Facebook Braces Itself for iOS 14 Changes
If you’ve been keeping up with the news around Apple’s decision to block Third Party Cookies, then you’ll know that all Apple devices & Safari browsers will now be able prevent third-party advertisers from targeting you based on your browser history and online habits.
As part of this push towards greater user privacy, all Apps available in the AppStore will be required to sign up for the AppTrackingTransparency framework. Put simply, iOS apps which collect user data and share it with other companies will be required to gain the explicit consent of its users.
Unsurprisingly, this has left Facebook – possibly the largest collector of personal data in the world – is concerned.
How will Facebook Data be Impacted?
In an email sent to Business Account owners, Facebook warned that with the new iOS 14 changes “may significantly affect ad creation, ad personalisation and performance reporting”.
You may at this point be asking yourself – will my data be affected?
Unfortunately – if your business is optimising, targeting users or reporting events from your website using Facebook Pixel, Conversions API or any other Facebook business tools then your ability to receive conversion data from iOS users will be impacted.
Facebook has further clarified that the AppTrackingTransparency framework will introduce Apple’s “aggregated event measure” feature – specifically limiting the number of tracked events that can be sent to eight per web domain. In addition to this, the eight events will be limited in their function and all ad sets optimising for events outside the eight auto-configured pixel events will be paused.
With these changes in mind, it may not come as a surprise that Facebook has also warned that it expects audience sizes and statistical modelling to decrease in accuracy as iOS 14 users are stripped from Facebook’s audience targeting tools.
Is there anything I can do to Prepare?
Facebook is clearly aware of the possible threat to its business model, and appears to be doing the best it can to prepare advertisers for the changes expected in early 2021.
Firstly, domains where multiple businesses or personal ad accounts own Pixels, accounts must complete a domain verification to continue to use Pixels across all accounts. This can be done in Business Manager, and Mackerel Media is ensuring that all clients are up to date with the current domain verification recommendations.
Next, Facebook is urging users to review and optimise Pixel Events in order to remain compliant with Apple’s “aggregated event measure” feature. If you have admin access to your Business Manager, you can edit which events are available for each of the pixels on your domain.
Finally, make sure you check your attribution – iOS 14 updates will only support a 7-day click attribution window. If your campaigns have an attribution window of longer than 7-days, Facebook will automatically reset to a 7-Day Click window. So make sure you are prepared for this, otherwise you might get a nasty surprise next time you check!
These changes to Facebook’s Data Tracking and Attribution are complex. If you’d like to have a chat with us about how to prepare, please drop us a line via hello@mackerelmedia.co.uk.
