Let’s admit it, social media advertising, particularly Facebook advertising; is the number one go-to advertising medium when developing an advertising campaign for your business's goods and services. As it stands, we live in a digital world and Facebook ads have become a powerful marketing tool for small businesses. Offering simple measurement and unmatched ability to target based on interests and custom audiences, Facebook ads have been the difference-maker, in assisting small businesses to cut through the noise, effectively reach customers whilst contributing to business growth.
There’s news, however, that this advertising medium is under threat with the roll-out of Apple’s iOS 14 which has been reported to include a tracking prompt, set to disrupt Facebook Ads targeting. Let’s look at how this new update by Apple can have an adverse impact on your Facebook Ads and by extension your social media advertising efforts.
About Apple’s iOS 14 Tracking Prompt
This latest update of Apple’s operating system includes a new prompt for any app in the app store. The goal is to make users aware of what an app will track before they install it, then allow permission opt-in for the tracking upon installation; similar to the prompt you receive when visiting websites with any form of cookie tracking.
What does this mean for Facebook?
This new iOS 14 policy will restrict some data collection and sharing unless people opt into tracking on iOS 14 via the prompt. However, as more people, opt-out of tracking on iOS 14 devices, ad personalization and performance reporting will be limited for both app and web conversion events.
So how does this affect your Facebook ads and advertising efforts?
1. Adverse Impact on Personalized Ads
Apple’s changes will adversely affect your ability to successfully reach, understand and engage people on mobile devices and across the web. This update will influence your ability to interpret performance, control who sees your ads, and make informed decisions about your advertising budgets. Ultimately, over time you may see an overall decrease in ad performance and personalization and an increase in cost per action.
2. Less efficient and less effective advertising
Most Facebook advertising strategies will have some form of remarketing, conversion tracking, or lookalike generation which rely on the effectiveness of the Facebook tracking pixel. When users opt-out of tracking, this will render the Facebook pixel useless for that user. For a bigger picture, if all iPhone users using Facebook’s properties; opt-out of Facebook’s tracking, you will not be able to consequently advertise to those individuals via remarketing in the future on their mobile device.
3. The greater difficulty for small businesses to reach their ideal audience, therefore, limiting growth
With users opting out in sharing relevant information that guides remarketing and ad creation; advertising efforts for small businesses will be negatively affected not only to remarket to users who have visited their website but to also take advantage of that pixel data to render lookalike audiences.
While this update is set to disrupt Facebook Ads, rest assure that Facebook has not been silent about the matter and has been speaking up about the impact, especially the impact on small businesses which gives us some hope that a workable solution can be created to help with social media advertising campaigns in conjunction with iOS 14.
Digital Intuition TT Your Digital Marketing Partner
9-11 Fitt Street , Woodbrook, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad W.I
Tel: (868) 224-3495
www.digitalintuitiontt.com
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