A Guide: How to Navigate the Apple iOS 14 Update

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We’re only three months down in 2021 but we’ve already found ourselves saying, what a year for digital! Between the Instagram Algorithm changing, TikTok privacy updates, new platforms demanding our attention, and now the Apple iOS 14 fiasco; we promise, everything is going to be okay. TLDR; Facebook is currently in a ‘lil fight with Apple, so we are preparing ourselves for what comes next. If you’ve heard about the iOS 14 update but have no clue what it means, you are not alone. If you know about it and you aren’t sure what it means for your brand, you are not alone. We heard enough of our creators and brands asking about the update and the impact it will have on ads, so we thought we’d put together a helpful guide.

Source: Here's What the iOS 14 Update Means for Your Facebook Ads

What you need to know:

With the new iOS 14 update, Apple is requiring all apps in the App Store to show a prompt to its users on iOS devices asking permission for the app to track them outside the platform in different ways. As you can imagine, given growing data and privacy concerns, many will likely say no. These revised privacy settings will impact targeting and advertising capabilities on Facebook. If an iOS user opts out of tracking, Facebook will not get their data for remarketing, conversion tracking, or lookalike targeting. At the end of the day, that little pop-up notification has a lot of power.

How does this impact my brand?

Apple announced changes with iOS 14 that will impact how Facebook can receive and process conversion events from tools like the Facebook Pixel. Any business that advertises on mobile apps, in addition to those who optimize, target, and report on web conversion events will be impacted. AKA, If iOS users elect to opt-out of Facebook tracking, brands will not be able to track these users with the Pixel, which means that they won't be able to gather information for conversion events or remarketing efforts. You read that right, we will no longer be able to retarget iOS users who’ve visited your website if they opted out – making it harder to reach the right people with a lower-funnel message:

Targeting options will be weakened. That means the ability to create hyper-personalized ads to audiences may be hindered greatly.
Fewer targeting options means potential wasted spend and less personalization of ad copy

In response, Facebook has released many statements about their frustrations with this update and has added a section on their Facebook for Business platform with Small Business owners sharing how this very negativity affects them in hopes to get Apple to reverse this policy.

@Blackprints for @OnePlus

What do we recommend you do about it?

Thankfully, standard UTM codes for tracking won’t be affected with the Apple iOS 14 update, as well as Google Analytics. Facebook is simply asking any advertisers who “optimize, target, or report on web events from a Facebook Pixel” to complete domain verification. Facebook recently released help pages and webinars to support advertisers and help them “update your event setup and manage these changes.” Regardless, these steps do not allow the tracking of users who opt-out of the iOS prompt; it just seems to help with the conversion layer to the iOS policy restrictions.

Source: Facebook for Businesses

The Good News:

While this update will most definitely impact Pixel-related campaigns and conversion campaigns, the good news is that Facebook still has extremely compelling and interesting targeting capabilities, honestly, it’s hard to not geek out about them. I mean really, we can target people based on their location (even within a 1-mile radius of a specific location), age, relationship, interest, oh, and even if their friends have a birthday next month. For example, we can target someone who works at Home Depot in a specific town, is married, is a first-time homebuyer, has an interest in console gaming, and loves pizza. Okay, now I’m hungry and want to go to The Home Depot.

‍Although we have yet to see the impact of the Apple iOS 14 changes, keep in mind the breadth of robust existing targeting that will still be available to us as marketers. That said, influencer marketing is a great choice when deciding where to move media dollars that once went to highly targeted conversion and Pixel ads. By using our first party data to research a creator’s demographics, you can find an influencer who has an audience that may take the place of a targeted ad. Strong creative and ad content will also be in high demand, and we are ready to help you meet those demands. Looking to get started? Check out our customizable campaign packages that can work with your budget, necessary creators, timelines, and specific deliverables. As a general life note, things happen that we have control over, and others that we don’t. At From Popular Pays, we truly believe that Facebook is doing the best they can with what they’ve been given. Honestly, aren’t we all? If you are looking for additional support navigating this change or considering alternate ways to advertise, feel free to hit us up, we love geeking out on this stuff.