The recent Apple iOS 14 update has given digital marketing professionals a bit of a headache, to say the least, when it comes to social media advertising Greenville NC. In short, Apple has recently started requiring that all apps in their App Store show a prompt to all users on iOS devices that asks their permission for the app to track them outside of the specific platforms. Seems fair, right? But what about advertisers and small businesses who rely on audiences and their trackable trends to market to them through social media advertising Greenville NC? This will certainly impact the way in which Facebook is able to receive and process conversion events from tools like the Facebook Pixel, essentially affecting those who optimize, target, and report on web conversion events. If those iOS users opt-out of Facebook’s tracking, there will be a domino effect that will result from this: If Facebook is not able to track user behavior, reporting will become inaccurate and targeting options will be weakened, resulting in more wasted spend of advertising dollars and less personalization of ad copy.

Specific Changes To Note

Advertising Tool Set Up - Advertisers will now be limited to using 8 conversion events per domain. This includes both standard events and custom conversions for optimization. Advertisers will need to choose 8 events, which can be swapped at any time, for their campaign optimizations and reporting.Targeting And Delivery - Default attribution windows are moving from 7-day click-through and 1-day view-through to 7-day click-through only for all conversions and catalog sales objective campaigns. Advertisers should expect delivery to be less efficient compared to historical performance.Measurement And Reporting - Website conversion events will be reported based on the time the conversions occur instead of the time of ad impressions. Additionally, there may be a 24-48 hour delay when an offsite conversion is reported from iOS users. With this, Facebook will no longer be able to support 28-day click-through, 28-day view-through, and 7-day view-through attribution windows. Additionally, delivery and action breakdowns, such as age, gender, and region, will not be supported for offsite conversion events.

How Can Facebook Advertisers Prepare?

• Verify your domain in Facebook Business Manager. If a domain has pixel events owned by multiple Business Managers or ad accounts, one Business Manager must verify the domain in order to edit the event configuration. This ensures there is no conflict between Business Managers or ad accounts as to ownership of the domain’s conversion event configuration.
• Prepare to operate and define the priority of a maximum of 8 conversion events per domain. It is recommended that you identify the 8 events most important to your business's outcomes and assess if changes need to be made to the campaign or measurement strategy. Advertisers will not need to make changes to their pixel as this event selection will be done in Events Manager.
• Anticipate changes to attribution windows and update automated rules if necessary.
• Identify campaign optimization strategies that may require testing, such as alternative audience options or different bidding strategies.

What Does This Mean For Programmatic Advertising?

Programmatic platforms have indicated that they do not expect a major interruption to performance on their platform. They have invested in cross-device tracking and are using multiple identifiers outside of IDFA, which is the unique device ID assigned to each iPhone, to link users and devices together.

Red Shark Digital Social Media Advertising in Greenville, NC

At Red Shark Digital, we understand the value that digital marketing through social media advertising Greenville NC has on your business and are fully dedicated to supporting you in these constantly changing times. The iOS 14 update represents a significant shift in the direction of digital privacy as more control is given to the users and their data by companies and not governments, a trend that will undoubtedly continue in the future. If you would like to find out more about how these changes affect your business or what you need to do to maintain performance through social media advertising Greenville NC, contact the digital marketing experts at Red Shark Digital today!