What Apple’s iOS 14 Update Means for Your Business
Apple never fails to astound its customers with new iOS updates and features, but this time it took a skeptical toll on businesses. Its new “Privacy Policy/Control” in iOS 14 update has raised a huge question for the advertisers and their ad efforts.
Today we are going to break down some of the crucial and critical changes for the advertisers and what changes they should consider to keep their ads strong.
What’s the New iOS 14 Update About?
First, it is important to know what is new about iOS 14 that is concerning for so many businesses. The new Apple iOS 14 update allows users to control how they share their data as well as who and what they share it with. This change came in just a few weeks after Apple began requiring privacy labels that force companies and developers to share how their data will be used before downloading a new app. As speculated, the “opt-out” change became one of the significant changes of this software update and trouble for marketers & advertisers.
Today apps like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter (to name a few) are required to ask users for permission to track data about them. News articles and reports show that privacy changes were long thought of and discussed. Moreover, in this digitally evolving world, data privacy has been front and centre in a national conversation about the power that tech and social media companies possess and this is the main reason why Apple came in with this added security feature.
What Does This Update Mean for Advertisers?
The biggest exception is that some, if not most, people will choose not to share their data through apps. This means the users or the audience will not receive more relevant ad recommendations, which could lead to the overall diminishing of the user experience. Although, the ads would be present for the users but hard to say they would be of any relevance to the user or viewer. Simply making the ad and placing it on the internet is just not enough for the advertisers to gain the attention of their target audience. This means that online advertising would significantly be less effective for iOS users.
The two biggest ad networks in the world, Google and Facebook, opposed this update implementation by Apple. Most of the advertisers use Google and Facebook ads platforms and the major reason behind using these ads platforms is that they are cost-effective and efficient. Google and Facebook both believed this privacy update will disrupt their audience’s experience and will adversely affect a large number of small businesses that rely on Facebook and Google advertising platform to reach their daily audience. Also, advertisers may become less data-driven in figuring out which ad would work and which won’t. Basically, advertisers are likely to rely a lot on guesswork when optimising ad campaigns.
How Does This Update Affect Facebook Negatively?
Facebook strongly argued that this iOS update will have a negative impact on businesses whether it is a small vendor which uses Facebook to sell their products or a content-based platform or an app which are running ads to make money.
Firstly, there is a huge impact on the audiences. When Apple users opt-out of data tracking, it’ll be basically impossible to accurately track and add them to retargeting audiences. That means your retargeting audiences and results will certainly start to shrivel. Moreover, the effectiveness of dynamic ads will start to fall and might come to an end after this update. Moving on, with the shrinking pool of consumers, Facebook expects that using the Audience Network will be much less popular for advertisers. Without the ability for publishers to impart information and data with advertisers, businesses won’t be able to access their own client information to spend their advertising money efficiently.
Another hurdle for Facebook Advertisers is the reduced effectiveness of the Ads for all mobile users. For instance, if a customer clicks on an ad link on the Facebook app which takes him/her to the mobile browser, Facebook won’t be able to track or record any of that information, resulting in a huge impact on conversions tracking and retargeting.
Things That Need to Be Considered
The first action that is recommended to all advertisers is to verify their domain as this is extremely pivotal for all businesses with pixels used by multiple business managers or personal ad accounts. Also, verifying the domain means there would be no interruptions in setting up conversion events. Additionally, relying on your Facebook pixel to build retargeting audiences for your ad campaigns can result badly. Hence, considering alternatives like the custom audience, lookalike audience, or interest-based audience is advised.
Since Facebook’s new rule allows only 8 conversion events per domain, as an advertiser you are required to rank the conversion events that are most important to you. Any campaigns optimised for events outside this 8 will basically be paused until you make adjustments. Further, the new policies have made some attribution windows like 28-day click through, 28-day view through, etc. out of support, therefore, adopt the Comparing Windows feature to see how conversions attributed to ads compared across different attribution windows.
Final Reflection
Undoubtedly this software update and added security feature will surely make the marketing plan a lot more complicated and a complex process, but the best thing you can do is make yourself more flexible. Adjusting to privacy updates like those included in iOS 14 is going to take proper advertising strategy, clear reasoning, and a sight for the future. Furthermore, there are still some things that are unclear like how to measure the effectiveness of the ads/campaign or who to reach the users who choose to opt-out? The answer is simple, get creative and adapt to the changes quickly as it will help you lead the market and have an edge over the competitors.
