Apple has come with another update of iOS 14, and in this article, I’m going to discuss some iOS 14 changes. The new iOS 14 has some major impact on a Facebook pixel, a tool that most of us use for conversion events. The iOS 14 changes how we process and obtain these events. Another major impact of iOS 14 changes would be on those businesses that publicize mobile apps along with those businesses that work on the events of web conversions by optimizing, targeting, and reporting on them using a set of business tools.

The new iOS 14 changes contain an AppTrackingTransparency framework that will show a prompt to the iOS users whenever they engage in any app that requires “tracking.” This change in iOS 14 will inhibit several users from acquiring or sharing your personal data. The more you choose not to share your location or activate tracking, the more limitations will be placed on the performance and personalization of ads. This iOS 14 change will affect the performance of the ads in both the web conversion events and the mobile apps.

Keeping these new iOS 14 changes in view, we will begin to process the pixel conversion events, and then we will move on to using the aggregated event measurement. Using these methods will help you run the campaigns much more effectively, and you will also be able to keep user privacy intact. Whichever business wants to advertise their ads using our platform is warmly welcome. We’ll provide you with a lot of resources and updates to help you in growing your business. Below mentioned are some of the consequences of iOS 14 changes:

• Actions you need to take to prepare for iOS 14 changes
• Restrictions on ad creation
• New delivery statuses
• Restrictions on reporting
• Restrictions on targeting
• Restrictions on dynamic ads

Actions you need to take to prepare for iOS 14 changes

In the new iOS 14 changes, Facebook has introduced a measurement system known as the aggregated event measurement system. This system will allow the users to measure the web events. Now, what actions can you take to measure your campaign performance?

To optimize your ads for conversion events occurring in the app of your business, you need to:

• To personalize the ads, you need to update the SDK of Facebook to the 8.1 version of iOS 14. By updating to this version, you will continue to the reporting for app conversion events as well. But two things are required before you begin to do it. First, you can only do it from the event manager, and second, you need to be the app admin to do that. This version of iOS 14 contains the SKAdNetwork API of Apple that is supported by the SDK of Facebook. This API will enable its users to measure the installed apps on your app. Therefore, if you don’t have the latest version installed, you need to install it right now.

To optimize your ads for conversion events occurring on the website of your business, you need to:

• Verify the domain of your website so you can carry on with your campaigns without any disruption. To verify your domain, you need to use the top-level domain plus one (eTLD+1). For instance, you have three domains in front of you as books.jasper.co.uk, www.books.jasper.co.uk, and the third is jasper.co.uk. For this, your eTLD+1 will be jasper.co.uk. In addition to this, it will be supporting those businesses that are registered on the “public suffix list.” If the businesses are registered on this list, only then they will be able to verify their eTLD+1.

Note: Most people tend to register on this list for the event configuration of Facebook only. We don’t recommend that. Instead, one should prioritize the domain authentication for domain pixels across a large number of ad accounts or businesses. This will assist you in configuring the conversion rates of pixels whenever the aggregated event measurement system becomes accessible to the users.

• Prioritize eight web conversion events per domain because, in the case of campaign optimization, aggregated event measurement has put a restriction on the users, and they can only prioritize eight conversion events per domain. After this, Facebook will jump in to figure out the conversion events that are most relevant to your business.

If you’re done setting up your pixel utilizing IMG tags, we suggest you check our developer documentation to know more about pixel conversion events.

Limitations on the ad creation

In order to advertise your website, you can use what you already have, but if you want to advertise your campaigns, then you’ll need to install separate iOS 14 apps. This is because the new iOS 14 changes permit you to reports from the SKAdNetwork API of Apple. Below mentioned are some of the supplementary limitations that you must keep in mind before moving forward.

To optimize your ads for conversion events occurring in the app of your business, you can:

Utilize a single account for ads and link that account with your app

There’s no restriction to use this single ad account for only one app. You can use it for various other apps as well.

Optimize your campaigns

This is important because the new iOS 14 changes will enable you to have only nine campaigns at one time. Furthermore, each of your nine campaigns is restricted to sets of 5 ads. You will get 72 hours to reset your campaigns after your deleted one of those nine campaigns permitted by iOS 14. This can prove to be beneficial for you because now you will be able to optimize the correct campaign and take benefit from it.

