The recent iOS 14 updates resonated with the immense significance of digital privacy among its users from the past years. Its implementation gave consumers more control over the data they unknowingly share with advertisers and publishers. 

In response to the upcoming changes, Facebook has indicated that they expect the amount of data available for ad targeting and measurement to decrease as users “opt-out” of tracking. The company expects the decrease in data to harm the effectiveness of all digital campaigns, particularly for advertisers that rely on web conversion events.

This post explains how Apple’s iOS 14 update shakes the Facebook ads landscape and provides a few tips on how you can optimize your campaigns within the confines of iOS 14 moving forward. 

Apple’s iOS 14 Update: A Protection Measure for Privacy

Apple has indicated that data privacy and protection remain central to the iOS update (iOS 14, iPad OS 14, and tvOS 14). Specifically, Apple introduced a new “prompt” that pops up when people access any iOS app, gathers data, and tracks users.

The purpose of the new update’s prompt informs the person that the app tracks their activity. It provides them with the option to allow tracking or not. If the user provides tracking, then the app continues to receive activity data.

Furthermore, the prompt applies to all users of Facebook and Instagram apps. It means that if the user opts out of tracking, then the app cannot track them or access their device’s advertising identifier.

Understanding Apple’s Tracking Activities in iOS 14 Update

Notably, Apple defines “tracking” as the act of linking user or device data collected from your app with the user for targeted advertising. In short, Apple says that when users opt-out of activity tracking, apps no longer use and link user’s data with other 3rd party information.

For example, tracking occurs when an opted-out user clicks a Facebook or Instagram ad and visits an advertiser’s website. Due to the recent iOS 14 update, Facebook cannot link the user data from their system to the person’s activity on the advertiser’s website.

Also, Facebook doesn’t harness that person’s activity on the advertiser’s website to optimize ad delivery for other similar users. Hence, they cannot report whether the user “converted” on their website to the advertiser.

The activity usually generates ad-triggering action when someone uses an eCommerce app when adding an offered item to the cart. The same event happens if a user visits any selling website, especially if he makes a purchase or views a specific URL after clicking through the ad.

Apple iOS 14 Update Tracking Activities:

Check these specific examples of tracking provided by Apple:

• Displaying targeted advertisements based on user data collected from apps and websites owned by other companies.
• Sharing device location data or email lists with a data broker.
• Creating a list of emails, advertising IDs, or other IDs with a third-party advertising network that uses that information. Usually, it leads to retargeting those users in other developers’ apps or finding similar users.
• Incorporating a third-party SDK that combines user data from the app with user data from other developers’ apps to target advertising or measure advertising efficiency.

How Does Apple’s iOS14 Update Affect Facebook Advertising?

No change happens for users who opt-in to allow activity tracking in advertisers’ ability to target ads and measure performance. However, for users who opts-out of search, Facebook’s ability to target ads based on actions and measure the person’s reaction to ads remains impaired.

Primarily, the big unknown occurs on how many people enable activity tracking vs. opting out. It means that nobody knows how much impact the iOS 14 rollout affects the advertisers in general.

Clearly, the more people opt-out, the larger the issue for Facebook and other ad platforms. Most likely, many Apple users do not install updates to their operating system as soon as they are available.

Thus, advertisers see gradual performance declines over several months. Because of these new limitations, brands and marketers requires a better strategy to understand better how they adapt and get the most out of their social media marketing tactics. 

Significant Changes in Facebook Advertising after Apple’s Recent iOS 14 Update

Facebook released an official statement regarding Apple’s recent iOS 14 updates. Thus, that advertisers need to prepare for the following changes:

Conversion Tracking

Apple’s iOS 14 changes significantly impact how Facebook receives and process conversion events from the Facebook pixel. Actions such as viewing content, adding to cart, checkout, purchasing, and other similar events go to waste if users opt-out of data tracking.

Ad objectives

Some types of ads that use pixel tracking receive a significant impact. These activities include optimizing landing page views, optimizing conversion ads for formal events or custom conversions, and app installs targeting iOS platforms.

Also, advertisers experience limitations in attributing app installs to users using iOS 14 and later. Apple’s development and release of iOS 14 have introduced a new feature designed to give users more control around data collection by third parties.

Remarketing and Lookalike Audiences

Advertisers need to prepare for a possible decrease in the population of pixel-based remarketing lists. It includes website visitors who showed an interest in a particular product due to the new limitations in tracking.

However, Facebook emphasized that lookalike audiences receive lesser impact due to the update. Advertisers experience an unlikely yet noticeable effect on the performance of ad sets using lookalike audiences.

Delayed and aggregated results

Now, advertisers set aside real-time reporting as Apple delays data for up to three days after the action or event occurs. Web conversion events surface based on the time the conversions arise and not the associated ad impressions.

Also, Apple aggregates data from ads and other marketing activities in some instances. Facebook doesn’t measure ad results at the user level as they have restricted access to specific data types.

Conversion windows

From now on, Facebook only allows tracking the following conversion windows: 1-day click, 7-day click (default), 1-day click and 1-day view, or 7-day click and 1-day view. So, the app disables the previously available attribution windows of 28-day click-through, 28-day view-through, and 7-day view-through.

It means that companies with longer sales cycles expect a decrease in reported purchases. According to Apple, it couches the move as being consumer-focused

Offline Conversions

Delivery and action breakdowns go off from the previous version for offline conversion events. The reports for conversion events surfaced based on the time the conversions occur and not the time of ad impressions.

