Ch-ch-ch-changes. Facebook has announced that businesses who advertise on mobile apps, as well as those that optimize, target, and report on web conversion events from any of their business tools will be affected by the new Apple iOS update.

Specifically, Apple will begin to require that apps in the App Store that engage in what Apple defines as “tracking” must show a prompt to iOS 14 users, in accordance with their AppTrackingTransparency framework. Apple’s policy will prohibit certain data collection and sharing unless people opt into tracking on iOS 14 devices via the prompt.

As more people opt out of tracking on iOS 14 devices, ads personalization and performance reporting will be limited for both app and web conversion events.

Actions you can take to prepare for this change

Facebook’s Aggregated Event Measurement allows for measurement of web events from iOS 14 devices. If you plan to deliver ads optimized for conversion events that occur on your website, you may need to take the following steps:

• Verify your website’s domain
• Configure 8 preferred web conversion events per domain in Events Manager. 

Facebook has created a Resource Center, which is located within your Ad Manager account. We recommend logging into this center and taking the necessary steps to resolve any issues identified and confirm whether the actions noted above are necessary. 

Please note: If you are a current client of ours utilizing Ad Manager, we have taken these steps on your behalf. 

New Delivery Statuses

Facebook has introduced a new column into Ads Manager: Delivery Status. This column of Ads Manager is where you can check the status of your campaign, ad set or ad and find information about any problems. The new column will call out any issues, such as: unsupported event or setup error. 

Reporting and Targeting Limitations

As with any change, Facebook reporting may be impacted. Real time data may be delayed up to 3 days. In addition, many results will no longer be able to be broken down by actions such as age, religion or gender. 

This change will obviously bring about a targeting limitation as well. As people opt out of tracking on the iOS 14 devices, your audience size will continue to decrease. 

As more people opt out of tracking on iOS 14 devices, the size of your app connections, app activity Custom Audiences, and website Custom Audiences may decrease. This will not be an overnight switch, but something for you to continuously monitor over time.

What do these changes mean for the users of the app? 

Right now – not much. The user experience should remain the same. 

That said, Facebook has been telling users that the information it collects from other apps and websites can “help keep Facebook free of charge.” A similar message was seen on Instagram’s iOS app (Facebook is Instagram’s parent company) as well. While nobody can predict what will happen to these platforms, it will be interesting to see how these privacy changes affect different apps – mainly Facebook and instagram. 

If you have questions about these changes or your ad account, give us a call for a free 15 minute review!