Your Event Match Quality (EMQ) in Meta Ads sits at 4.2 out of 10. Or at "medium." Or at "low." That means that in a significant share of your conversions, Meta records the sale but doesn't know who bought. The email, the phone, the name, the city — missing. And without that data, Meta can't build good lookalikes or optimize your ad delivery properly. The result is a higher CPA than it needs to be.
What does EMQ measure and why does it matter?
Event Match Quality measures what percentage of the events you send to Meta it can link to an identified profile in its database. Meta has profiles for more than 3 billion people — with their emails, phone numbers, names and locations. When your pixel sends a Purchase event, Meta tries to match the incoming data to a profile in its database.
If the event arrives with email, phone, name and city, the odds of a match are high. If it arrives with only the device's IP, the odds of a match are very low. EMQ is the average of that match rate, on a scale of 1 to 10.
- EMQ 7-10 (high): Meta identifies most of your buyers. Lookalikes are accurate and delivery optimization works well.
- EMQ 5-6 (medium): Meta identifies fewer than half. Lookalikes start to degrade. CPA creeps up.
- EMQ 1-4 (low): Meta doesn't know who bought in most cases. Lookalikes are built on incomplete data. The algorithm can't optimize correctly.
If you want to understand the concept in depth before moving on to the steps, we recommend the article what EMQ is in Meta Ads and why it matters for your e-commerce store.
Why does EMQ drop for an online store?
There are four main causes of low EMQ in e-commerce:
- The browser pixel doesn't receive the buyer's data. The pixel can only access data that's available in the browser session. If the checkout form doesn't expose that data at the moment the Purchase event fires, the pixel sends the event empty.
- iOS and ATT block tracking. iPhone users who chose "Ask App Not to Track" prevent the pixel from reading the device's identification data. The event arrives without an IDFA or user data.
- Ad blockers and private browsing. Blockers block the pixel entirely. The event simply never gets sent. And Safari's privacy mode (ITP) caps cookie lifetime at 7 days, cutting the attribution window short.
- Accelerated or third-party checkout. If the buyer pays with Mercado Pago or an outsourced checkout that redirects off your domain, your store's pixel can miss the Purchase event because it happens on a domain you don't control.
The 5 parameters that raise EMQ the most
Meta documents which match parameters exist and how much weight each carries in the EMQ calculation. These are the ones with the most impact, in order of importance:
- Email (em): the parameter with the most weight. Most Meta profiles are tied to an email. If you send the buyer's email hashed with SHA-256, the odds of a match go up dramatically.
- Phone (ph): second in importance. In Argentina, a mobile number is required in most checkouts — it's data you always have available.
- First and last name (fn, ln): help disambiguate matches when the email or phone isn't unique enough.
- City, state and postal code (ct, st, zp): location data reinforces the match and is especially useful for geographic audiences and localized lookalikes.
- Gender and date of birth (ge, db): lower individual weight, but they add up when the other parameters are already present.
To see how these parameters work in detail, we recommend the article on match parameters in Meta Ads.
Step by step to raise your store's EMQ
Step 1: Check which parameters your pixel is sending today
Go to Events Manager in your Meta Ads account. Select your pixel and find the diagnostics section for the Purchase event. Meta shows you which parameters are arriving, how often, and which are missing. This diagnosis is the starting point — before changing anything, you need to know exactly what's arriving and what isn't.
Step 2: Check that the checkout exposes the data to the pixel
The browser pixel can only send the data that's available at the moment the event fires. On Tiendanube, the Purchase event fires on the order confirmation page. On Shopify, the custom pixel in Customer Events has access to the order data after the purchase. Check that this page has access to the buyer's data and that the pixel is reading it correctly.
Step 3: Hash the data before sending it
Meta requires identification parameters (email, phone, name) to arrive hashed with SHA-256. If you're sending the parameters unhashed, Meta silently rejects them — EMQ doesn't go up even though the data is arriving. Meta's official integrations for Tiendanube and Shopify handle hashing automatically.
Step 4: Implement CAPI to recover iOS data
The Conversions API (CAPI) sends data from your server to Meta, without going through the user's browser. Order data — email, phone, name — is always available on your server, regardless of whether the buyer is on iOS, uses blockers or has private mode turned on.
To understand how CAPI works technically, we recommend the article Meta's Conversions API explained simply.
Step 5: Deduplicate events correctly
If you have CAPI running alongside the browser pixel, both will send the same Purchase event. Meta needs a unique event ID (event_id) to deduplicate and avoid counting the same purchase twice. If you don't deduplicate correctly, EMQ can be hurt by duplicate events with inconsistent data. More detail in the article on event deduplication in Meta Ads.
A supplements e-commerce store in Argentina had an EMQ of 4.1. It implemented CAPI through the Escalafy Pixel. Fifteen days later, EMQ had climbed to 7.4. CPA dropped 23% the following month without changing the ads, the budget or the targeting. Meta's algorithm, with more real data on who was buying, optimized delivery toward profiles more likely to purchase.
How long does EMQ take to rise after implementing CAPI?
EMQ updates in real time in Meta's Events Manager. You'll see the change within the first few hours after implementing CAPI, as new events arrive with complete parameters. The impact on campaign performance (CPA, ROAS) usually shows up after 7-14 days, because Meta's algorithm needs that time to retrain on the new data.
How Escalafy enriches events with real profit data
Escalafy's server-side Pixel connects to your store at the server level and sends every Purchase event to Meta with all available match parameters: the buyer's email, phone, name, city and postal code.
The difference from other CAPI tools is that Escalafy also sends the real profit of each sale as the event value. Instead of sending Meta the gross sale price, it sends the sale price minus fees, product cost, shipping and installments. Meta's algorithm can then optimize toward the buyers who generate the most net profit — not just the most revenue.
To see how the tool works, visit the Escalafy Pixel page and the Escalafy server-side Pixel page.
Frequently asked questions about raising EMQ
Can I raise EMQ with just the browser pixel, without CAPI?
Yes. If the problem is that the pixel isn't sending match parameters correctly, you can improve EMQ by making sure the Purchase event includes email, phone and name. But if you have significant iOS traffic or users with blockers, the ceiling for improvement is low. To reach EMQ 7+ you need CAPI.
Does a high EMQ guarantee a lower CPA?
It doesn't guarantee it, but the correlation is strong. A high EMQ means Meta has more data to optimize with. Other factors also affect CPA: creative, market competition, product price. But EMQ is one of the few technical factors you can improve directly.
How much does a low EMQ hurt my lookalike audiences?
Significantly. Lookalikes are built on the identified profiles of your buyers. If 40% of your sales reached Meta without identification data, the lookalike was built from the remaining 60% — and that subset may not be representative of your real customer base. More detail in the article on lookalikes built on incomplete data in Meta Ads.
Is CAPI compliant with privacy laws?
CAPI hashes the buyer's data with SHA-256 before sending it to Meta. Meta never receives the email or phone in plain text. In Argentina, the implementation must be done with the user's informed consent, usually through your store's privacy policy.
Low EMQ is money you're leaving on the table for the algorithm.
Every sale that reaches Meta without identification data is a buyer the algorithm can't learn to find. Over time, that data deficit turns into worse audiences, higher CPA and less efficient bidding decisions.
The technical fix is concrete: send the data from the server, with every available parameter, correctly hashed and deduplicated. The result is a higher EMQ and an algorithm working with real information — not estimates.
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