Paid advertising on every digital platform is undergoing a major transition in a new era of data legislation & privacy, with the largest ever proposed change now taking shape as a result of Apple’s new policies on its operating system iOS14. The emergence of an opt in prompt, on the installation of an app on iOS means that the data that can be stored or used for advertising purposes is now in the hands of the consumer. This is referred to as AppTrackingTransparency or ATT. Combinining this with other ecosystem changes on the web, namely Apple’s Private Click Measurement approach to limit data sharing on Safari, means that platforms are going to struggle to work from a paid advertising perspective compared to when there was no real rules in play.

This article will focus on Facebook’s changes: what they are doing, what you should be doing & the little snippets of information that are key to understand or risk a large impact to how you run ads on Facebook.

Facebook’s stance to iOS14 changes

Facebook have been very vocal in their stance to the ATT changes, but have also used it as an opportunity to prepare for the future of web based tracking also. ATT is primarily around the app to app world, however Facebook is known to use data to measure cross-device, which therefore creates a large hole in how it operates.

Unlike Google who have recently said they will not use the ATT Prompt on their iOS apps as they do not use the IDFA for advertising purposes, Facebook will be using the prompt. Some speculate this is due to more reliance on the IDFA than first thought but their stance seems to be set around the fact that if they didn’t adopt the prompt, Apple would kick them off the App Store.

But what are the critical things that are at risk with less data on iOS14:

• Remarketing : if you opt out, there is no way to retarget these users. Hence you could expect big drops in retargeting spend as well as performance that is judged on pure platform CPA / ROI

• Frequency Caps: again if there is opt out, the ability to frequency cap is limited, even for someone like Facebook who can generally tie it back to an individual profile

• Reporting : there are big implications on reporting, from standard metrics like reach to more conversion driven data points, which will be covered in more detail later

• Lift Studies : this is something that FB have communicated will be impacted for iOS14 traffic, if they are unable to accurately segment or control.

• Attribution : again some big changes coming here, but there looks to be bigger challenges around the ability to tie back to an impression

So what are Facebook recommending as next steps & what are the solutions in play?

Verify your domain

As part of some of the new functionality that Facebook is building out, there is now added focus on ensuring advertisers who want to use paid ads for their websites, to verify their domain. This is nothing new & has existed in Facebook in three forms:

• Verifying your Business Manager

• Verifying that you are working on behalf of a specific advertiser e.g. as an agency

• Verifying your domain is owned by you

It is more the 3rd one that is important here. This is very similar to the Google SEO world, where you can do the exact same thing with Google Search Console to gain additional insights in that tool. But this is now key for Facebook as it unlocks certain functionality that I will cover next.

This also by default then focuses on advertisers owning their own technology i.e. if you verify your domain, you should do it from your owned & operated business manager. If an advertiser does not have one, now is the time to get one. You should never be doing this from your external partner / agency’s business manager, which makes no sense in this situation.

As to what domains you need to verify, you would need to understand your domain structure. For example:

example.com

sub.example.com

example.com/de/

Are all part of the main domain “example.com”, so you only need to verify that single domain. And this creates some challenges which we will come onto later. Alternatively:

example.co.uk

example.de

example.ca

Are all unique domains so you would end up with 3 unique verified domains.

These domains can then be shared as an asset to your partner’s business managers, if you are working with an agency who is owning the ad account from which the paid ads are coming from. There are also additional question marks for certain types of vendors / users of Facebook Ads, who will not really be able to get verified domains e.g. if you are running affilitate links or using a 3rd party such as Spotify.

Save historical performance reports

As part of the changes that Facebook are bringing to their ads product, a lot of reporting functionality is going to disappear across the board for conversion based campaigns. This is despite it working perfectly fine on Android devices, Facebook have made the move to keep a single setup for both operating systems. So it is recommended to save reports on the following:

• Attribution window breakdown, if you were using 28 days windows previously

• Breakdown by demographics by conversion

• Custom conversion reporting

• Breakdown by device by conversion

One of the biggest changes is the change to the default attribution window on Facebook. Historically this was set at the ad account level as a default of 1 day post click and 28 days post impression. Now the following will occur:

• Default window is now 7 days post click

• Attribution is now on the ad set level, not account or campaign

• Attribution reporting is now to the time of the conversion, not time of the event as it was historically

This means that if you are looking at the standard UI, you may not see conversion reporting on the higher levels anymore. And now you may see conversion reporting occur after a campaign ends. Previously Facebook would give this attributed conversion back to the time of the click / impression. The reason for this is due to the reporting latency that will occur with some of the iOS14 changes. And this has already started in the Facebook UI despite no Apple Prompt yet, as of the 19th January.

