03.03.2021
HOW WILL THE LATEST VERSION OF IOS 14 AFFECT FACEBOOK & INSTAGRAM ADVERTISING?
The digital marketing team at Oyster Studios has been investigating Apple’s iOS 14 update and its potential impact on Facebook and Instagram advertising so you don’t have to! Here are our findings…
For those of you who haven’t heard, the new iOS 14 update is a big deal in the world of digital marketing as it will prompt users to opt out of being tracked for advertising purposes. This is because of Apple’s new ‘App Tracking Transparency’ policy. Until this becomes widely available, it’s not entirely clear how it will affect paid social media advertising platforms, however we have done some initial research and our findings are summarised in this blog. Our research focuses on Facebook and Instagram, but the issues are also relevant to Twitter, Snapchat and other social media platforms.
A large volume of businesses who run advertising campaigns on Facebook and Instagram use the ‘conversion’ objective and track campaign performance, purchases, etc. using the Facebook Pixel. The Facebook algorithm then gets to work and shows ads to the people most likely to convert and make a purchase. However, if iOS 14 users decide to opt out of tracking in droves, this could impact on conversion campaigns in the following ways:
- The Facebook algorithm’s ability to target people who are most likely to convert is will be affected (since FB will have less knowledge about the behaviour of people using iOS 14 who have opted out of tracking).
- There are likely to be smaller and less complete audiences available for remarketing purposes.
- Targeting will potentially be less effective and lookalike audience sizes will be smaller, since FB will have less information on the interests, hobbies and habits of people who have opted out of tracking, although according to Facebook, “Location targeting, demographic targeting, and detailed targeting are not based on conversion or event data that could be impacted by users opting out of tracking on iOS 14 devices, and therefore should be unaffected by Apple’s new iOS 14 requirements.”
- There will be a potential impact on reporting, including delays in the reporting of information and the likelihood of certain information being aggregated and incomplete.
- When iOS 14 is released, advertisers will be restricted to using the ‘7-day click’ attribution window for iOS 14 users. This could mean that you have an ‘apples and pears’ situation when comparing the results to similar campaigns in previous years.
The above summarises the issues as we see them, and it remains to be seen how significant the impact of this is going to be. For companies with a low proportion of iOS 14 customers, these issues are unlikely to have a dramatic effect on advertising performance, but for many others it could have a greater impact.
So, how should you prepare?
In the first instance, we recommend looking at your analytics to establish the volume of iOS 14 users who visit your website on a regular basis and the proportion of iOS 14 users among your customers, so you are better informed.
Then, Facebook has advised that all advertisers should do the following:
- Verify your domain name in Facebook Business Manager – this is important to help prevent interruptions with campaigns
- Choose your top 8 events within the events manager section
- Implement conversion APIs
