs and payloads.

Don’t trust “green checkmarks.”

Meta is powerful — but only if you feed it clean, structured data.

If you work with GA4 to BigQuery exports, be sure to check out my SQL cheat sheet.