Apple’s iOS 14 policy update started rolling out globally in January 2021. It’s meant to protect customer data from being used without permission.
While this is a step in the right direction for consumer privacy, citing its disagreement, Facebook announced its intention to move forward with the Apple Limit Ad Tracking (LAT) prompt associated with the update. More specifically, Facebook and Instagram apps will give users the option to opt in to being tracked across apps and websites owned by other companies. There will be no changes to how Facebook targets or tracks activity if they opt in. On the other hand, if users opt out, Facebook will only be able to access limited data.
eMarketer anticipates that 50-95% of users will opt out of sharing data. Facebook believes this trend will have serious implications in terms of measuring campaign effectiveness, making fruitful optimizations as well as targeting.
How will the Apple iOS 14 update affect your Facebook and Instagram advertising?
- The impact will vary from market to market, but will be particularly significant within the US, Europe and the UK. It will lay the groundwork for other OS providers to take similar steps.
- Advertisers will move from transacting via device identifiers to people identifiers such as phone, email and address, making first-party data more valuable than ever before.
- The default attribution window changed within the platform, shortening the period from 28 to seven days for click-through conversions/revenue.
- Conversion events and custom conversions will be limited to eight per domain, and only one if a user has opted into LAT. If a user opts out, you will be allowed to rank all eight events based on priorityNo matter what combination of actions a user takes, you will always get insight into the “highest” priority action. In other words, you’ll get insight into action number two if it’s the highest priority action taken.
- If you’re running an app install campaign, each app is limited to nine iOS 14 campaigns at once. Further, each campaign is limited to five ad sets of the same optimization type. You can’t vary your optimization choice across ad sets in the same campaign.
- Facebook will no longer provide demographic breakdowns for conversion data within the platform, limiting audience data collection and optimization opportunities for advertisers.
How marketers can prepare their Facebook Ads for the iOS 14 update
- Verify your site domain in Business Manager.
- Align on conversion event prioritization and ranking.
- Identify new campaign optimization strategies that may require testing, leveraging a new bid strategy or testing alternative audience options.
- Upload your customer list to the Facebook platform in order to exclude current customers from prospecting campaigns instead of relying on pixels.
- Start using Google Analytics to collect demographic data on Facebook conversions.
Reach out to Mindgruve for more information, to future-proof your Facebook marketing efforts and more.
