How To Prevent Ad Annihilation Due to iOS14 Updates
In June 2020, Apple announced a new iOS 14 AppTrackingTransparency framework, requiring apps to show a discouraging prompt, that will have hard hitting implications for businesses that advertise on mobile devices and across the web.
In early 2021, Facebook will begin to show Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) prompt. Once Facebook and Instagram show Apple’s ATT prompt, those that optimize, target, and/or report on mobile web events from any of our business tools will be impacted given Apple’s required limits on data sharing.
Today, in order to help minimize disruption, we are providing you actions you need to take immediately.
Actions to take right now:
Domain verification in Business Manager: This is critical for businesses with pixels used by multiple Business Managers or personal ad accounts. Domain verification will ensure no immediate or future disruption in the ability to configure conversion events.
Note: Domain Verification must be done at the effective top level domain plus one (eTLD+1 ). For example, for www.books.jasper.com, books.jasper.com and jasper.com the eTLD+1 domain is jasper.com.
It’s free to verify your domains. There are 2 domain verification methods:
- HTML file upload
DNS TXT record
EVENT MANAGEMENT
We only get 8 conversion events per domain now: If you use more than 8 conversion events per domain for optimization or reporting, prepare an action plan for how to operate with 8 conversion events per domain based on your business priorities. You will not need to make changes to the pixel or Conversions API implementation as event configuration will be done in Events Man
Aggregated Event Measurement: Facebook will introduce Aggregated Event Measurement to support measurement of web events from iOS 14 users once Apple requires the ATT prompt. It is designed to help you measure campaign performance in a way that is consistent with consumers’ decisions about their data.
Event Limits: You will be limited to the use of 8 conversion events per domain (i.e., 8 <pixel, event> or <custom conversion> per domain). You will not need to make changes to the pixel or your Conversions API implementation as event selection will be done in Events Manager beginning early 2021.
Ad sets optimizing for an event beyond the 8 that are prioritized will be paused.
The 8 conversion events per domain will be ranked based on priority. If multiple events are completed by a user (i.e. “add to cart” and “purchase”) only the higher prioritized event will be reported.
After the initial configuration, the domain owner will be able to configure which 8 events are tracked for a given domain in Events Manager.
Ads Reporting (Ads Manager, Ads Reporting, Ads Insights API):
- 28-day click-through, 28-day view-through, and 7-day view-through attribution windows will not be supported. Historical data for these windows will remain accessible via the Ads Insights API.
- Statistical modeling will be used for certain attribution windows and/or metrics to account for less data availability from iOS 14 users. In-product annotation will communicate when a metric is modeled.
- Certain attribution windows will have partial reporting and metrics will not include all events from iOS 14 users. In-product annotation will communicate when a metric is partial. This will launch in early 2021.
- Delivery and action breakdowns will not be supported for offsite conversion events.
- Offsite conversion events will be reported based on the time the conversions occur and not the time of ad impressions. As a result, you may notice small fluctuations in cost metrics, as cost per conversion will reflect spend over a given period divided by conversions that took place over the same period, whereas today, cost per conversion reflects spend over a given period divided by conversions driven by ad impressions that took place over the same period.
- Long story short: conversion/sales data will be delayed about 3 days now
Attribution Window Selection: We will be replacing the account-level attribution window with a new attribution setting at the ad set level that can be accessed during campaign creation. This attribution setting ensures that the conversions we measure are the same ones used to inform campaign optimization, and will allow for increased flexibility and clarity when analyzing ad performance. We will introduce a new API parameter to allow for the querying of results based on this new attribution setting.
For automated rules: In early 2021, attribution window settings for existing and newly created automated rules will no longer be supported, and a default window of 7-day click-through for non-iOS conversions and the SKAdNetwork window for iOS conversions will be implemented.
VALUE OPTIMIZATION (VO)
VO will transition from Ads Manager to Events Manager and value set will need to be enabled.
If you have previously used VO, value sets will be automatically assigned based on historical data and turned on in Events Manager.
If you are eligible and use VO infrequently or have never used it, value sets must be configured manually.
Turning on value sets will automatically utilize 4 out of the 8 events allowed for campaign optimization and reporting for a given domain. Advertisers will have the opportunity to allocate up to 8 event slots to value sets for greater precision.
For optimal performance, events with value sets turned on should be placed in higher priority slots within the Events Manager.
Actions to take now:
If you are already using VO, no action is required.
DYNAMIC ADS
There are no specific changes for Dynamic Ads for Retargeting, but you may see performance and audience sizes decrease. We expect minimal impact to you using Dynamic Ads to reach Broad Audiences.
Actions to take now:
Verify product URL domains in the catalog feed and avoid the use of URLs redirectingusers to a different domain.
Prepare to use only 1 pixel per catalog to optimize for prioritized conversion eventsacross all catalog items.
ACTIONS TO TAKE IN THE VERY NEAR FUTURE
Set up the conversion API: since reporting from the pixel will be unreliable, send data back from the conversion source (ie. CRM) back to FB ads dashboard: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/2041148702652965
