Why does the new iOS 14 policy for apps impact web advertisers?
The iOS 14 policy update is forcing the industry, platforms, advertisers and marketers to change all their strategies and account structures to suit.
We've prepared a video explaining the changes. It's on our YouTube channel, but you can also check it out below:
Facebook, Instagram and other publishers are apps installed on users' smartphones and are also subject to the new iOS 14 policies.
As a result, they will also need to present the prompt to accept data tracking. And if the user does not accept the tracking of their data, we will lose the ability to analyze the results that the Facebook family of apps have generated for your site.
We've prepared a video explaining all the changes. It's on our YouTube channel, but you can also check it out below:
PCM: Apple's new web protocol
Apple has created a new protocol for web attribution, called Private Click Measurementor PCM or PCM. PCM significantly restricts the data that can be shared between companies and platforms.
There are major consequences with this new protocol:
- It was created without consultation and alignment with the industry. As a result, the solutions are not aligned between the ad platforms. So, possibly, the way Facebook has found to alleviate the problem will be different from the way Google will decide to apply it, for example.
- According to Facebook, Apple has not provided specifications and details of this protocol, which has created a gap for the development of products and solutions.
- The PCM protocol was designed only for browsing from Safari to Safari, so it doesn't support measurement from the app to the browser. In other words, if the user clicks on an ad in the Instagram app, is taken to a website and converts, the conversion will not be recorded.
- The protocol also does not support cross-domain evaluation. In this case, if a global advertiser displays an ad with "dominio.fr" and on conversion the user is taken to "dominio.uk", the conversion will not be registered either.
AEM: Facebook solution for event registration
To mitigate the problems caused by the PCM protocol, Facebook is developing its own protocol, called Aggregate Event Measurement, AEM or AEM.
This protocol limits the transmission of data, generating aggregated and delayed information, as determined by the new iOS 14 policies, but at the same time supports critical use cases for advertisers.
AEM supports application-web assignment and allows flexibility for other platform privacy proposals (e.g. Privacy Sandbox).
It's important to remember that aggregate event measurement won't solve all the impacts of Apple's protocol. Advertisers will still lose functionality with these changes.
The main changes for advertisers
First of all, you have to understand that although the updates are from Apple for iOS 14, the impact will be on all users, including Android users. This is because Facebook has had to restructure itself in such a way that the impact will be global.
So, in order to evaluate the changes, let's divide them into 3 groups:
Configuring Business Tools
Optimization and Segmentation
Measurement
Configuring Business Tools
In Facebook Ads, all advertisers will be able to have a maximum of 8 pixel events registered per domain.
As a result, advertisers who work with more than 1 agency, for example, will need to put together a joint action plan so that all agencies use and share a single pixel, with only 8 events.
For global clients, the brand architecture may be affected in different ways, since everyone will have to agree on which events will be prioritized for all the brand's international segments. For sites with a global presence, the limitation of 8 events will be per domain.
In addition, you will need to verify the advertiser's domain in the Business Manager itself, as in the image below:
Next, you need to configure the priority of the 8 events so that Facebook can use them according to the AEM protocol. This step is important because, after the user OPT-OUT, only 1 event will be registered by Facebook. It is therefore essential to order the events by their importance.
Customer Journey Analysis
For example, in the case of e-commerce, the most important event is probably the "Purchasewhich records the purchase made. Therefore, this event should be first on the prioritization list. The second most important event could be "AddToCart (Add to Cart), so it should be the second event on the list.
Still in this example, if a user who has OPT-OUTed the Facebook app clicks on an ad, visits the website, goes to the product page, adds it to the cart and completes the purchase, only the "Purchase" event will be recorded (albeit in a delayed manner).
Another user who makes the same journey, but stops after adding to the cart, will only have the "AddToCart" event recorded. In other words, analyzing user flow will be a major challenge.
This structure will underestimate the total volume of events in the ad manager, but it will make it possible to record valuable actions on the site. When this happens, Facebook will call it "Partial Events" or "Veiled Events ".
If, after the campaigns have been published, the advertiser or ad manager decides to change the order of prioritization of the 8 events or select a new event, this event will be prevented from being optimized for 3 days.
When Apple starts running the prompt (no date set), any campaign that is optimized for an event that is not configured in the aggregated data tool will be automatically paused.
Optimization and Segmentation
There will be changes to the conversion windows that can be selected on the platform. As a result, it will be possible to notice a reduction in the sizes of personalized audiences coming from the site, with a limitation in offering a holistic view of performance.
A sharp drop in performance indicators is therefore expected, as well as major challenges in prospecting and re-segmentation. It is recommended that we make changes to our audiences at this time, with an inclination towards greater liquidity and value optimization.
With less data and a noticeable reduction in the size of custom audiences, we will need to be less judicious to maintain a considerable volume of users within our audiences and mitigate delivery and performance challenges for our campaigns.
Today, a valuable use case for personalized website audiences is to exclude all buyers from our prospecting campaigns. Since we don't want to impact a person who has just purchased our product or service.
However, with iOS 14's data collection limitation, this audience of buyers will be much less precise, thus causing an overlap of audiences in new customer prospecting campaigns, even if the exclusion audience is configured.
Furthermore, in the analysis and measurement reports, it is expected that previous purchases will start to be attributed to prospecting campaigns.
Measurement
Measurement will undergo significant changes, given the limited reporting windows and lack of visibility of conversions. Advertisers should expect a sharp decrease in reported conversions.
Of the conversions reported, it will not be possible to break them down into details, such as doing demographic analysis on the audiences that converted.
What will the conversion windows look like?
Facebook will no longer use the 28-day window for clicks and views. The 7-day click window and 1-day view window will collect partial data and cease to exist, respectively. The 1-day click and 1-day view attribution settings will show modeled and partial data, respectively.
The following table summarizes the changes:
Some conversion windows will continue to be available in the Ads Insights API for some conversion events. But about the Conversions API, we'll deal with that another time. As a result, the user interface in the Ads Manager will display new information.
Action Plan for Facebook Ads Advertisers
So, in this article we've seen a summary of the changes that are taking place in Facebook Ads due to the adaptation to the IOS 14 policy changes. So, check out the main actions that must be carried out so that your campaigns continue to run there.
Immediate actions:
- Verify Facebook Business Manager domain
- Operate and set the priority of a maximum of 8 Pixel events per domain.
Future actions:
- Be prepared to anticipate changes in the assignment windows and update the automated rules if necessary.
- Identify campaign optimization strategies that may require testing, i.e. alternative audience options, different bidding strategies, etc.
