Have you heard about the latest iOS update from Apple? 

The new update is going to have a huge impact on how marketers can use data in advertising across the Facebook group of apps including Instagram and WhatsApp.

There is currently a lot of talk and also some fear around the new update and the impact this is going to have on businesses ad spend and also results for marketers.

If you’ve not yet heard about the latest news in the Marketing world, I’ve popped together all my insights for you to get your head around the changes.

What is happening?

The latest iOS 14.3/4 update is available on iPhones now, and it comes with some BIG changes when it comes to the handling of your data, a hot topic ever since GDPR was introduced and a very important element in marketing that you need to be aware of. 

In principle, the changes to data privacy seem great on the surface, because you have a right to know who is tracking you, right?       

This new update is specifically designed to target privacy of data, honing in on the Facebook group of apps, which include Instagram and WhatsApp to let users know that their data is being tracked and gives them the opportunity to opt-out.

As you can imagine, Facebook are not best pleased with this huge change. Why? Because Facebook makes money from advertising, with less data available to target specific audiences, they may see a decrease in ad spend because businesses will not be able to see the statistics or a justifiable ROAS (return on ad spend). 

The Facebook team has spent 1 billion dollars to fight this as it WILL impact conversion reporting capabilities and the future of advertising across the Facebook group of websites and apps.

What does this new update mean?

If you are an iPhone user, you may be familiar with the pop up in the current iOS 14 that asks you, ‘Do you want to be tracked while using the App’ in which you can select: whilst using the app, not at all or just once.

In the iOS 14.3/4 update will now see a new pop up:

‘Do you allow Facebook to track your activity from other apps & websites?’

You’ll be able to answer Yes or No and read the justification from Facebook as to why you should allow them to track you. 

This is known as ATT - Ad Tracking Transparency.

At the moment, if you see an ad, and you click on it, the browser will go to the website (the advertiser would have used UTM parameters), the pixel code embedded in the site fires an event, the event is then tracked in the ad manager. This is a great way to understand ROAS and if your ads are working!

Under the new Apple software update, Facebook won’t be able to report that data back to the ads manager and that information will not be able to be used for knowledge on optimisations. 

Apple is making a huge statement with this move and making it harder for Facebook to track conversion from ads. Facebook has been fighting this move and focusing on small businesses and the impact that it will have on them.

How will the new iOS affect you? 

As marketers, we rely on the data supplied by Facebook to specifically target potential customers based on their demographics and their activity on your website. 

You may be interested to know that Android users are not being subject to these changes, and I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised to know that the percentage of Android users worldwide is higher than Apple by a long way. 

If you use an agency for your ads and see a sudden decline in your ROAS, please don’t assume that your agency is going downhill, the decline is purely because of the change in restrictions to data and vital conversion information.

All marketers are in the same boat with these changes, and brands and businesses that outsource their paid ads need to understand that things will change.

What specifically is changing in the new iOS update?

Currently, ad results are based on time of impression, for example, if you saw an ad 5 days ago, the conversion is actually happening on FB ads manager 5 days ago as the ad attribution is recorded on impression. THIS IS CHANGING. If you’ve ever noticed that your Shopify/online store data won’t ever match your ads manager, this is why! 

I’ve listed out the key components that will be changing.

• Ads will be recorded on the date of purchase/conversion now. BUT not in real-time like we are used to and we don’t know how long it will be delayed for. 

• You won’t be able to see demographic breakdowns on ads manager for gender, age, or platform/placement. This has the potential to cause optimisation and reporting issues.

• Retargeting pools will be smaller as the data is not coming back from Facebook.

• The default right now is that 28-day view and a 1-day view window, this is changing to a default of a 7-day click and 1-day view. 

• Only 8 conversion events, which is not really a problem for e-commerce, view content, add to cart, purchase etc. Previously conversion events had no limit.

What do we do now?

I’ve listed some of my recommendations for you to tackle this head-on.

• First, verify your website domain, telling Facebook you own the domain - this is SO simple to do.

• Update to the latest version of Facebook SDK update 8.1 (integrate Facebook conversions API).

• Increase your efforts to collect first-party data - this is so IMPORTANT. This is DATA you can use and upload back into Facebook. Just as a reminder, first-party data is something that you collect yourself and retain, and third party data is data that comes through another platform/person to you.

• DIVERSIFY your advertising techniques, make use of email lists and other ad platforms to spread the risk.

• If you have the budget, use 3rd party reporting to get an accurate picture of your audience.

• Keep an eye on developer updates as things will be changing fast as Facebook try to mitigate their downside risk!

Need some help with your Facebook Ads?

I completely understand that this news is particularly overwhelming, but I feel that we will get more information soon about how Facebook will change to help businesses advertise on their platform. If you are keen to check out what Apple have to say about the new update click here.

If you need some help with your advertising across social media, please do reach out, myself and my team can help you. Drop me an email Mary-anne@firebellymedia.co.uk and I can send you some more information on how we can help.

Remember, it will take SOME time until every iPhone user updates to the latest version of iOS, so there will be a period of time where you will still be able to advertise based on retargeting and demographics. 

What do you think about this latest change? I’d love to know your thoughts, let me know in the comments how you think this will affect the future of advertising. 

BIG love,

Mary-Anne. x

 

p.s if you would like to check out more marketing tricks that I’ve been sharing on TikTok, you can view ALL of my videos here.

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