How the new iOS 14 App Tracking Transparency Framework is going to impact Your Facebook Advertising (and digital advertising in general)

Facebook's recent attack on Apple in regards to their new app tracking transparency framework has been all over the news. Who doesn't love a good public tantrum? Facebook ran full page ads saying Apple does not care about small business and that this change is fundamentally changing digital advertising.
Are you concerned about what this means for your Facebook and Instagram advertising? Will you not be able to capture conversions from this channel anymore? Should you be pulling Facebook Ads? But what if you rely on Facebook to drive new customers to your site? Are you really screwed?

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Not all is as bad as it sounds.
Yes, significant changes are coming (and are already here).
Yes, Apple's changes will have an impact on your Facebook and Instagram advertising campaigns.
Yes, you will need to prepare yourself and make the recommended changes.
But, no, it is not the end of the world. You can still keep running your ads and will still keep getting new customers via Facebook and Instagram, but you will just not be able to target in such a granular way as before and some visibility on your data and performance will be lost.
Hey, it's just another change (don't we all love change?). Digital advertising changes constantly, so let's be prepared and adapt as needed.

A little context around iPhone's market share in Australia

The mobile iOS market share in Australia in 2020 is 41.4% (up from the previous years).

For some advertisers in the ecommerce space iPhone and iPad dominate. In some cases they make up a combined 80% of all traffic and orders.
How large the impact will be is hard to say at this stage. We don’t know how many iPhone and iPad users will upgrade to iOS 14, how quickly the move is happening and how many users will actually opt out of being tracked (estimates are 50% ...).

What is Happening?

The Apple App Tracking Transparency framework is coming into play in early 2021 as part of the release of the new iOS 14 and the Facebook Ads community is panicking ...

“Data tracking is not allowed if the user chooses to disable the option. And that choice must be presented to the user through Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency framework, which, in the user interface, appears as a typical iPhone pop-up query.”*
Apple will prompt users to say yes or no to being tracked by each individual app on their phones. This will likely lead to many users disabling tracking for apps.
Facebook / Instagram are likely to be the apps most impacted as their mobile app use is huge and their advertising relies on the pixel (a cookie solution) and behavioural and demographic data to a large degree. This means limited targeting options for advertisers in the future and a reduced ability to track conversion metrics.

What does Facebook say?

Apart from throwing a tantrum as I mentioned above, Facebook’s solutions are relatively easy to implement and it’s not going to be catastrophic for small business. The impact is a lot more significant if you have an app yourself and if you do a lot of in-app advertising. This article focuses on impacts for advertising websites.

What You need to do

Facebook has created a Resource Center in your ads manager which guides you through the process: what do you need to do next with links to more detailed information.
Here is what you should have already done and if you haven’t, make it an absolute priority now:

• Complete domain verification: You can learn more here. Go to your Business Settings – Brand Safety – Domain. Click 'Verify domainV. You have several options. The easiest is to add a little code to your website DNS (within your web hosting environment) or you can also add a file to your website (a little more techy if you don’t have a developer handy as you need to access your website’s backend, but manageable). After a couple of days you finalize the verification by clicking on the confirm button in business manager.
• Select and prioritize your top 8 conversion events per domain: Once you have verified your domain, you can configure your conversion events under Aggregated Events Management: “We will start processing pixel conversion events from iOS devices using Aggregated Event Measurement. This will support your efforts to preserve user privacy and help you run effective campaigns." (Facebook will prompt you, if not check Events Manager). Facebook will have a few events preselected for you, so make sure they are the ones you want and prioritize them. This is really important as Apple will only allow 1 single event to be submitted, so make sure you have the most important event at number 1 (‘Purchases’ if you are selling online). All other events outside of the 8 you select will be made inactive for campaign optimization and reporting. You can edit your events later on, but be aware that this will mean that any ad sets with affected events will be paused for 72 hours. For an ecommerce business the priority events you want would be purchase, add to cart, start check out, landing page view and potentially sign ups or leads as a minimum.
  
• Set up Facebook Conversions API (CAPI): My Facebook rep has been in my ear about pushing my clients to set this up for weeks.
  • What is the CAPI: Facebook recommends to install the Conversion API in parallel to the pixel as it will improve data accuracy and conversion tracking. It can help improve the accuracy of events sent for measurement and optimization, and measure customer actions in more ways.
  • What's the caveat? Facebook will receive your customer data including name, address, email address and phone numbers which means you need to check your privacy policy before you activate this business tool.
  • How can it be set up? Go to Events Manager – Data Sources – Implementations. You can do it yourself (with a developer) or use one of the native integrations with different platforms (i.e. WooCommerce).

If you are on Shopify, they have recently launched a native integration where it's literally just a push of the button to switch from standard to maximum customer data sharing (in Shopify go to your Facebook Sales Channel and click on Settings, then Data sharing). This is the easiest way without involving developer resources. There are a few limitations though: it looks as if at this stage only purchase events will be shared (no other steps in the funnel). Also it's not clear how this set-up works with privacy management when a consumer wants to opt out of tracking on your site.

What will the impact of these changes be?

1. Reporting limitations:

• Delayed reporting: Real-time reporting will not be supported, and data may be delayed up to 3 days (as it takes Apple up to 3 days to share the data). This means for you that reporting data will not be complete for up to 3 days making management and optimization of short campaigns and promotions harder.
• No support for breakdowns: You won’t be able to break down event reporting data into demographics, locations and placements for iOS users (you will still be able to see this for traffic though).
• Changes to account attribution window settings: Facebook has already set the ad set level attribution window for all new or active ad campaigns to the new default of a 7-day click attribution window. You can change this, but are limited to the following windows:
  • 1-day click
  • 7-day click (default)
  • 1-day click and 1-day view
  • 7-day click and 1-day view
• Targeting limitations: As more people opt out of tracking on iOS 14 devices, the size of your website custom audiences may decrease. Retargeting audiences such as Viewed Content, Added To Cart, Initiated Checkout or Purchased will be limited to the last 7 days (currently up to 180 days). Lookalike audiences built from the above custom audiences are impacted, too as your seed audience will be reduced to the last 7 days which means that your audience size and ability to create a lookalike will be impacted. This will be an issue for businesses with small data sets and small numbers of events on a daily basis.

 

Phew, this is a lot to take in and it sounds more complicated than it is. Just follow the recommendations and you're prepared as well as can be.
The digital advertising world is in constant change and this latest development is not the end of the world.
But, I am hoping that it shows you that it is super important to focus on your own first party data and not rely on a single marketing or advertising channel.

Two main takeaways for you

1. Diversify your advertising and marketing efforts: Do not rely on a single platform like Facebook. Test others, diversify and focus on what is best for you. You don’t need to be everywhere, but you need to be where your target audience is.
   
2. Own your data: Having a big following on social media is nice, but things can change quickly. You don’t have any control over platform changes. Facebook could decide to close Facebook Groups for good. If this is your only way of engaging with your audience, then you’re screwed if you have not built up a database outside of this social platform.
   

The solution is to have your own website and build your email list! Email is far from dead! Social advertising has been the cool kid on the block for the last few years, but email marketing still rocks. It is often the best performing marketing channel for many businesses and industries. This is where you can reach your audience on your terms. So now go and make the most of it.

Are you owning your data? I would love to hear from you.

Source: *https://www.wired.com/story/sorry-facebook-ios-changes-not-bad-for-small-businesses
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash