Where are we up to?

Since late 2020 there’s been a lot of gnashing of teeth over the iOS 14 update and the impact it will have on digital advertisers. The roll out has been slower than we expected, and over the past months the industry has got a clearer picture of how life will look post iOS 14.

For perspective, let’s look at exactly who this will affect:

• All apps in the Apple App Store will have to have the ATT prompt - this does not only concern Facebook advertisers

• It will only apply to mobile users, so your non Apple mobile users and desktop users will be unaffected

From early experience it looks like the opt in/out is asking users if they would like ‘more personalised’ ads or ‘less personalised’ ads, so there is reason to be optimistic that Apple mobile users may still opt in.

What do I need to do to be prepared?

If you are running ads, or plan to, and haven’t done the following, get them on your critical to do list.

• Verify your domain https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/domain-verification/verifying-your-domain/

• Select your 8 conversion events and rank them in order of importance (eg if you are an e-comm business you will want to rank the Purchase event at the top). Your 8 events can include standard and custom events. Think the order through carefully when you rank them, if you change this later your campaign could be paused for up to 72 hours.

• Keep an eye on the Resource Centre. Facebook will flag actions which need attention here and you can mark them as complete as you work through.

How are my campaigns going to be affected?

Tracking

Facebook will track the actions of users who have opted out, but won’t track the user. This means, for example, if a user who has opted out makes a Purchase, that purchase will be reported, but you won’t be able to identify that user as a purchaser in order to create an exclusion audience. This ‘aggregated’ data becomes a pot of people who can be identified as having taken an action, but cannot be identified individually for their action.

If you currently run retargeting campaigns using purchaser data as an exclusion audience you should consider using offline data of your purchasers and upload them as a saved audience to exclude. It’s not as robust as the old system, but will go some way to plugging the gap.

Facebook will only report the highest ranking of your 8 events, so the visibility of the purchasing journey won’t be quite as clear. For example, if a user purchases your product you will only see the Purchase event, not Add to Cart, Initiate Checkout etc.

Targeting

Largely covered above. Anyone who opts out cannot be included in a website custom audience. For some campaign models this will really sting, and the more hysterical are lamenting the end of retargeting, but we strongly disagree. Retargeting audiences will undoubtedly become smaller, but campaign structure just needs to be amended to account for this. 

If you’re concerned about how your retargeting campaigns are going to be affected, check your account data to get an idea of iOS 14 usage (Analytics > choose Page and Pixel to create a Private Group > add filter > create new filter > used a particular app or device > choose the iOS version you want to check). We don’t know yet what the opt in/out rates are going to be, but let’s say that as many as 60% of your audience are iphone users, and 80% of them opt out, you still have 52% of your retargeting audience. Revisit that campaign and consider whether that’s still enough traffic to make the campaign viable, or do you need to restructure your retargeting activities?

Also consider how you can keep users within the Facebook platform to build retargeting audiences - test video views and engagement audiences which don’t rely on the pixel data, and put more focus on building email lists.

Optimisation

The more data a campaign has, the quicker it can optimise. Facebook has historically said it needs to see approximately 50 events per week to come out of the Learning phase, but it looks like this is now down to 25-50 events. This is good news for advertisers as with less data in the campaign it may take longer to hit the optimisations and exit Learning.

Attribution

Previously there were two attribution windows, conversion and optimisation, these have been merged to form the Attribution Setting.

After roll out the widest attribution you can apply will be 7 day click, 1 day view (we believe 7 day click will be default). This will mean that campaigns with a longer purchase/action turnaround are likely to see a drop in reported activity. For these kinds of businesses it’s important to watch the broader picture in your organisation. If your Facebook actions are down, but your business wide results are unaffected, provided there is no other explanation, it would be fair to assume that the ads are still doing their job, but the actions are happening outside of the new attribution window.

However, many businesses will have always seen actions taken within the 7 day window, and will therefore see little or no difference.

Conversions API (CAPI)

Whilst this isn’t a full workaround for the limitations we’re seeing with the update, it is worth having to increase the visibility you have on your customer journey.

The update is ongoing, and the changes still regular, but we’re satisfied that advertisers are now equipped with the tools and knowledge they need to work through the bumps. As always, if you have any questions on the update, or would like to book in for some support, drop us a line.