SKAdNetwork

For the app advertisers who are trying to run campaigns to try get app installs, the biggest change in Facebook with iOS14 is the emergence of the SKAdNetwork API. Again this is not exactly new, but Facebook are now going to use it in their ads product. But due to the limits on what Apple allows in it, you now have the following restrictions:

• Only 1 ad account can run app install campaigns for iOS app

• Maximum of 9 campaigns & 5 adsets allowed

• Last click attribution

The SKAdNetwork is fairly limited in the amount of data it gives out, hence why there are some very specific numbers referenced here by Facebook. This also causes big problems for deferred deep-linking, i.e. when an user install an app for the first, the ability to drive them to a specific section of an app. As this generally requires a IDFA, this does not work on Facebook and most likely all platforms.

In order to use the SKAdNetwork, advertisers need to ensure you are either using the latest version of the FB SDK (8.1 and above) or if you are working with a MMP (Mobile Marketing Partner), make sure their SDK is using the SKAdNetwork (most of them are).

Choose your 8 events for your pixel

The biggest disruption on Facebook ads is undoubtly the impact to the web based advertising, which is quite surprising based on the ATT being app focused. But as previously mentioned, Facebook are trying to futureproof for additional changes coming from Apple & Google in the future.

For advertisers who want to measure / optimise / reporrt towards conversions on Facebook, you now have a limit of 8 events for your pixel. This is partly due to the ATT Prompt but largely more down to the fact that Apple’s changes currently breaks the most common user journey on Facebook: clicking on an ad on their App and landing on a webpage (App to Web).

Apple’s proposed solution: Private Click Measurement only works in a web to web Safari world, so Facebook have decided to build their own solution called Aggregated Events Measurement (AEM). Apple recently communicated that they will build PCM into Apps, which will help solve this but most likely with big restrictions. AEM allows Facebook the ability to still track app to web journeys, but with a limited view & delay in reporting. This is why the 8 events are part of the discussion. Facebook can also use AEM to track a single event if an user opts out, which is slightly interesting from a data legislation perspective.

In order to pick your 8 events, you first need to verify your domain. Without this, you cannot do anything and will struggle to measure iOS14 traffic, especially post the prompt / PCM coming out properly. You get to choose your primary event, which is important to get right. It is possible to change these, but with a 24 - 72 hour delay in the UI.

But going back to the first point about domain verification, you can now see that how your website is setup can cause critical problems with what 8 events can be prioritised. If you have a single domain across multiple countries / business units, you will have to decide on 8 events to suit everyones needs, which may span multiple teams / agencies. Another big casualty are certain verticals that use a lot of custom conversions, a way to make more unique conversion points with the Facebook Pixel for reporting / bidding purposes. This can be very problematic for certain advertisers & Facebook are pretty limited in what they would recommend here.

The recommendation from my side would be to look at a standard event e.g. Purchase to get working across the board, and then look at using alternatives for more bespoke needs. Using parameters at least in the data collection may unlock more analytical power in the future also. But there are some use cases that reallly cannot abide to a 8 event limit.

Another important point in the small print is if you are an advertiser that wants to optimise towards value, i.e. ROI / ROAS. If this is important to you, then the term Value Set is going to be your new best friend. These are different groupings of revenue e.g. 0-25, 25-50. But in order to use these for bidding, you need to reserve 4 out of the 8 events to these value sets, in order to give the FB Algo enough information to work with. This is quite a dramatic requirement at this point in time, but is important for those advertisers who want to use revenue / profit data in Facebook ads.

