How Advertisers are Navigating iOS 14’s Mobile Tracking Changes

Learn about the new Apple iOS mobile tracking changes update and how it affects your digital advertising

In early 2022, Apple announced its next iOS 14 update will include an option for users to opt out of any in-app data collection in apps like Facebook and Instagram. You may be wondering how it will affect your advertising.

Read more to learn how advertisers have navigated the iOS 14 mobile tracking changes and get a few tips on how to have continued success with social media and online advertising.

What is the iOS 14 update?

At the beginning of 2021, Apple released a new update that would impact the way that advertisers reach their audience. With the iOS 14 update users needed to opt-in, or give permission, to an app to track their activity outside of the platform.

Advertisers and marketers are concerned because a lot of ad campaigns target audiences based on their online behavior. If an app can’t track that information, ads will become less personalized, and in turn, could be less effective.

The concern for marketers was that they wouldn’t be able to deliver their ads to people based on certain activities, like if they’d visited their website, for example. This meant that ads would likely have smaller audience sizes and less accurate reporting.

Additionally, with this update advertisers are only allowed to use up to eight conversion events from a single website domain. This means if you run a campaign and track several different conversion types (like Lead, Landing Page Views, Purchase) you’ll now be capped at eight at any given time.

How Advertisers are Navigating the iOS 14 Mobile Tracking Changes

While the iOS 14 update has made advertisers jump through some more hoops in setting up their ad campaigns (getting domain verification and aggregated event management), the update ultimately is not the death of retargeting or Facebook ads.

So far, according to our partner HubSpot, it looks like more than 90% of users are opting out of data tracking. This is more than industry experts were predicting.

What are advertisers doing to compensate?

1) Diversifying ad spend

The main story of how advertisers are navigating the latest iOS tracking update is diversifying ad spend.

This means companies have shifted some ad spend that was previously allocated to Facebook to other platforms like Google because of the remarketing features and the ability to target users based on search intent.

2) Reporting Facebook success with Google Analytics

While some money is still being used to advertise on Facebook, there are different ways of reporting.

Companies have begun using UTM parameters on their site’s URLs to generate data tracked by Facebook to Google Analytics. This means you can use Google Analytics to track some of the activity on your Facebook ad campaigns.

3) Using owned data for lookalike audiences and retargeting

Strategies such as using lookalike audiences or retargeting an email list have continued to drive results. With privacy updates becoming a norm for big tech companies, marketers will need to begin focusing on owned data to inform their campaigns.

With your owned data (such as an email list), you can target lookalike audiences or retarget those very people.

Keep in mind, you can still use the old method of retargeting campaigns because not all of your audience is on iOS devices. You can still use the channel as a cost-effective way to see some return on ad spend (ROAS).

4) Using other Facebook advertising options

Besides these new ways of approaching ad campaigns, some advertisers are investing in other ways to reach audiences on Facebook.

For example, you can use the messaging objective to create a lead-generating chatbot on Facebook Messenger. There are options to retarget users who reach out to you on messenger and start conversations with new leads who click on an ad of yours.

Additionally, Facebook has another strategy that advertisers have explored: the Facebook lead ads (in-app lead form).

While using your own landing pages is definitely the preferred method, in a cookieless world, using lead forms on Facebook can help you generate leads and capture first-party data.

The iOS 14 mobile tracking changes have made Facebook ads less effective, but there are still ways for advertisers to target their audience and generate leads on the platform.

We Continue to Monitor the Changes

Advent Trinity is keeping up-to-date with the changes. We do not recommend canceling your advertising just because the parameters have changed. With a little creativity and ingenuity, your ads will continue to work for you, just in a different way. 

Need help with social selling? Call us! 682-331-8758

By Leslie Radford