Apple’s latest iOS14 update will allow users to opt-out of Facebook data tracking on apps and websites which means big changes for Facebook ads.
Facebook and Apple have form when it comes to taking a pop at each other. Largely, their spats don’t affect us too much as end-users, but the privacy changes that have come along with iOS14 definitely will affect you, both as a consumer and even more so if you are a small business or enterprise that uses Facebook for advertising.
How am I currently being tracked across Facebook and online?
In a (very basic-level) nutshell, if you are an Apple user operating on the iOS14 system, you will start to see pop-ups when you open apps telling you what data that app might use to track you and giving you the option of opting-out of Facebook tracking.
Facebook currently has the capability to track user activity on websites and apps off Facebook. This means that as long as you are logged in to Facebook (which we pretty much all are, all of the time!), Facebook can track what sites you visit and what you look at on those sites IF the website is using Facebook’s pixel coding on their site.
This data is hashed/encrypted before getting back to Facebook where it is ‘matched’ with the data Facebook already has on you from your activity on the app, and advertisers can then effectively use this pixel data to send you adverts that should theoretically be tailored to your interests.
What kind of information is tracked?
Facebook tracks your activity when you land on a website using particular defined ‘events’ which match the activity you take when you are browsing, such as the buttons you click like ‘Add To Cart’, ‘Subscribe’, ‘Initiate Checkout’ and ‘Purchase’.
Your activity is also used in retargeting advertising. That’s what’s happening when that pair of trainers you were checking out or that you added to your cart but didn’t buy, then magically appear in an ad the next time you open up Facebook? That’s the pixel.
Being able to opt-out of off-Facebook tracking on iOS14 devices means that Facebook can no longer easily obtain and use this pixel data to tailor what ads you see in your news feed.
Is the iOS14 privacy update a good or bad thing for me?
While this is good news from a consumer point of view in lots of ways, i.e. more transparency about how our data is shared and what data advertisers can track, it also means that your experience on Facebook may be less personalised and you’re likely to see less adverts and information that you might have been interested in seeing.
From the perspective of a small business, charity or community who uses and relies on Facebook advertising, this is a major headache. It reduces their ability to find their ideal audience on Facebook and Instagram, which means reaching the right people with the right message and offer is going to prove much more difficult.
As well as retargeting, Facebook pixel data gives businesses useful data about their customer’s journey and experience on their website, landing pages and ads too, which is good for the end user as it means continuous improvement on those channels.
What do the Apple iOS changes mean for my Facebook ad accounts?
This all means that your ad campaigns, data-driven custom audiences, ability to track ‘events’ and retarget, and therefore your ad campaign results, are going to be affected.
The ‘events’ that used to be tracked via the pixel will now no longer be registered in the same way with users that have opted out on their Apple devices. As Apple users make up almost 52% of all mobile users in the UK and experts predict as much as 80% of these users could opt-out – that’s a whole lot* of useful consumer data that is lost to businesses.
What is Facebook doing to mitigate the changes from Apple’s iOS14 tracking privacy update?
These changes are not out of the blue for Facebook and they will, of course, find ways to adapt and mitigate these kinds of technology changes.
For a start, they are cutting down the number of ‘events’ linked to each pixel to eight – this will be done automatically for you based on the events that have most often been used or are most required by the business according to Facebook AI.
Facebook has also introduced a new way for servers to send the ‘event’ information directly to Facebook, bypassing the user’s browser. This is called the Conversions API, (or CAPI) and although it is a useful workaround, it is much more difficult to match the events to individual Facebook users without using the cookie data from the user’s browser so it’s a lot less accurate.
Facebook used to have a 28-day attribution window with ad campaigns, (meaning that as long as someone purchased or completed the objective within 28-days of clicking on your ad, this would be attributed to your ad as a result), however this has now been reduced to just 7-days, so if you are selling a product or service with a longer consideration period, this could impact on how successful your ad campaigns appear.
Facebook is also pushing out their own ‘opt-out’ messaging explaining what this means for advertising and asking users if they will allow permission for their app and website activity to be used to personalise their Facebook experience.
What do I need to do to my Facebook ad account in response to Apple’s new privacy update?
Turn on Conversions API and enable Advanced Matching in Facebook Events Manager.
Go to Business Manager or Ads Manager (I would always do this via desktop rather than on mobile or the through the Facebook apps) and select Events Manager.
Find your pixel settings and scroll down.
In the section ‘Automatic Advanced Matching’, slide turn this ON.
Scroll down further to the section titled ‘Conversions API’. Here you have the option to set up manually (you’ll get a piece of code which your website developer will need to add to your site) or via a partner integration like WordPress, which is what I used.
Follow the steps as guided by Facebook and you will be given a token code which you should COPY and SAVE as this will have to be pasted into your website via whatever Pixel plug-in you have set-up.
It’s fairly straightforward but you should get your developer to do this for you if you are at all unsure.
Verify your website domain with Facebook
Click here for a step by step video from Facebook which is actually quite helpful!
We will all have to ride it out for a while until we see how CAPI performs and what other mitigations Facebook might be working on. It’s all very new and apart from getting your head (or your developer’s head) around the technical bits you need to do in the back end of Facebook and your website, there is nothing you can do about this update but roll with it and learn.
*doing the math on 80% of 52% was too much!
