Big news from Apple & Facebook Ads, with new changes of iOS 14.
This will affect your campaigns, about how they receive and process conversion events from tools such as the Facebook pixel. Apple will now give users the chance to opt-out of their data being tracked, impacting data collection
Facebook has already responded to these changes by introducing a new way of processing pixel conversion events from iOS devices. To do this, they use Aggregated Event Measurement. This will support your efforts to preserve user privacy and help you run effective campaigns.
How will it affect your Facebook advertising?
We can expect the following to happen:
Your Facebook pixel will only optimize for a maximum of eight conversion events for each domain
Facebook will initially configure the conversion events that they believe are the most relevant to your business based on your previous activity. All other events will be made inactive for campaign optimization and reporting.
Delayed reporting
Real-time reporting will not be supported and data may be delayed up to three days.
Changes to account attribution window settings
Once Apple’s iOS 14 changes take effect, the attribution window for all new or active ad campaigns will be set at the ad set level, rather than at the account level. The default setting for all new or active campaigns (other than iOS 14 app install campaigns) will be set at a 7-day click attribution window. Going forward, 28-day click-through, 28-day view-through, and 7-day view-through attribution windows will not be supported for active campaigns. As more people, opt-out of tracking on iOS 14 devices, the size of your app connections, app activity Custom Audiences, and website custom audiences may decrease.
But, How to plan around the iOS 14 update and your Facebook Ads campaigns?
Verify your domain
Domain verification is part of the changes Facebook implements in respect of Apple iOS 14 privacy changes. Domain verification establishes which Business Manager account has the authority to configure. It prioritizes the 8 available conversion events for a given domain. If you’re optimizing for conversions, then verifying your domain is the most important thing to do to avoid any future disruption of your campaigns.
If you’re running Facebook ads, you will have already seen prompts in Ads Manager to verify the domain associated with the account.
Domain Verification is a simple process that you can do inside your Business Manager. There is one step you need to perform on your website that involves one of the 3 following processes:
DNS Verification
Add a DNS TXT record to your domain host to prove that you own the domain. Most domain hosts allow this, but the specific steps for each service will vary.HTML File Upload
Upload an HTML verification file to your website. To do this, you need admin access to your website’s root folder. This will verify your domain immediately.Meta-Tag Verification
Set the meta-tag containing the verification code into the <head> section of your website’s homepage.
Review your current pixel events and decide which 8 events you’d like to track
You will need to configure 8 preferred web conversion events per domain in Events Manager. Facebook’s new Aggregated Event Measurement limits domains to 8 conversion events that can be used for campaign optimization. Facebook will initially configure the conversion events they believe are the most relevant to your business. This is based on your previous activity. Ad sets optimizing for a conversion event that is no longer available will be paused when Aggregated Event Measurement launches in 2021.
If neccesary or if is an option for you: Exclude iOS devices from campaigns with conversion objectives
This certainly isn’t a permanent solution to running paid advertising on Facebook in the future. However, doing so may give you an insight into what you can expect when the update takes effect.
Create campaigns outside the conversion objective
This would mean running traffic campaigns or similar. Then, use your website’s tracking to determine if a sale or conversion occurred as a result of the ads. UTM’s and a variety of other tactics can be used to determine which campaign, ad set, and add that a conversion took place from without having to rely 100% on Facebook’s tracking pixel. Lead generation campaigns could be used as well. This strategy will not undo the impact on retargeting audiences, but will aid in your ability to drive results from prospecting campaigns.
Once you permit us to connect with Facebook Ads, you are authorizing us to read required information to optimize (and manage) the accounts, campaigns, ad group or ad sets, ads, and all the variables related to get that porpoise. We need to cover the terms and conditions from Facebook to keep the relationship with them.
Here you have all the variables we need to cover, directly from Facebook:
We hope this information will be useful for you.