Choose auction as your buying option whenever you want to create an ad

Because the new iOS 14 changes only have this option. It contains neither reach nor frequency.

You can only delete or turn off your campaign once

Because this version of iOS 14 doesn’t let you turn on or off your campaign whenever you like.

To optimize your ads for conversion events occurring on the website of your business, you can:

• Prioritize your web conversion rates to up to 8 numbers. Facebook will help you in this regard by providing you with the most relevant web conversion events based on your previous activity and history. However, if you don’t find these web conversion events relevant, you can edit them in the event manager. If you don’t optimize or prioritize your campaigns for iOS 14.5, you may be subjected to limited reporting and delivery.

However, the new iOS 14 changes brought a limitation to your app campaigns along with your website conversion events, and that is:

• New iOS 14 changes help you consider four different campaign bid strategies, namely: lowest cost, minimum ROAS, cost cap, or bid cap. You can choose only one of these strategies, but if you go with the minimum ROAS or cost cap campaign bid strategy, then your campaign will remain functional and operable for three straight days.

New delivery statuses

You will now be able to check your campaign status and check how it is running. You can also check for any problems that may disrupt the functionality of your campaign. But where can you check this? In the delivery column of the ads manager. This delivery column will also help in demonstrating the impact of the limitations on your ads. Two statuses can be applied to your iOS 14 campaigns, and these are:

• Updating limit

The new iOS 14 changes aid you in having only nine campaigns. When you reach this limit, you won’t be able to add more campaigns. When you turn off or delete any campaign, the new iOS 14 will give you 72-hour till it gets permanently deleted from your campaigns. Whenever you turn off or delete any campaign, you need to remember that you’re also cutting off its links with the associated ads or sets of ads.

• Pending limit

The new iOS 14 changes enable you to have nine campaigns only. When you will reach this limit, you won’t be able to add any more campaigns unless you deleted one of the previously existing ones. But then again, you will get a 72-hour period before your new campaign gets delivered.

There’s a single delivery status that can be applied to web conversion events campaigns only, and that is:

Setup error

Your ad will automatically turn off if you don’t link it with any pixel event pair or if this pixel event pair is not linked with any domain. To overcome this error, you need to edit a few changes in your ad or associate with any pixel event pair. You can do this in the event manager section of your app. You can do two things to turn your ad back on. You can either find a pixel event pair for your domain, or you can select a new ad domain. Both things take place in the event manager.

Restrictions on reporting

The new policy of Apple has limited the businesses to track their performance, especially the iOS 14 Facebook ads. In the new iOS 14 changes, the SKAdNetwork API of Apple will provide the users with the reporting of their campaigns, ads, and other conversion events of apps.

Similar restrictions can be seen on the web conversion events where reporting is now limited under the new policy of Apple. There will be four restrictions that will be seen on the ads insights API, ads reporting, and ads manager.

There will be a delay in reporting

The users will now come across a delay of up to 3 days, and no real-time reporting will be supported on these new iOS 14 changes. All the conversion events and campaigns will be reported according to the time they appear on the SKAdNetwork API instead of when they get functional or operable.

All the results will be estimated instead of being accurate

In the case of app install campaigns, there will be now statistical results for the given ads and sets of ads unless there is only one ad or set of ads present in the campaign. Moreover, these reporting results will be delivered to Facebook for further use. Now, in the case of web conversion events, again, the statistical modeling will be used for iOS 14 users’ conversions.

No support will be given to any fallout in an app or web conversions

These fallouts may include age, region, or placement.

The new iOS 14 changes will make your attribution window set on the ad set level instead of the account level

The users can access this change while they are in the process of creating their campaigns. This setting of the campaigns by this attribution window will enable the users to measure the conversions of their campaigns. Furthermore, it will also allow the users with more clarity and flexibility whenever they want to track the performance of their ad or campaign. With the onset of the new version of iOS 14, the attribution window will set all your new and active campaigns on a 7-day click.

