Health advertiser tracking checklist: 15 things to check before Meta does

Run this before you have a problem. It takes about an hour, and it catches most of what gets health advertisers restricted. I've grouped it so you can do it in sittings, and added why each check matters, because a checklist you understand is one you'll actually run.

The site and the links

1. Look at your top 10 landing pages. Do any URLs name a condition, a drug or a treatment? Those addresses travel with every event from that page. 2. Look at your thank-you pages. Same question, and this is the one people forget. 3. Check the page titles. They travel too, and they're often more descriptive than the URL.

The events

4. List every event your pixel and server send. You can't fix what you haven't listed. 5. Read the names as a stranger would. Does any describe a service or a condition? 6. Look at the parameters on each event in Test Events. Is anything there you can't explain?

The forms

7. Does any form ask about symptoms, conditions or medications? If it does, that data belongs in your own system. 8. Does any of that reach an ad platform? Check the events, not the form.

The identity

9. Are you sending a hashed email and phone, and nothing else that identifies a person? Those are what matching runs on. 10. Is the formatting clean before hashing (lowercase email, digits-only phone with country code)? A badly formatted value matches nobody.

The stages

11. Are you sending later stages (booked, showed, paid) and not just the form? They're better signals and can be sent without attaching anything sensitive. 12. Is anything sent more than 7 days after it happened? Meta rejects those, so a slow process quietly loses them.

The record

13. Can you show exactly what was sent for any given conversion? If a reviewer asked tomorrow, could you? 14. Do you have a changelog of tracking changes? It turns mysteries into dates. 15. Does someone own this, by name? A checklist with no owner is a wish.

Score yourself. Zero to three problems, you're in decent shape. More than that, start at number one. Numbers 1, 5 and 13 are usually the most revealing.

One caution: a checklist is a snapshot. The site changes, so the answers change. Put a date in your calendar to run it again, and after any major site update.

If you want to run this in one sitting, here's a schedule for an hour. Ten minutes on the site and links (checks 1 to 3). Fifteen on the events (4 to 6): this needs Test Events and a test booking. Ten on the forms (7 and 8). Ten on the identity and formatting (9 and 10). Ten on the stages and timing (11 and 12). Five on the record and ownership (13 to 15).

Who should be in the room? Whoever manages the ads, whoever manages the website, and whoever handles compliance or the practice's privacy questions, even if they only join for the forms section. The site person answers "where does that come from?", and the compliance person answers "should that be sent?". Two perspectives catch what one misses.

Write down each finding as you go, with a name next to it. A finding without a name doesn't get fixed.

Which item did you fail?