This article will provide you some news on the recent iOS 14 privacy update that sent digital advertisers around the world into a frenzy. However, in the midst of uncertainty, a solution or workaround will always be there. 

Things Changing ≠ Death of Digital Advertising

Recently, Facebook said that they have decided to pre-empt Apple's big privacy update by asking users for permission to track them.

What does this mean? 

When you go to Facebook or Instagram, there is going to be a prompt before you see Apple’s prompt. This is just going to allow Facebook to provide context to the user as to why they should opt-in, and hopefully, that will increase the number of opt-ins.

Image: News articles on Facebook’s next action plan to tackle Apple’s privacy update

 

While the final details are still being ironed out by the Internet giants, we (as great marketers) already know that this is just another thing we need to adapt to because we are literally in an industry that forces us to change all the time.

Also, Facebook published several guides in their Business Help Centre to point us in the right direction as we try to find a workable solution for this privacy update.

Image: Facebook shares articles on their Business Help Centre to help us address issues relating to the change

 

Biggest impact will be on Conversion ads

If your business relies heavily on Facebook Conversion ads, pay attention to the changes that will affect how you track your conversions. 

1) The number of events recorded will be reduced, as Facebook will only record the lowest funnel event after the privacy update. 

For example: John Doe visits your website, views your content, adds a product to the cart, initiates a checkout, and completes the transaction (purchase). 

Previously it was recorded as John’s activity: 1 website visit, 1 view content, 1 add to cart, 1 initiate checkout, 1 purchase

Soon it will only be only recorded as John Doe: 1 Purchase

2) Soon, you can only track purchase from 1 day or 7 days click attribution. Therefore, fewer conversions and ROAS will be recorded in your Facebook Ads Manager as attribution settings have been changed.

3) Facebook limits the events you can have using Pixel to only 8 events, and you need to rank all 8 of your Facebook Pixel events.

 

What you can do to deal with these impacts

Corresponding to the points above, here are what you can do:

1) The change will affect how all advertisers run their ads on Facebook, and as of now, there is nothing on Facebook Pixel that we need to change. 

It is the main reason Facebook is against the iOS privacy update, as it will lead to worse ad performance due to Facebook’s difficulty in delivering personalized and accurate ads to iOS users. We can only follow what Facebook proposed for now - Facebook Aggregated Event Measurement, which will be implemented by Facebook to their platform directly. 

You should also prepare for reporting WITHIN Facebook to be incomplete. 

That leads to point no.2, to start looking for an alternative for more accurate measurement, so we could track the real numbers and act accordingly for the things that we can control.

2) To start adding URL parameters (also known as UTM) into your Facebook Campaigns, so we can start tracking the real (actual) number of purchases from Google Analytics and Shopify Dashboard.

You can implement CAPI via Shopify or manually with Google Tag Manager.

3) To verify your domain with Facebook Ads Manager.

You also need to decide on which 8 events you want to track, then customize them in your Events Manager. SoMin.ai could assist you to set up the ranking for the events. 

Link to how to verify your domain: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/domain-verification

4) Other things you can start doing to continue being successful using Facebook and Instagram ads:

• Test broader markets as soon as possible
• Focus on high-quality content for your websites, landing pages, and ads
• Re-evaluate how you attribute success for your ad campaigns
• Invest in channel diversification. You can use Email, Messenger or SMS marketing to build your customer lists, own multiple traffic assets, and focus time and effort on retention with the goal of enticing customers to come back and purchase again. Simply put, 1st party data is the heartbeat of your business. 

 

Don’t worry, you are in good hands

That is a short summary of all the things we would recommend to get every marketer ready and prepared for the future with iOS 14 privacy updates.

With that being said, we still support advertisers on Facebook and Instagram. These platforms are still going to be one of the biggest players in digital advertising, so we should not be too concerned or worried about changes like this.

If you need any clarifications or have questions, please reach out to us at everest@somin.ai or marlo@somin.ai. We'll do our best to assist you for the transition.