In the case of active campaigns, if you go ahead a bit, three attributions windows will not be supported. These are:

• 28-day click-through
• 28-day view-through
• 7-day view-through

In the case of inactive campaigns, they will continue to report by utilizing the attribution window at the account level. But how can we access the historical data? This can be accessed by ads insights API if the attribution windows don’t support it.

Once these changes occur, you can modify your 7-day click attribution window to any other supported window. But you must keep in mind that these modifications can only occur for the campaigns that aren’t iOS 14 app install campaigns. Now, below mentioned are some of the windows that the new attribution setting will support:

• 1-day click
• 7-day click (default setting under the new policy of Apple)
• 1-day click with a 1-day view
• 7-day click with a 1-day view (primary default setting)

Before the aforementioned unsupported windows become inaccessible, you need to take the following actions to prepare yourself.

• It is essential to acquire results from the reported conversions that occur from the 7-day attribution window because this will help you to get better campaign insights. You can use comparing windows to see how your campaigns or ads function across multiple other windows.
• You can take out any data you need or want from the 7-day view or 28-day view attribution window. However, this data will also be available to you through ads insights API once Apple undergoes its new policy.
• Once the new iOS 14 starts working, all of your automated rules will be transformed to a 7-day click window. To prevent any unanticipated damage to your data, you must update all your automated rules to this attribution window. Because once the new policy of Apple strikes, you will not be able to change your rules to any other attribution window.

However, you need to know one thing that all of these changes can strike at multiple times. Therefore, you need to be prepared for these changes. To make it easy for our users, we will change the settings to 7-day click and 1-day review to make our users habitual of the newer enforcement prompt of Apple. Once the new iOS 14 introduces into the market, we will change our settings to a 7-day click. But this 7-day click change in the attribution window will only apply to those ads or sets of ads that are formed after this change. Optimization and reporting will bear no effect on the sets of ads that are formed before this change. To keep you updated on the rest of the changes, we will keep on notifying you.

Restrictions on targeting

You will find several restrictions on targeting because many people keep opting out of tracking. This can reduce the custom audience of your website and app along with the size of how far your app connects with other people. You can tackle these restrictions by two of the following strategies:

• Try to expand your target audience
• Try to tackle and broaden your audience to create more awareness of your brand

Restrictions on dynamic ads

You can have a lot of problems while targeting your audience once they start installing the new version of iOS 14.

You can adapt the following strategy if you want to deliver dynamic ads using the app of your business:

• If you want your audience to get to your business’s app, you will need to provide them with some links because only then you can direct all the iOS 14 users to your apps. It is important to provide the links because once your users install the new version, the device will change to the mobile web browser destination instead of your app.

You can adapt the following strategy if you want to deliver dynamic ads using the website of your business:

• You must use only one pixel per domain or catalog because this will help us in optimizing the conversion events according to your likings. However, if you can’t keep up with one pixel, then you need to go to the event manager and go through the 8 prioritized events in there. But make sure that each of these events is linked to the catalog after installing it to the domain.
• If you use multiple domains in your catalog, you need to verify each of those domains. Avoid using any domain that can direct your user to any other website.
• Now, comes the part where you line up your ads in a set. For this purpose, you can choose one of the 8 prioritized events or one of the non-prioritized events. However, for the non-prioritized events, your ads will be unable to report or deliver anything regarding the people because these people will have the new version of iOS 14 on their devices. To edit your preferences, you can go to the event manager and change anything you want.

5 steps to keep your iOS 14 Facebook ads working

Up till now, we have discussed how the iOS 14 changes may affect your ads and reporting. And now I’m going to discuss how you can fix this issue and keep your iOS 14 Facebook ads working.

Well, with the introduction of the new policy of Apple, various questions were asked regarding its impact on the Facebook conversion campaigns and how can you prepare yourself for bigger changes. The new iOS 14 changes arise a lot of questions such as how can you keep your Facebook ads functional with the conversion objective as successfully as you did with the previous version.

