What to Know About Apple’s Privacy Update
Apple’s next update, iOS 14.4, is currently in beta but is expected to launch any day now. With it will come a massive privacy update that will have a huge impact on small business advertising on mobile apps and on the mobile web.
The new privacy feature in iOS 14.4 is called App Tracking Transparency (ATT), and it marks a dramatic change in the way apps, like Facebook, can track users.
Once ATT is live, when a user opens an app using their iPhone, a pop-up box will appear that asks them to opt into tracking with a message that will read, “x would like permission to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies. Your data will be used to deliver personalized ads to you.”
Why the iOS privacy update is a game-changer
The IDFA (identifier for advertisers) is a unique identifier that’s resettable, random and assigned to a user’s iOS device. The IDFA is used to track the user’s interactions with in-app ads and installs. Think of the IDFA as similar to a cookie, but instead of being stored on a user’s browser, it’s stored on a user’s device.
The IDFA isn’t going away; however, Apple’s new privacy feature does require that users opt into it on every single app that wants to utilize it. Although this change seems rather innocuous, it will have an impact on advertisers and consumers alike, and iOS users are expected to opt-out of app tracking in droves.
When Apple announced ATT was coming back in 2020, Facebook, which is one of the most IDFA-dependent developers, estimated that it would lose between 50% and 60% of its ad revenue. But, Facebook is far from the only business that will be negatively impacted.
Small businesses are impacted by ATT because it prevents them from being able to collect and share the information they need for effective targeted advertising. It also hinders the ability to understand the true value of their ads on Facebook.
Apple’s privacy update will make it more difficult to reach a small business’s target audience through Facebook advertising. And, without the ability to gather data to personalize ads, it will limit a small business’s ability to compete with its bigger competitors.
Furthermore, you should expect to see conversions from iOS users drop, even though you may still be seeing similar sales numbers. This is because Facebook is reducing the attribution window length to only 7 days for click-through conversions and 1 day for view-through conversions, where the windows were previously 28 days and 7 days respectively.
Subsequently, you won’t actually experience a drop in conversions as a result of the change in the attribution window, but with less user data from Facebook on Apple devices, you may appear to.
ATT will also impact users who opt-out negatively, as the ads they are shown will be less relevant to their needs. Plus, with the decline in in-app advertising, consumers will start having to pay for content that previously would have been ad-supported.
What you can do to protect your business
To minimize the impact of ATT, Facebook has announced that it will soon launch Aggregated Event Measurement, which is a tracking framework that will allow Facebook marketers to continue to measure customer interaction and bypass some of the data issues associated with ATT.
According to Facebook, Aggregated Event Measurement was designed to “measure campaign performance in a way that is consistent with consumers’ decisions about their data.’
With the launch of Aggregated Event Measurement, Facebook will limit the number of conversion events per domain to eight, which you’ll be able to configure in the Events Manager.
Each event will be ranked by priority, and only the highest-priority event will be reported. For example, if a user adds a product to the cart and makes a purchase, only the purchase will be reported.
If your business relies on pixels used by multiple personal ad accounts or Business Manages, you’ll need to verify your domain in the Business Manager. Reference Facebook’s Business Help Center to learn how.
Furthermore, if you currently use more than eight conversion events per domain, you’ll have to decide which events to prioritize in Events Manager. Don’t worry about making any changes to the conversions API implementation or the pixel.
Learn more about Facebook’s recommendations for preparing for iOS 14.4.
Prepare for Apple’s privacy update with Marketing 360®
There are many reasons to advertise on Facebook, but one of the biggest benefits of Facebook advertising is the ability to target users who are already interested in your message and already want what you have to offer.
There’s no doubt about the fact that Apple’s privacy update will have an impact, but by taking the right steps now, you can minimize the impact and protect your bottom line. And, Marketing 360 is here to help.
