Technology is ever-evolving, and that typically means good things for us in the marketing world. But things were a little different with iOS 14 and what that means for Facebook Ads. The iOS 14 update limits user information exchanged with Facebook, preventing specific data collection and sharing.
Apple’s App Tracking Transparency framework states that “Privacy is a fundamental human right and at the core of everything we do. That’s why with iOS 14, we’re giving you more control over the data you share and more transparency into how it’s used.” We agree that privacy is incredibly important for everyone. But we can also agree that this change makes social media marketing efforts much more difficult.
1. What was Affected By iOS 14?
If you have an Apple device, you’ll notice that iOS 14 devices will have limited Facebook Ads functions and its tracking for app and web conversion events. More specifically, this will affect your ability to target audiences, track web conversion events, advertise mobile apps, and optimize ads.
This takes away some major tools that us social media marketers have gotten used to using in Facebook Ads. Retargeting and Lookalike audiences have long been a staple of advanced Facebook advertising, but this change has made them quite ineffective on iOS unless users have opted-in to allow tracking.
2. Biggest Changes to Facebook Ads.
Facebook Pixel Tracking
Pixel actions like Form Submission, Click to Download, Add to Cart, Purchase Completion will have less numbers reported as more people choose to opt-out of being tracked.
Facebook Ad Optimization
Due to less pixel tracking activity of user activity, there will be less data to work with when optimizing ads with Facebook’s automated features.
Retargeting & Audience Segments
Users who visited your website via iOS 14 devices and iOS 14 users who opted-out won’t be tracked, so they won’t be able to be included in Retargeting or Lookalike audiences.
Conversions & Catalog Sales
For both these objectives, the attribution window will change from a 28-day click & view to only 7-day click and 1-day view for all devices.
Luckily, all conversion activity happening solely on Facebook or Instagram will still 100% be tracked and reported accurately.
Limit of 8 Events Per Domain
Facebook will automatically assign the events they believe to be the most relevant to your business. iOS 14 users who opt out of data tracking will now only be logged for one event after they click on a Facebook Ad.
3. Facebook Ads Solutions
This might seem like all is lost but fear not. Facebook does not want this to happen, so they are coming up with the own solutions. Let’s not forget that Facebook is a company that wants to make money, so they will do everything in their power to make sure advertisers are spending their hard-earned money on Facebook Ads.
Facebook has designed Aggregated Event Measurement to measure campaign performance in a way that still allows consumers to keep their privacy. This is done through utilizing Facebook Pixels to track the actions of people on your website rather than using cookies, which would violate their privacy.
That’s all well and good, but what does that mean that we, the advertisers, need to do to make our ads perform better? Luckily for us, there isn’t much that we need to do. The first thing to do is to verify your domain using the steps outlined in the Facebook Help Center.
The second thing to do is make sure that each of your campaigns are only targeted to one conversion type. You should already be doing this, but it is even more important now since there is a restriction on the number of events Facebook is allowed to track. So if you want to have a Lead Generation ad group and a Link Clicks ad group, you need to make sure they are part of different campaigns to make sure tracking is as accurate as possible for each.