Many of you may have already heard or been notified of Apple’s iOS 14 update on your mobile devices. However, there is a larger issue at hand which appeals to businesses and advertisers alike who promote their products or services via Facebook Ads.

Users on Facebook will now be prompted with Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) window, where they will essentially allow users to opt in or out for their data to be tracked.

In general, this will most likely impact audience member size/data, whilst remarketing capabilities may also be affected due to users opting out of tracking.

Below we’ve listed several key changes as a result of the update, along with next steps in order to better prepare your business/ad account in order to mitigate the potential disruptions this update may have on performance moving forward.

What’s Happening?

Whilst Apple’s iOS 14 update has already had an impact on Facebook thus far, there are additional changes yet to be rolled out, needing to be closely monitored over the coming months/year; all of which are listed below.

Roll out ‘Aggregated Event Measurement’

An algorithmic model that will help advertisers/businesses measure campaign performance regardless of user’s decisions to opt in or out

Maximum of 8 Conversion Events per domain

i.e. purchase, add to cart, view content, page view etc

If a user completes multiple conversion events, then the highest priority event will be reported

For example, a purchase will have a higher priority than a page view

Amending campaign optimisation events could take up to 72 hours to be processed

Therefore, prior to carrying out any changes, be sure that an amend is required before doing so

And don’t be surprised if such changes take some time to be processed

Sunsetting 28-day attribution and 7-day view attribution windows (this has already taken place)

Will be replaced by

1-day click

7-day click

1-day click and 1-day view

7-day click and 1-day view (default attribution window)

You will still be able to compare attribution windows, by clicking on ‘Compare Attributions’ under the ‘Columns’ at either campaign, ad set or ad level in your Facebook Ads account

End of reporting for age, gender, region and placement

There will no longer be supporting breakdowns on age, gender and placement data for conversions

Advertisers will have to rely on past historical demographic data accrued across other paid or non-paid channels to inform them of who and where they should be targeting

Regarding placement, this is slightly trickier as any new advertisers will not have a concrete understanding of which placements are relevant and could perform well for them – so one to A/B test across your campaigns.

Actions Required

Domain Verification in Business Manager *IMPORTANT*

This will ensure no immediate or future disruptions in the ability to configure conversion events

Your business domain will have to be added in Business Manager

How to find this:

Go to your Facebook Ads Manager account

Click on ‘Business Tools’, located on the left-hand side of your screen and go to ‘Business Settings’

Then navigate to ‘Brand Safety’ tab and select ‘Domains’

Once there, you should see an option to add your website’s domain

After which, you’ll then be prompted with the below screenshot, where you or someone with access to your domain will need to verify your website’s domain

Can be verified via: DNS Verification, HTML File Upload or Meta-Tag Verification

Side note: this could take up to 72h, so don’t worry if it’s not immediately verified

Prioritise Conversion Events

Seeing as you’ll only be able to use a maximum of 8 conversion events, it will be important to prioritise those which you are either currently using or planning on using in your campaigns

Review the various attribution models at your disposal

You can review the various attribution models at campaign, ad set or ad level

You can find this under ‘Columns’

Once there you’ll be able to select or remove any of the attribution windows to either view one on its own or compare versus one another

Moving Forward

All in all, we expect there to be minimal effects off the back of this in the short-run, however, could potentially see further impact on audience/remarketing capabilities in the long-run, as noted above.

Therefore, it will be vital for businesses and advertisers to closely monitor their accounts over the coming months/remainder of 2021 and identify any trends or shifts in traffic, audience size and general top-level performance (i.e. leads or sales) – as there could be further updates on either Facebook or Apple’s side as we move closer towards a cookie-less world.