iOS14.5 Impact on Facebook Advertising

iOS14.5 Impact on Facebook Advertising

Opting out

On 26th April 2021 Apple’s iOS 14.5 privacy update launched, impacting all platforms that rely on data collection for advertising like Snapchat, TikTok, Amazon, and Facebook. For business owners and Digital Marketers, it will be more difficult to reach our target audience, remarket and deliver relevant ads. Bit of a headache for businesses who up to now relied on the tech giants like Facebook to scale their businesses.

For the first time we can now control how our online activity is seen. So, if we choose to opt out of tracking, we can still browse as normal, but our data will not be tracked like it used to be. You may have noticed seeing less ads as you scroll through Facebook? This is why.

Facebook Ads

So far, Facebook has been very transparent with how these changes will impact ads. Our advice, make the most of their honesty, as we have all learned, things in the domain of the biggest tech giants change without warning!

This impact on ads will be most obvious around 3 core performance related areas:

1. Conversion tracking – Conversion tracking will have more restrictions, but Facebook is working on some new features in its business manager to combat this.

2. Ad Objectives – remarketing campaigns designed to target traffic from your website will be impacted if the user has chosen to opt out.

3. Reporting – real time reporting is gone.

Reduce the Impact

With Facebook there are a few ways you can start to reduce the impact of iOS14.5

1. Verify your domain in Event Manager
2. Use lookalike audiences to test and build new audiences
3. Prioritise the eight conversion events that are most important for your business

If you want to really work on protecting your business assets there are other ways you can be proactive and avoid losing leads and potential clients.

1. Use Android campaigns: the iOS 14.5 update only affects Apple devices and users.
2. Leverage your websites analytics to understand where your visitors are coming from and use this data to your advantage.
3. Develop a stronger organic social media and content strategy to strengthen your brand.
4. Build your mailing list – this is gold for every business.

The waiting game

We are still unsure what big businesses like Google and Facebook will do in response to the iOS14.5 update. What is certain however, is that it has never been more important for businesses to adapt their approach and ensure they diversify their digital marketing channels.