Apple vs Facebook Datawars
What you need to know about Apple’s iOS update and how it affects your Facebook advertising in 2021.
Facebook and Apple Privacy Debate. How Apple’s iOS update will impact social media advertising in 2021
As you've likely heard, Apple has announced an iOS 14 update that has Facebook up-in-arms, as it will (quite dramatically) affect the functionality of Facebook advertising on iOS devices. So, if you play in the Facebook advertising space, I thought you may value an overview of what it means and how you can prepare your team and business for the changes ahead.
First, the high-level facts you need to know:
The iOS 14 update is due to roll out early 2021
The update means iOS 14 users will receive a pop-up that will prompt them to allow or deny Facebook tracking their activity in-app (across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger) and across other apps and websites.
In-app activity includes things likes, comments, shares, link clicks and purchases. While tracking across other apps and website provides behaviour and interest insights to understand what content users engage with while browsing online.
94% of Facebook Ad revenue is from mobile
iOS represents roughly half of mobile users. 53% market share in Australia and 45% market share in the US (Statistica, Oct 2020)
All Apple iOS 14 users will have to give permission for Facebook to track them in-app and across other sites.
Assuming a fair share of iOS 14 users opt-out of data sharing with Facebook, this means the data and insight Facebook receives to help you market effectively on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger will be impacted for iOS 14 users; affecting what and how you target, personalise and measure in your Facebook advertising to these users.
How exactly will you be impacted? Well, according to Facebook, there are three main areas:
Understanding your ad performance: there will be limitations in how Facebook can measure and report on conversions from specific customers or accurately attribute app installs to people using iOS 14 and later.
Targeting and personalising ads: for those that opt-out, you won't be able to target them based on how they've engaged with your business or deliver ads to new relevant audience at specific frequencies. Your ability personalise and customise ads these audiences will be limited, and your custom audiences will likely decrease.
Optimising budgets: in the beginning, it's fair to say it will be hard to predict and optimise cost per action over time and allocate budgets accordingly. So you'll have to monitor and review this continually.
While this may sound like the end of the world for you as a Facebook advertisers, it's not time to panic. It's time to prepare.
Facebook has declared it will actively fight to prepare and mitigate the impact of the change for you as an advertiser. And, let's be honest, with the Google Chrome cookie-ban looming, as marketers we need to get comfortable changing the way we market to our customers as data privacy and accessibility evolves.
In the meantime, there are a few things you can do to prepare yourself and your business:
FOR YOUR WEBSITE
Complete your website's domain verification. Chances are you've done this as best practice, but the key difference now is that it needs to be done at the effective top-level domain plus one. The process is the same as it's always been and you can learn more here.
Get ready to operate with only eight conversions per domain. A conversion event is an action a customer takes on your website, for example landing page view or add to cart (below is a list of typical events for you as reference).
If you currently use more than eight conversion events, build the plan now to determine the eight that matter most to your business.
Facebook will initially configure the conversion events they think are most relevant - others will become inactive. But you can go in and change them.
Facebook’s standard conversion events that track actions users take on your website.
RUNNING ADS TO YOUR WEBSITE
You can use your existing ad accounts to advertise to devices on iOS 14, but you'll need to create separate iOS 14 app install campaigns due to reporting limitations.
Moving forward when you create ad sets, you'll have to choose from the eight set conversion events.
Ad sets that were optimising for a conversion event that is no longer active will be paused automatically.
In preparation for this, consider if changes will need to be made to your campaign or measurement strategy in alignment with your upper and lower funnel objectives.
For dynamic ads set up your catalogue to use only one pixel. If you use multiple domains in your catalogue, verify each website display you use as a product URL and avoid using any product URLs that redirect to another domain.
FOR YOUR BUSINESS APP
Update to Facebook's SDK for iOS 14 version 8.1
This will help you optimisation ads delivered to devised with iOS 14 and continue to receive app conversion events.
You can do this through Events Manager.
RUNNING AD TO YOUR APP
Keep in mind you can only associate your app with a single ad account. However, you can use the same ad account to advertise for multiple apps.
Each app will be limited to nine iOS 14 campaigns at once, and each campaign is limited to five ad sets of the set optimisation types.
You won't be able to vary your optimisation choice across ad sets in the same campaign.
Auction will be the only available buying option when you create an ad for devices on iOS 14, reach, and frequency will not be available.
Once your campaign is published, unfortunately, you won't be able to turn on or turn off the iOS 14 campaign toggle. You'll have to turn off or delete your campaign.
CHANGES TO REPORTING
OK, there are a few things you'll want to keep in mind when it comes to reporting too. The key changes will be:
Delayed reporting: The real-time reporting for iOS 14 devices will not be supported, and data may be delayed up to three days. For app installs, conversion events will be based on the time they reported to Facebook API. For website conversions, events will be reported based on the time of conversion, not ad impression.
Estimated reporting: Facebook may have to use statistical modelling to account for results at ad set and ad levels in-app and conversion on website for iOS 14 users.
Change to attribution window: The attribution window for all new and active ad campaigns will be set at the ad set level rather than account level (you can access this during campaign creation). The default for all new and active ad campaigns will be set at a 7-day click attribution window, which means 28-day click-through, 28-day view-through, and 7-day view-through attribution windows will not be supported for active campaigns. But you can still access reporting from legacy inactive campaigns.
Facebook has provided some pretty extensive information and guidelines to help you, so if you'd like to dive deeper, there are a few links below.
Facebook's Apple iOS 14 How It Will Impact You
I hope this overview helps.