How Will Apple’s Tracking Changes Affect Your Facebook Ads?
You depend on Facebook to connect with committed customers and expand your reach to new audiences. Most of this potential and existing customer base probably relies on Apple products, too – in Canada, the most recent data shows that almost 57% of smartphone users have an iOS device. What happens when these companies don’t agree?
Apple has announced changes to app tracking that will come with their updated iOS this month. How will this affect you, and how can a digital marketing team help you make sense of them?
What Changes To Advertising Is Apple Enforcing?
Apple is changing all its advertising platforms with the new iOS 14 by making tracking optional for iPhone users. Starting with this update, all apps in the App Store that engage in what Apple defines as tracking must present a prompt to iOS 14 users. Unless the user lets the app track them on their device running this new operating system, Apple will forbid certain forms of data collection and sharing.
The new opt-in tracking changes will affect how you understand your ad, as well as how your Business account receives and processes conversion events from tools like Facebook pixel. Facebook pixel is an analytics tool that lets you measure the effectiveness of your advertising by understanding the actions people take on your website.
As more users deny apps – like Facebook – the right to track them on phones and tablets using iOS 14, there will be limits on ad personalization and performance reporting for both app and web conversion events. Because of Apple’s choice, Facebook says that ad performance could drop by as much as 60%.
How Could This Change Affect Your Small Business Marketing Goals?
The changes have major implications for small businesses that advertise on mobile apps and those who optimize, target, and report web conversion events from Facebook’s business tools. Unless they make the proper changes, they will no longer have the ability to tell what audiences like the ads and how well they lead to conversions.
Facebook says they are making changes, including processing pixel conversion events from iOS 14 devices using Aggregated Event Measurement. The company, which derives most of its money from ad revenue, will support efforts to preserve user privacy while also helping businesses run effective campaigns.
Right now, the only way they’ve helped is by making more hoops for small businesses to jump through. It poses a tough question: if you don’t know who is signing up or buying your stuff, how can you optimize your ads?
Why Small Business Digital Help Is Important
How can you run ads that are Apple compliant? The new updates come with many new rules for how you set up your ads; now, you need domain verification, two-factor authentication, and aggregated event measurement. It’s necessary to set these factors up to prevent Apple or Facebook from turning them off.
You can still rely on Facebook’s Aggregated Event Measurement to allow for measurement on iOS 14 devices. You must update Facebook’s software development kit (SDK) for iOS 14 version 8.1 to personalize ads for iOS 14 users and keep receiving app conversion events reporting. If you’re an app admin, you can do this from the Events Manager tool.
You shouldn’t let the changes scare you off! Facebook and Apple aren’t the be-all and end-all of online advertising. SlyFox can run your social media accounts, update them to appeal to changes, and set you up with effective advertising on other platforms like Google. You have so many options at your disposal – our team will help you use them!
