With the upcoming implementation of Apple’s iOS 14.5, advertising on Facebook is going to get more interesting. The updated iOS is going to require that all apps in the App Store show a prompt as a part of their App Tracking Transparency framework. This is going to affect how Facebook receives and uses conversions from tools like Pixel. Advertisers running campaigns to iOS 14.5 and later will see limitations on data sharing.
The update is going to require people to opt into tracking on the updated devices, otherwise Apple is going to prohibit certain data collection and sharing. As people begin to opt out of the tracking on their iOS 14 devices, personalized ads and performance reports are going to become limited in apps and online.
Facebook is going to continuously update its users about any updates that are going to affect them. They are also going to process pixel conversion events from iOS 14 devices using their Aggregated Even Measurement.
When creating ads for conversion events on both app and online, you will need to update Facebook’s SDK for iOS 14 to 8.1, learn about mobile measurement partners, verify your website’s domain, and create eight web conversion events per domain. On your website the pixel can only be optimized for eight conversions per domain.
If you are advertising in your business’ app then you can only link your app to one ad account. Additionally, each app is restricted to nine campaigns at once with a 72-hour reset period after an ad is turned off.
Another impact is the limited reporting across Ads manager, Ads reporting and Ads Insights API. Here are some of the changes:
- Real-time reporting is no longer available
- Data may be delayed up to three days.
- Web conversion will be reported when it happens, not when the impression occurs.
- There will no longer be delivery and action breakdowns (age, gender, region, etc.) on either app or web.
- There are no longer going to be 28-day views available. Instead, there will be seven day only.
- The size of your target audiences is going to decrease, so we recommend using one pixel per domain on the web.
Let's Recap
All in all, there is going to be less effective and less efficient advertising the more Facebook users opt out of using the Facebook pixel, leaving advertisers unable to remarket to their target audience. There will also be less website sales from ads than before due to the loss of personalization of ads.
It is going to be a big learning curve overall for advertising both on the web and in app. We are going to have to relearn and rethink how we advertise in iOS 14.5. Many people, including Facebook, are not happy about this decision from Apple as they believe small businesses will be impacted most.