Impact to performance

Unless you are the most optimistic person in the world, there will be an impact to the performance of Facebook Ads going forwards. The most at risk may be those App Install campaigns with limitation post click views but also very close behind is the web conversion based campaigns. Dynamic Ads, a staple for most ecommerce businesses are going to struggle if there is high opt out, from both the ability to serve personalised ads but also the ability to even group users into a remarketing segment.

This in turn impacts the ability to do a lower funnel marketing strategy, as the lines blur between prospecting & retargeting. If you are unable to completely exclude site visitors or purchasers due to a combination of opt in / tracking limitations, you may need strange performance figures.

Another hugely popular question is what is the impact to 3rd party analytics, whether that be Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics or even adserver data. The answer is unknown and don’t expect Facebook to answer it either, but personally if there is less signals for the algorithm to work with, it is likely to have an impact on those tools also.

Other Facebook solutions

Whilst these iOS14 triggered changes have meant that certain approaches to campaign strategy & activation on Facebook will change, Facebook do have a couple of other products which are important to consider as part of a wider marketing strategy. By no means are these a complete solution to ensuring you have the same levels of reporting / performance post iOS14 changes, but they do enable the ability to at least maximise the chances of it.

Conversion API (CAPI)

This product was originally known as the Server Side API from Facebook, but has been rebranded in 2020. The most advanced advertisers were already looking at ways to utilise this, as there are some core benefits it has in terms of data input into Facebook, which does not have to just be based on your website. But now based on the signal loss expected on iOS14, this is now front and centre in terms of a technical way to help boost the data that Facebook has to work with.

There are standard partner integrations with Facebook’s most common partners such as Tealium & Shopify, but it is also possible to utilise other tag managers including Google Tag Manager to get this up & running. But there are two points to be aware of. First of all, anything you do data wise is still subject to any Apple policy as well as the ethical side of data collection / manipulation. And secondily, server side tagging is not always free, as you need to house that data somewhere in the first instance. Vendors generally charge an extra for this or you’d have to store it in a Cloud environment yourself. But it is still a recommended action to running CAPI side by side with the standard pixel, to help Facebook with the maximum set of 1st party data.

Facebook Attribution

Facebook Attribution is a separate product within the Facebook Ads suite, which allows advertisers to measure Facebook Ads performance alongside other channels. As it is not part of the traditional Ads Manager platform by default, Facebook have adopted a separate approach in how it will operate post iOS14 ATT. In fact, it is going to opposite way of Ads Manager, with no AEM & no limits in terms of conversion reporting. This though may make it more open to the threat of signal loss.

Whilst this is still developing into what it will look like, it would be interesting to have this setup & compare vs your Ads Manager data as well as other data sources. And considering this is free to use, there is no obligation to make use of what it says.

Closing Thoughts

The lengths that Facebook have gone to with reacting to the iOS14 ATT changes from Apple are quite significant, especially considering that nobody else has gone to the extremes that they have. But as mentioned, there are other reasons as to why Facebook may be doing this, to try prepare themselves for more changes on the web ecosystem with the removal of reliance on cookies. Whether the performance drops seen by large amounts of advertisers in autumn 2020 were an indication of Facebook testing these changes may be a very ironic timing, but what does seem to be true is that the future of running paid ads on Facebook will be very different. However by having a good base of 1st party data to work with, a good testing approach & a measurement framework that moves beyond platform stats, you will still be able to understand whether Facebook is working as expected in your marketing mix.

For additional links:

Original FB Announcement: https://www.facebook.com/business/news/preparing-our-partners-for-ios-14-launch

FB iOS14 Announcement: https://www.facebook.com/business/news/ios-14-apple-privacy-update-impacts-small-business-ads

FB Support Page iOS14 Prep: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/331612538028890

FB Conversion API: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/2041148702652965

FB Domain Verification: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/domain-verification

Apple’s Private Click Measurement: https://privacycg.github.io/private-click-measurement/

Apple’s SKAdNetwork: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/skadnetwork

FB Main Webinar: https://www.facebook.com/business/m/UK-webinars/past?deeplink=1049599325550632

FB Web Webinar: https://www.facebook.com/business/m/sessionsforsuccess/ios14-web-guidance#

FB App Webinar: https://www.facebook.com/business/m/sessionsforsuccess/ios14-app-guidance#