Facebook Advertising and iOS14: A Guide (and what to tell clients)

Facebook Advertising and iOS14

No doubt you’ve heard about the changes with iOS14 and what it does to Facebook advertising. We found two (really good) resources that we feel sum up this whole deal so far. The first is from our colleague Maurice Rahmey and the second comes from Digiday’s Confessions of a Media buyer.

In addition, what we’ve laid out all the resources you need, as we know of them right now. We have a client email template, a list of resources, and action steps.

Enjoy and hey, sign up for our newsletter while you’re at it.

Client Email Template

(Grab the template here)

Dear Client:

Recently, Apple announced a number of changes that are forthcoming in early 2021 surrounding iOS14. These changes will have massive implications on our ability to market, track, and understand data from our potential and current customers. We are still learning complete details about what the changes will be, but there are actions we must take now to ensure we are prepared properly.

What we do know is that tracking will be become more difficult, our attribution windows will change, ads will be likely less effective due to a loss of “signals” from users opting out of tracking, and we’ll need to be developing a greater understanding of how customers are finding us and how we can keep them around using tools like email and a post-purchase survey tool.

Below are resources for you to peruse as we prepare for these changes.

Must-Read Resources

• Read Maurice’s Twitter thread Here

• Read Andrew’s Twitter thread Here

• Read this article from Facebook here

• Read this developer blog post from Facebook here

Action Steps Needed Now

• Implement CAPI via Shopify or manually with Google Tag Manager

  • This helps you track based on information completed on your site through other means than cache-based pixel events.

• Verify your domain

  • This ensures you’re set up and “official” to Facebook.

• Calculate your delayed attribution multipliers

  • This helps you understand which percentage of your conversions come after 7 days.

• Decide which eight events for conversions you’ll track. Then customize them in the Events Manager

  • Prepare yourself that reporting will be very different. Facebook states, “The 8 conversion events per domain will be ranked based on priority. If multiple events are completed by a user (i.e. “add to cart” and “purchase”) only the higher prioritized event will be reported.”

• Prepare for reporting within Facebook to be less-complete

  • Facebook states, “Certain attribution windows will have partial reporting and metrics will not include all events from iOS 14 users. [It’ll be communicated] when a metric is partial.”

• Install a post-purchase attribution survey tool, like Prove It Post-Purchase Surveys

  • You will absolutely need this to understand the true impact of Facebook and Instagram’s ads on your sales funnel.
    

We plan to continue to keep our community updated on these changes as more information becomes available and in the meantime if you would like to read more on Facebook’s stance you can also go here to do so.