If you’re an active advertiser on Facebook you may have heard about Apple’s next iOS 14 update, its impacts on Facebook ads, and Facebook’s response to it. We’ve been following the saga closely and would like to update you on what this will mean for advertisers and the steps you need to take to prepare for the changes ahead.
In summary, advertiser’s reports and results are likely to change due to changes in the way Facebook gathers and records data. This is because Apple’s iOS 14 update will offer iPhone users the option to increase their privacy protection, allowing them to choose to prevent Facebook from tracking information outside of the Facebook app.
An example of what iPhone users will see in the update’s privacy setting option is below:
50% of Facebook users are people using iPhone – so this update by Apple will undoubtedly impact the data that Facebook can obtain about users leading to some impacts on targeted advertising.
Areas Of Your Facebook Advertising This Will Impact
(Just how much, we can’t know until the change occurs)
Tracked Conversions & Events
Your campaigns use Facebook Pixel to track important actions people take on your website like purchases and contact form submissions. Pixel is a piece of code that sits on your website and is connected to your Facebook Ads account. One major change that Facebook is rolling out because of the Apple update is to limit the number of events tracked by the Pixel to eight only per domain. Your domain is companyname.co.nz and any other sub-domains, such as shop.companyname.co.nz are included in that one domain.
This change also means that you will only be able to see ONE event on your website from iOS users who have opted out. For example, if a user clicks on an ad, visits your website and then completes multiple events such as filling out a contact form, subscribing to your email newsletter, and making a purchase, Pixel will only be able to report on ONE of those actions. Part of Facebook’s solution for this will be a new event prioritisation system, giving you the option to indicate which events are most important to you. Facebook’s system will use this ranking to determine which event they will report on when users complete multiple events.
Related to the change to tracked events, it will be important to note that any campaigns that are optimising for a pixel conversion event that is no longer active will be paused. In advance of this limitation, consider whether changes will need to be made to your campaign or measurement strategy.
Verification
Facebook is recommending advertisers verify their domains in their Facebook Business Manager accounts. You can begin this process by checking your account’s Resource Centre and following the steps there. We have also prepared a how-to guide to assist with this, below.
Reporting
The reporting on your Facebook campaigns will change, and you should expect to see a drop in reported performance from your advertising. There will also be delays added to the event reporting from websites to Ads Manager, meaning event data will take between 24 – 48 hours to come through.
Attribution, Optimisation and Targeting
The current default for Facebook’s reporting is 28-day click / 1-day view. This means Facebook takes the credit for a conversion from an ad that was clicked up to 28 days before the conversion or viewed within one day of the conversion. This is changing – the new default will be a 7-day click / 1-day view model. Also, some event tracking will begin to be modelled by Facebook’s AI, i.e. estimated based on user actions on site.
Recommendations
You will need to do the following:
- Domain verification – Something we understand needs to be done as soon as possible is verifying the domain name associated with the pixel installed on the website. This will allow advertisers to select and order the eight Pixel events that matter most to them. See our how-to guide below for more information on this.
- Event ranking – One major change that is occurring is to limit the number of events (conversion goals) tracked by the Facebook Pixel to eight per domain. You will need to discuss with your Conversion Marketing account manager the importance of tracked events on your site, and you will need to rank them accordingly when this functionality is available as an administrator in your Facebook Business Manager settings.
- Check your Resource Centre – To help prepare for the changes ahead, Facebook has added a Resource Centre section in all ad accounts with updates and tasks to follow. We recommend you log in to your ad account and check this to begin preparing for the changes ahead. To do this, navigate to the Resource Centre in your Facebook ads account at https://business.facebook.com/adsmanager/manage/resource_center .
Here to help
We know these changes may have an impact on your advertising, and we will work to keep all of our clients and contacts up to date with news and additional resources as they become available.
You can contact our team if you have any questions about these changes and what is required to prepare your ads account for the changes.
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How to verify your domain
- Sign in to Facebook
- Go to your Business Manager account
- Click on the 9 dots or hamburger menu in the top left corner, navigate to “Brand Safety” and click on the dropdown menu, select “Domains”
- This should open up three options for how to verify your domain:
DNS verification, HTML file upload, Meta-tag verification.
(If you don’t see these it may mean you need to add a domain to connect with your Business Manager. If this is the case don’t worry about the next steps. Instead, add yourdomain.co.nz as a new domain) - What verification option you choose will depend on who will do this (you or a developer) and the platform that hosts your website. We believe that the metatag verification option is the easiest, and encourage you to use this method if you are doing it yourself, otherwise, follow your web developer’s advice.
- Select the verification process you prefer and then follow the steps outlined by Facebook under that section.
