IOS14 Is Changing the Facebook Advertising Game
Apple has announced three new major policy changes that will unprecendentedly limit businesses’ ability to use personalized advertising.
Facebook users will be given the option to opt-out of tracking under Apple’s App Tracking Transparency framework. The impacts will be felt the most in optimization, targeting and campaign measurement. While these changes can seem daunting to businesses that rely on data sharing capabilities to reach their consumers, we’d like to mitigate some of the uncertainty by sharing what we know about these key changes and unpacking how they will affect eCommerce businesses.
Facebook’s Pixel has been a favourite tool for businesses to use for targeting and optimization capabilities, however, reliance on the pixel will no longer exist. Apple has introduced Private Click Measurement (PCM) that will restrict data sharing by not supporting app-to-web and cross domain measurement. These changes will make it harder for businesses to understand consumer behaviour and reach their target audiences.
Facebook Responds with AEM Rollout
Though it’s not a complete fix, Facebook will be introducing Aggregated Event Management (AEM) to fill in these gaps. AEM will still limit data sharing capabilities, however, it will support app-web attribution.
To further combat the challenges that PCM presents, businesses should utilize the Conversions API (CAPI) tool that Facebook offers. CAPI will pass data directly from your server to Facebook’s server. It’s uncertain when IOS14 will roll out, however, if your API is not set up prior to these policy changes taking effect, businesses could see CPAs increase by over 150%. While not full-proof, CAPI will be one of the tools to bridge the gap in tracking data.
Pixel Events Will Carry More Weight Than Ever
One of the biggest changes businesses will face is an 8-event limitation per domain. Not only is it necessary to thoughtfully select which 8 events are the most important, but you will also need to rank those in order of priority. This is because if a user opts out of being tracked, Facebook will now only receive information and report on one event after an ad is clicked based on your rankings. If a user opts-in to being tracked you will have visibility of all 8 events.
This will result in a huge underreporting of activity which creates only a partial view of campaign performance. It is critical for brands to understand which pixel events best align with their business goals. For some, purchase or add to cart will be the most important, while for others, it may be submit application or complete registration.
If you have multiple domains it is important to understand how the 8-event limitation affects each of your domains. For example; Acquire.com, Acquire.de, and Acquire.co.uk may each select their own unique list of 8 events. However, de.Acquire.com, uk.Acquire.com will have to support the same 8 events across all pixels. Finally, like the previous example, Acquire.com/uk and Acquire.com/de will also all have to use the same 8 pixel events.
How Will Attribution and Targeting Be Affected?
When it comes to the ways IOS14 will impact attribution, we’ll all have to say goodbye to 28 day click through as Facebook removes that option. The new default for users who opt-in to being tracked will be 7 day click. For those who opt-out, the default will be 1 day click. Thus, resulting in a massive amount of information being unavailable to businesses. Though much of that data will be lost, ensuring your business has UTM codes properly set up can help paint a more clear picture of your consumers actions.
For users that choose to opt-out of data sharing, the conversions that are reported will also take a hit as breakdowns will cease to exist. This means understanding demographics such as age range and gender won’t be available to analyze.
When it comes to targeting custom audiences, businesses will likely see a decrease in size as more users opt-out. Along with that we suspect that overlap in audiences will become more prevalent. Unfortunately, these data limitations will make it harder to exclude past customers which means they may appear in prospecting campaigns.
Luckily, there is new technology being developed by Acquire that will allow advertisers to save their hard work by extracting historical data and extrapolating missing data. The aim is to put valuable, hard earned data back into business owners hands.
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Now What?
While we await IOS14, there is still a lot you can do now to prepare your business for the upcoming changes which we’ve listed below. However, the most important thing you can do going forward is this: adopt an agile approach to running Facebook ads. Successful businesses will need to adapt and welcome change.
Acquire embodies an agile approach in every aspect of the business and is working on strategies to help our clients with this transition:
Verify your domain.
Carefully plan for the 8-event limitation.
Understand how the attribution window changes effect measurement and analytic capabilities and thus, how it will impact your overall ad account.
Set up Conversions API.
Understand that best practices around optimization strategies, bidding, and audience targeting will need to be tested to understand new baselines of performance.
If using Facebook SDK, update to version 8.1 or above.
Preparing for a Limited Data Future
Though it is impossible to know how all of these changes will affect advertising on Facebook once it is rolled out, there are tools to help you understand and project Facebook’s true results.
New tech platform, Fates.Ai, offers a tool to extract historical data like 28 day view and breakdowns. The Fates will leverage this data to create models by using machine learning and historical analysis to gain back valuable 28 day attribution windows.
Shoot us a DM if you have any questions about IOS14 and how to prepare.
Make profitable decisions.
Retain access to all the analytics that Facebook is deprecating.