The funnel Whence sends
Whence follows a visitor through six steps of your store and can send each one to your ad platforms, from the server. You choose the steps for each pixel you connect.
Choose the steps a pixel sends, and check what left
Step 1: Open the platform
Open Marketing > Conversions. On the platform’s row, click Details (1). A platform not connected yet shows Set up instead: the same choices are under More options in its form.
Step 2: See what Whence sends
In the panel, open What Whence sends to Meta (1) (the name follows your platform). Each step is listed with the reason it helps, and the steps that are not sent say so. Click Edit settings (2) to change them.
Step 3: Check or uncheck the steps
Check the steps you want (1): Page view, Product view, Add to cart, Checkout started, Payment info, Purchase. Leave Test mode (2) unchecked for real sales: with it, everything goes out as test events that do not count in your campaigns. Click Save.
Step 4: Check what left
Open Recent activity (1): the last 50 events for this pixel, newest first (2). Each one shows its status and what the platform answered, for example Sent with the number of matching details, or Not sent: no marketing consent. Events show up a few minutes after they happen on your store.
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Sent | The platform accepted the event. |
| Failed | The platform refused it. The reason is shown below. |
| Queued | Waiting for the next send, every five minutes. |
| Test event | Sent in test mode: it does not count in your campaigns. |
| Not sent: no marketing consent | The visitor did not give marketing consent. |
The six steps
In the order a shopper goes through them:
- Page view: every page a visitor opens.
- Product view: someone looked at a product.
- Add to cart: someone added a product to the cart.
- Checkout started: someone started checkout.
- Payment info: someone entered payment details, the last step before a sale.
- Purchase: the sale itself, with its amount. This is what your campaigns learn from.
The name each platform receives
| Step | Meta | TikTok | Snapchat | Microsoft | Klaviyo | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Page view | PageView | not offered | PAGE_VIEW | page_visit | PAGE_VISIT | pageLoad | not offered |
| Product view | ViewContent | ViewContent | VIEW_CONTENT | view_content | VIEW_CONTENT | view_item | Viewed Product |
| Add to cart | AddToCart | AddToCart | ADD_CART | add_to_cart | ADD_TO_CART | add_to_cart | Added to Cart |
| Checkout started | InitiateCheckout | InitiateCheckout | START_CHECKOUT | initiate_checkout | Custom: InitiateCheckout | begin_checkout | Started Checkout |
| Payment info | AddPaymentInfo | AddPaymentInfo | ADD_BILLING | add_payment_info | Custom: AddPaymentInfo | add_payment_info | not offered |
| Purchase | Purchase | Purchase | PURCHASE | checkout | PURCHASE | purchase, or your event action | Placed Order, or your metric |
Google Ads and Taboola receive the purchase only: Google Ads as the conversion action you enter, Taboola as the conversion event name you enter.
What is checked by default
When you add a pixel, Whence checks these steps. You can change them under More options when you set it up, or later with Edit settings.
- Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest: product view, add to cart, checkout started, payment info and purchase.
- Reddit: product view, add to cart and purchase. Reddit has no standard checkout or payment info event, so those two go out as custom events, which is why they start unchecked.
- Microsoft Advertising: purchase only. Each other step needs a conversion goal of type Event with the matching action (“view_item”, “add_to_cart”, “begin_checkout”, “add_payment_info”) that you create first.
- Klaviyo: purchase only. Klaviyo’s own script or Shopify integration may already record the other steps and start your abandonment flows.
- Google Ads, Taboola: purchase, the only step they receive.
Page view starts unchecked everywhere. Page views are the most numerous events and do not help optimize sales, and your ad platform’s own tag usually sends them already. On Microsoft Advertising, your UET tag already sends page loads without Whence’s event ID, so turning it on counts each page twice.
When each event leaves
Whence checks your store every five minutes.
- Steps (page view to payment info) are read as they arrive. A step older than 6 hours is no longer sent: it would not help the platform’s bidding anymore. Steps are sent in batches of 50.
- Purchases are read from your orders of the last 72 hours. If the browser has not reported an order yet, Whence waits 30 minutes before deciding.
- A refused send is tried again after 5, 10, 20, 40 and 80 minutes, 6 attempts in all.
Each event is sent once per pixel, even if Whence reads it twice.
Consent
Whence sends an event only when the visitor gave marketing consent. Without it, a step is not sent at all and a purchase shows Not sent: no marketing consent in the pixel’s activity. A shopper who refused stays refused. The only exception is the store setting described in Record without consent, which treats a missing answer (never a refusal) as consent.