Audience Network

Facebook’s ability to deliver targeted ads via the Audience Network on iOS 14 remains limited. As a result, advertisers expect less volume and lower effectiveness when using Audience Network as a placement.

Facebook Advertising Opportunities that Remains Unchanged after Apple’ iOS 14 Update

The following advertising opportunities remains unchanged after Apple’ iOS 14 updates:

Geographic targeting

Because geotargeting doesn’t include activity tracking, advertisers’ ability to geo-target their campaigns remains unchanged.

Interest-based and demographic targeting

Advertisers’ ability to target ads based on users’ interests, age, gender, and other attributes remains unaffected.

Reach and link-click campaigns

Because click campaigns do not rely on optimization against specific events, the data remains untouched.

Uploaded custom audiences

Generally, generating custom and retargeting audiences via the Facebook pixel receives heavy changes. However, directly uploading customer lists remains on the list of allowed actions.

Advertisers still use privacy-compliant email lists of their customers or prospects. Then, uploading the data to Facebook creates a custom audience without issue.

Lookalike audiences

As mentioned above, the size of custom audiences generated via pixel events goes smaller. However, Facebook stated that they do not expect the size of the associated lookalike audience to appear smaller.

Actions Taken by Facebook to Respond to Apple’s Recent iOS 14 Update

To address the decrease in conversion data due to Apple’s recent update, Facebook introduced Aggregated Event Measurement (AEM). Through Aggregated Event Measurement, advertisers rank their conversion events in order of importance.

Thus, Facebook uses this ranking to track conversions from people who opt-out of activity tracking. Apple’s Private Click Measurement solves cases not addressed by the update.

Now, Facebook connects the conversion of the ad as opposed to the user. It occurs especially if a user opts out of all activity tracking, clicks an ad, and completes multiple conversions within the conversion window.

Usually, users generate the tracking activity when completing a purchase or subscribing to a newsletter. Facebook relies on the AEM ranking provided by the advertiser to report only the top-ranked conversion event.

In addition, Facebook modifies how its pixel collects data. In some cases, the company incorporates statistical modeling to fill in data gaps.

How Should Facebook Advertisers Respond to Apple’s Recent iOS 14 Update?

Facebook advertisers have to make changes in their ad account/Business Manager to use the new Aggregated Event Measurement.

1. Verify the Domain of Your Pharmacy’s Website

Before anything else, verify your pharmacy’s website domain to avoid any immediate or future disruption of your website’s campaigns. Thus, the domain owner’s Business Manager receives authority to configure the top 8 conversion events for that domain.

Facebook created a step-by-step tutorial on how to verify your domain on their official website. Take note that Domain Verification remains at the practical top-level domain plus one (eTLD+1 ).

2. Arrange and Prioritize Facebook Advertising Actions for iOS 14 Update

With Facebook’s new Aggregated Event Measurement, advertisers receive a limited to a maximum of eight events per domain. A pixel event or custom conversion remains applicable towards the eight conversion events per domain limit.

For example, if a business has three pixels each with three events, the domain overall has nine conversion events (three pixels x three events). In this case, the company chooses which eight to keep and prioritize them in order.

How it Impacts Facebook Ads

Hence, Facebook auto-configures the initial eight events based on campaign spend within the last 28 days across all events, including automatic pixel events. Any ad sets optimizing for an event not included in the eight prioritized events cease.

All advertisers need to frequently visit the Events Manager to prioritize actions and events for Facebook advertising campaigns. So, they can continue carrying out tasks such as creating website custom audiences, but not for conversion tracking.

Any modification of an event configuration using the configuration for 72 hours remains paused. It includes adding new events, deleting events, or re-prioritizing events to eliminate the risk of incorrect attribution.

3. Redo the Audience-building Campaign

Notably, custom audiences generated by pixel-based strategies shrink. Advertisers need to consider opportunities to directly acquire privacy-compliant email addresses from customers and prospects to continue to create custom/lookalike audiences.

Accomplish the audience-building task through internal data mining where possible. Next, rethink and redo the campaign via lead generation campaigns with dedicated landing pages containing form capture.

4. Use reach or click-based optimization

Because conversion-oriented campaigns get affected, consider switching to reach or traffic-based optimizations. A well-designed traffic campaign remains effective as a conversion campaign in driving leads, sales, signups, or other user activities.

5. Confirm All Pixel Implementation for Dynamic Ads

If your pharmacy profile runs dynamic ads, ensure that your catalog uses only one tracking pixel. There are no specific changes in dynamic ads for retargeting since advertisers notice a decrease in their website conversion audience sizes.

6. Update Facebook SDK for iOS 14 Update

Running ads in promoting the business requires the most recent update to Facebook’s SDK for iOS 14 version 8.1. It helps the personalization of ads delivered to iOS 14 users and receives app conversion events reporting.

7. Update to the Recent Conversion Windows Version

Update any automated rules currently using a 28-day attribution window to a 7-day window to prevent any unexpected adjustments in spending.

The Great Impact of Apple’s iOS 14 Update on the Advertisers

Marketers and advertisers survived 2020 by being flexible and finding creative solutions to take on the ever-changing landscape. Technology and software continue to evolve, and more updates will come, so we have to roll with the punches!

Apple’s iOS 14 new privacy controls allow users to disallow data tracking by third-party networks. As the digital industry remains constantly shifting, changes like this keep us on our toes and allow for creative solutions.

For more information on how to make the best Facebook advertising strategies, contact The Social Pharmacist today!

Keyword: iOS 14 update