If your custom events aren’t appearing among the metrics you can add as columns in Meta Ads Manager, you’re not alone. This can be confusing — it might look like some events randomly appear while others don’t. However, there’s a specific reason for this behavior, and fortunately, there’s a simple fix.
Why Custom Events Don’t Appear
Meta only allows custom events to appear as selectable metrics after you’ve optimized for that event in a campaign.
If you’ve never used a particular custom event as an optimization goal, it won’t show up in the list of available columns.
How to Make a Custom Event Appear in Columns
To make your custom event available in Ads Manager columns, you can follow this quick workaround:
Step 1: Create a Temporary Campaign
Go to Meta Ads Manager and click Create Campaign.
Choose the Engagement objective (or any campaign objective that supports website conversions).
Step 2: Configure Your Ad Set
In the Ad Set settings, select Website as the conversion location.
Choose your Pixel.
For the Conversion Event, select your custom event — the one that wasn’t appearing before.
Step 3: Schedule and Publish
Set a start date in the future (so the campaign won’t actually start running).
Click Publish to save and activate the campaign.
Once the campaign is published, your custom event will immediately become available as a metric that can be added to columns in Ads Manager.
Step 4: (Optional) Delete or Keep the Campaign
You can delete the campaign afterward — it doesn’t need to run.
Or, if you want to gather data on that event, you can choose to keep it running.