The Facts: Facebook and Apple iOS14

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Apple's iOS 14 is coming, and it's changing the way advertisers measure the performance of Facebook Ad Campaigns. Get the clear facts about the situation and how you should proceed with recommended steps.

As you may have already heard, Apple has announced changes to iOS 14 aimed at increasing user privacy. 

These changes once implemented will have a significant impact on the ability to measure performance of Facebook Ad Campaigns. While this change will also affect Google campaigns, for the sake of this article we’ll focus on Facebook’s impact. 

Here’s the skinny below on what you need to know.

What’s changing and when?

In an update to iOS 14 slated for early this year, Apple will no longer allow advertisers to track the Identifier for Advertiser (IDFA) tag by default. Instead, users will have to opt-in to tracking on a case-by-case basis.

Why does this matter?

The IDFA tag is a critical piece of tracking that allows advertisers to collect mobile device data across apps and platforms. A majority of users are not expected to opt-in for tracking, and Apple currently has 40% of the U.S. smartphone market share. Roughly 92% of Facebook’s advertising revenue comes from mobile devices.

How will this affect your Facebook campaigns?

Facebook will only track 8 events.

  • Prioritized ad sets optimizing for an event beyond the 8 will be paused. 
  • The 8 conversion events per domain will be ranked based on priority as determined by Facebook’s value optimization.
  • If multiple events are completed by a user (i.e. “add to cart” and “purchase”), only the higher prioritized event will be reported.
  • After the initial configuration, the domain owner will be able to configure which 8 events are tracked for a given domain in Events Manager.

Reporting will be less complete

  • 28-day click-through, 28-day view-through and 7-day view-through attribution windows will not be discontinued across all devices.
  • Historical data for these windows will remain accessible via the Ads Insights API.
  • Certain attribution windows will have partial reporting
  • Metrics will not include all events from iOS 14 users.

Recommended next steps

  • Verify your domain in Business Manager.
  • If using the Facebook SDK, update to the latest SDK, version 8.1 or above.
  • Implement the Conversions API to track offline events directly, without relying on Pixels.

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