Facebook: “A problem with Facebook prevented your activity from being published. Try to republish.."

[Lilith]

This post is a part of a larger thread that includes current known issues & required permissions to successfully connect to the Facebook Channel. You can find the Table of Contents here.

Say you’re working on creating a Facebook Campaign through your Shopify admin, when suddenly you encounter an error message that prevents you from publishing a post. 

This error will say: “A problem with Facebook prevented your activity from being published. Try to republish in a few minutes.”

Don’t fret, we have some steps below that you can follow to help you resolve the situation.

Disclaimer: The error mentioned in this post comes from the Facebook platform itself. We can’t provide support for Facebook errors through Shopify first hand because they originate directly from Facebook. However we suggest steps to take below. If these steps do not resolve your situation, you must contact Facebook directly to resolve your situation.

What The Error Looks Like:

You’ll encounter a couple of visual messages. See the 2 images that follow to ensure your situation matches the error messages here.

In the activity:

Banner on the page:

Reason You’re Seeing This Error:

Campaigns are failing due to the Facebook Pixel updates for Apple's iOS 14 release. You can learn more about this on Facebook’s Business Help page. You’ll need to make sure your Facebook accounts are set up accurately.

How to resolve: 

To fix the issue, ensure that your Facebook accounts are set up to meet all requirements. Follow the sections below in the written order and in detail to accurately resolve your situation.

It’s recommended to go through the steps even if you feel you’ve done them all. This is a great way to make a mental checklist to confirm to yourself that you’ve made the effort to troubleshoot the issue and get to a resolution quicker.

Be sure to take screenshots of your steps as well in the event you need to submit these for further help.

Step 1: Verify The Domain

The first item we need to confirm is that your domain is verified within the Facebook channel. You can follow the steps outlined in our Shopify Help Center guide to ensure that your domain has been verified. If it’s been verified, then you will see the following in Settings > Accounts > Domain verification:

Alternatively, you can verify this through your Facebook Business Manager by referring to Facebook's Help Centre document on Verifying Your Domain. 

If your domain is already verified and added to your Business Page your settings will look like the image below:

NOTE: If you’re using your account’s assigned permanent myshopify.com domain as the primary domain then you won’t be able to verify the domain by the DNS TXT method. You’ll need to choose another method, preferably the meta tag method.

NOTE: We don’t recommend using the myshopify.com domain as your primary as this is not conducive to a successful long term branded business. Please ensure that you have a custom domain for the longevity and success of your business.

Step 2: Set Up Aggregated Event Measurements

Once your domain is verified, the next item you need to action is adding events to your Pixel for the domain. The steps to take are outlined in Facebook's Help Centre documentation called “Configure events to use Aggregated Event Measurement”.

You will need to add all of the following essential Pixel events:

• Search
• ViewContent
• AddToCart
• InitiateCheckout
• AddPaymentInfo
• Purchase

Below is an example of how you can prioritise the events:

Once you have added events, make sure you click Submit to save the changes. 

NOTE: Be aware that you can only change these events once every 72 hours.

NOTE: Purchase events are usually the top priority, make sure you prioritize the events based on what is most important to you, but all need to be added.

NOTE: You might receive the error message again if you’ve setup Aggregated Event Measurement for the first time or recently changed anything. If this is the case then you must wait 72 hours for the events to process on Facebook then you can reattempt publishing. This is a new standard that Facebook has implemented to allow the changes to take effect and process properly. Patience is key here to avoid getting this error again.

Step 3: Matching Domains Between Facebook and Shopify

Last but not least, you'll want to ensure that your primary domain in Shopify matches the domain verified in Facebook. For example, if the domain verified in Facebook is yourdomain.com then you'll need to ensure that yourdomain.com is your primary domain in Shopify, rather than www.yourdomain.com. That www makes a difference and so does any other version of your domain.

To check this do the following:

1. Log into your Shopify admin
2. Head over to Online Store > Domains
3. If the primary domain needs to be changed, in the right corner, click on Change primary domain
4. Select the exact same domain that is verified on Facebook within the popup
5. Click Save.

You can refer to our Shopify Help Center guide on managing domains as well for more information on changing your primary domain.

Once you have actioned all of the steps in this post, you can test a new Facebook Marketing activity on your store again.

As an additional workaround you can also create ads directly in Facebook as well. Please refer to the following Facebook Help Guides:

• Create a dynamic ad 
• Create a retargeting campaign

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