Well…Apple and Facebook…

…and apparently, amongst many other of the uber privacy-infiltrating tech conglomerates out there, they happen to want to do something about it.

There’s an ever-growing standard when it comes to protecting your online privacy, and one of the biggest changes we’ve seen in 2021 so far is the rather sluggish and drawn out rollout of Apple’s iOS 14, and more specifically Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy.

Put simply, Apple is requiring all apps in the App Store to show a prompt to users on iOS devices asking the user for permission for the app to track them outside the platform in different ways:

Think of it like cookie consent pop-ups we get on websites ever since GDPR came in to effect.

How this affects Facebook Ads

The ATT policy increases the potential of reduced visibility into key metrics that measure and show how your ads perform and what’s driving your conversions. Lack of insight into what’s driving your conversions leads to an increased challenge in optimising your marketing budget and delivering profitable results.

Facebook advertisers are most concerned with the iOS 14 update, as it affects many things in the paid social landscape, but most notably the measurement and attribution of Facebook Ad results, and the targeting and optimisation of your ad sets and campaigns.

To counteract the impacted changes, Facebook recommends the following:

1. Verify your domain with Facebook. iOS 14 will affect how Facebook receive and process conversion events from tools such as the Facebook Pixel. Verifying your domain is the first step in addressing this. (There’s a 2-minute video at the bottom of this page explaining how that’s done)
2. The new update means you can only track a limit of 8 app or web conversion events per domain, such as leads, purchases, add to carts, etc. Select your events, and rank them by importance in your Facebook Events Manager tool.
3. The maximum attribution window will change from 28 day post click/view  to 7 day post click, and 1 day post view. You’ll need a way to account for leads and sales that occur from day 8 on. Compare your attribution windows now to see if and how much you might be affected.

To minimise the impact on existing client accounts, the tracking and tech team at KMG are working alongside Account Managers to ensure that domain verification is completed when necessary. We'll be in contact if this affects you.