How iOS 14 Changes Affect FB Ads for In-House Marketing Teams
Whenever a major industry change occurs, those working with an agency are typically in good hands. They have professionals dealing with the difficulties of keeping ad campaigns on track. However, the same luxury isn’t afforded to those who handle all marketing efforts in-house.
In recent times, your own in-house marketing team has probably been keeping an eye on all the drama between Facebook and Apple. It’s easy to get caught up in the raging war, but what you ultimately need to know is how the changes affect you, right? If you’re desperately reading online articles and trying to find the best way to cope with the Apple iOS 14 update, don’t worry, we have some advice for in-house marketing teams today!
What’s the iOS 14 Change?
If you’re struggling to understand the iOS 14 update from Apple, you aren’t alone. This is now one of the most-searched topics in recent history because it affects all apps in the App Store, Facebook advertisers, and all iOS users. If you’ve ever had doubts relating to the impact that Apple had on the world, just look at the aftermath of this iOS update.
Back in June 2020, Apple announced iOS 14 which contained a redesign of the home screen, improvements to privacy, and a new Translate app. However, among all the minor changes, Apple also announced the introduction of App Tracking Transparency. Essentially, this is a system that provides iOS users with more control over how they are tracked on Apple devices.
Soon after, the decision was met with criticism; various parties came together to demand more time to prepare for the update. After consideration, Apple agreed and decided that it would launch the App Tracking Transparency feature in the iOS 14.5 update instead. Now, this update is live, and the expected drama is unfolding.
After updating their device, users are asked whether an app has permission to track their activity and behavior when opening it for the first time. For example, let’s say that you have the Facebook app on your iPhone. The first time launching this app after updating will display a message asking for your preference. You can either allow tracking or reject it — whatever you choose, you also have the option of changing your preference later in the settings.
Why the backlash? Because this Apple update affects Facebook ads more than any other change in history. As you probably know, Facebook relies on data to fuel the advanced targeting system. Your in-house marketing team targets niche audiences and those most likely to enjoy your products. The reason it can do this is because of the data available across the Facebook platform.
Now, this data is threatened. According to an Apple IDFA survey, around 38% of people will allow tracking after updating their device to iOS 14. Of course, this means that Facebook will instantly lose access to 62% of all iOS data.
The Impact of iOS 14
How does this affect your in-house marketing team? With nowhere near as much data, the pixel struggles to populate retargeting lists, seed audiences for lookalike audiences shrink, and there’s not as much data for all marketing efforts on the platform. They’ll lose valuable gender, location, placement, and age data — all the parts that previously played an important role in ad campaigns.
If you’re part of the in-house marketing team, you’ll know the luxury of Facebook advertising over the years. It seemed too good to be true with advanced targeting and data pouring in through every orifice. Now, we’re learning that it really was too good to be true. If fewer than 40% of people allow tracking, the amount of data we can access shrinks immediately and this will impact the efficiency of existing campaigns.
Since there’s no agency to lean on during these hard times, it’s critical that you’re on this page and researching the best solutions to this problem. You might now lack access to critical data, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to remove Facebook from your marketing strategy.
Potential Solutions
You could sit around and wait for Facebook to keep fighting, but it looks as though its efforts will probably be futile. The Apple iOS 14 update is just another example of an ongoing war between advertising and consumer privacy. On the one hand, advertisers want all the data they can get to create tailored campaigns and personalized creatives. On the other, consumers feel nervous knowing that their own personal data is spread between various parties.
Recently, it has become clear that consumers are only willing to give so much away for personalized ad experiences. As soon as it crosses the line, they would rather have no personalized ads at all than lose privacy. The fact that over 60% are expected to block tracking is a testament to this fact.
As an advertiser, we’re in a sensitive environment and one that requires attention. The good news is that you still have 40% of iOS data as well as all Android data. Since this was an Apple update, no Android devices have been affected. With this in mind, you might want to exclude Apple devices from existing campaigns and focus on Android devices alone if you’ve seen an impact on performance.
What about the long term? Well, there are two potential solutions for your in-house marketing team.
1. Conversion Data
Firstly, you can start using your own conversion data to power ad campaigns across Facebook. Especially with lookalike audiences, you can no longer base an audience on people who have visited a specific product page, nor can you do this with retargeting campaigns. However, what you can do is build a lookalike audience using the data accumulated from people who have already converted.
Read More: How to Work Around and Keep Facebook Lookalike and Audiences Up to Date
Naturally, these people have provided some personal information to purchase from you. During the checkout process, they will have given permission for you to contact them and use their data. Although this will require some manual effort, using data from converted customers could just keep your Facebook campaigns alive.
2. AI Tools
The problem with the first solution is that in-house marketing teams have enough of an uphill battle without now adding manual campaign adjustments. Let’s be honest, you may not have the time to update your seed audience and campaigns every other day. If this is a problem, the next solution is to partner up with a reliable and credible artificial intelligence solution.
Even before iOS 14, this is a change that all in-house marketing teams should have considered. Do you feel as though you spend most of your time making small adjustments and staring at data? If so, a solution like Trapica automatically optimizes all Facebook campaigns using machine learning and artificial intelligence. What’s more, it even helps you to gather location, age, and gender insights despite the iOS 14 update.
With this in mind, you get vital insights, and the platform implements them automatically (can you really ask for more?). This is incredibly valuable for an in-house marketing team because it means you get to finally think of the bigger picture once again. The marketing team can do things for which they were initially hired rather than wasting time making small adjustments to ad campaigns.
AI tools gather the important insights and then use this information to automate the optimization of bidding, budgeting, targeting, and creatives (A/B testing). Trapica is a leading tool in the industry because it not only automates on Facebook but also across Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Quora, Google, LinkedIn, and many other platforms. If you’re active across several platforms and the iOS 14 update has knocked your marketing efforts, an artificial intelligence tool is the way to go.
Summary
Unfortunately for advertisers, the war between Facebook and Apple is set to rage on for some time. For two companies who previously co-existed quite peacefully, it’s strange to see them up against one another. Look deeper into the debate and you’ll perhaps see the motivations for their respective stances.
Apple says that it wants to protect the data of consumers, but skeptics will say that it actually wants to suffocate Facebook advertising (and other systems like it). Instead, it wants businesses to make money from in-app purchases and subscriptions rather than through ad revenue (of which they don’t see a single cent).
Facebook says that small businesses will suffer, but skeptics will say that the company is actually worried about its bottom line since advertising contributes a large chunk of revenue.
Regardless, small businesses will endure problems with Facebook advertising after this Apple update. Data isn’t available as freely, campaigns rely on fewer data points and are less accurate, and both ROAS and ROI fall. Thankfully, there are solutions for in-house marketing teams, and we’ve explored two of the best today with converted customer data and AI solutions!
