Facebook Pixel: Use an old, seasoned pixel or brand new one?

[infmus]

Hey everyone,

I have a bit of a dilemma here and want some input. I have an old FB Pixel and ad account that I ran from 2016 to 2018 that has almost 20,000 purchases, 30,000 add payment info’s, 188,000 add to carts, 2,000,000 content views, and over $277,000 spent on it. It's extremely seasoned and at its peak, I could run ad sets to all of Facebook with no targeting whatsoever and still hit the right audience. 

Fast forward to now, I've started a new store in the exact same niche. My partner wants to just start fresh with a new pixel but I'm arguing that the other Pixel has so much data on it that would be foolish to not utilize such a powerful tool, although the data and audiences are a bit outdated. 

What does everyone think of this?

[DuaneBrown]

2018 is a lifetime ago in Facebook world. Run a test for a month with the old pixel, if you can make it work then continue. If not, ditch it and use a brand new pixel. There are bigger issues to worry about and this is something you can test and go from there.

[Lilith]

Hey, @infmus!

My name is Lilith, I'm on the Social Care team at Shopify.

This is a fantastic question. From my own experience of running thousands of ads using hundreds of pixels, I've noticed a few things that you can consider when deciding on which pixel to use. Of course, there isn't a right or wrong way to decide on this, but there might be some budget considerations to take into account when it comes to new pixels.

If your new business is the exact same niche as the previous one, you'll want to also make sure that the brand's personality is similar to the old one. They don't have to be the same, but this can impact the reaction of the same audience based on the brand you present. This isn't a bad thing, but this does vary from one business to another. Your ads can do better or they might have slightly fewer results. When I say branding, I don't mean just the Visual Brand, but more the Unique Value Proposition (USP) and messaging. Here's a great blog that can help recap any of these concepts.

Nevertheless, since your niche will be similar to the new one you can definitely use the old pixel! A well seasoned and data-rich pixel is worth more than a fresh brand new one.

I'd also consider using both pixels on the same store because you'll be using the old pixel on a business with the same target audience and similar niche, but different brand identities. The reason I'd recommend this is to help get data on the new pixel while using the old one to keep driving traffic and purchases in your new store. Once you've reached your 500 purchases on the new pixel you'll be able to remove use the new one for most of your ads if you'd like to move it to a future store or keep it on the current new one. Think of this as like cloning your pixel. It's worked wonders to open new businesses in the past for many merchants including myself.

Here are a few tips to help make sure that using the old pixel is successful for your new business:

• Use Facebook's custom audiences feature along with lookalike audiences
  • The data is a few years old so you'll need to refresh it a bit
• For convenience use the marketing tab with Dynamic ads to help boost the rate of optimization
• Manually install the second pixel if you're going to season that one

Let me know if that helped! I'm happy to answer any questions you think of as you work on your business.