And this is exactly why I’m here. I’m going to help you in dealing with the new iOS 14 changes especially their impact on the Facebook conversion campaigns. The new iOS 14 will bring the following changes:

• Verification of your Facebook domain
• Aggregated event measurement of Facebook
• 8 conversion events per domain
• 7-day click attribution window

There have been murmurs around these changes like why do I have to verify my domain? What is aggregated event measurement? Weren’t there unlimited conversion events per domain before? What happened to the 28-day click attribution window?

If you want to have successful Facebook conversion campaigns just like you had before this new update, proceed below.

The impact of new iOS 14 changes on Facebook conversion campaigns

The new iOS 14 advertising impact can change the way our advertisers operate. Most of you have used Facebook for advertising your products and brands and with this new version, you will see certain changes in the Facebook pixel itself.

The purpose of this approach is that you send traffic to your website or landing page through Facebook ads, and want your visitors to complete a potential action. Once this action is completed, custom events and conversions will help in recording this action in the Facebook interface.

This action can assist the advertisers to calculate the cost per each acquisition or cost per each action from their website or the landing page. In this way, the advertisers will know if their marketing is successful or not and they can also pin it on Facebook internally.

For our users, the new iOS 14 changes bring a lot of limitations for apps, especially Facebook. One of the limitations is the passage of data from one domain to another. This limitation can have a large impact on the process of how the advertisers operate their ads and pass the respected data for optimization and reporting.

Therefore, if you’re running ads on Facebook and you need to make your Facebook conversion campaigns successful, this is what you need to do:

1. Verify your website or add a domain
2. Prioritize 8 conversion events
3. Select the attribution window for your ad set
4. Start relying on the internal data (CRM, Google analytics, etc.)
5. Monitor the size of your audience

Now, I will discuss each one of these strategies one by one.

1. Verify your Facebook domain

Facebook directs all of its users to verify their domains to deal with the new iOS 14 changes.

Facebook states:

“it’s important to prioritize verifying your domains if your domains integrate pixels that are owned by multiple businesses or personal ad accounts.”

Verifying your domain is considered to be one of the best practices because it helps advertisers to stay connected with their businesses. You can verify your domain by placing a specific code on your website. You can take help from any webmaster to come up with an effective code.

You may be thinking that why is this necessary to verify your domain? It is important because all the advertisers will have power over their conversion events and they will know which conversion events should be prioritized over the other. Once this new version hits your devices, Facebook will request permission from the advertisers through Apple’s framework known as app tracking transparency which I have already discussed above.

The new iOS 14 changes will limit its users to select only 8 web conversion events per domain. If you own several domains, it will be important to verify them so they can operate successfully and effectively. In this way, you will also have more manual control over the web conversion events. You can select these events according to your requirements.

2. Prioritize 8 conversion events

You know that Apple has a framework named private click measurement and now, in response to this, Facebook has introduced a framework called aggregated event measurement. This framework will allow the users to measure their web conversion events followed by the new iOS 14 changes. But what are the implications of this framework?

1. To optimize your campaigns, you’re limited to use only 8 web conversion events per domain.
2. All the ad sets which are no longer accessible as a result of new iOS 14 changes, will be paused.

Without your knowledge, Facebook can choose your 8 web conversion events based on your previous campaign activity. However, you can go to the business manager and manually select them according to your likings. But we do recommend that you should opt for those web conversion events that bring the most benefits to your business.

Start by prioritizing your events in the account based on your marketing strategy and then come up with the best 8 web conversion events per domain. This can be one of the iOS 14 advertising impacts on the advertisers who can’t create custom conversions now.

However, for these web conversion events to get selected, you need to verify your domain first.

3. Select the attribution window for your ad set

Another iOS 14 change is the setting of your attribution window. As already mentioned, the attribution window of all the new or active Facebook conversion campaigns or others will be set at the set level rather than the account level. The default attribution window will be a 7-day click but you may also have several other options such as:

• 1-day click
• 7-day click
• 1-day click plus 1-day view
• 7-day click plus 1-day view

This change can disable all those advertisers that have the habit of viewing their reporting for a long time due to the unavailability of a longer attribution window. There’s no solution for this limitation so you need to keep up with this new iOS 14 advertising impact. There will be a lot less flexibility concerning the availability of data and its reporting.

4. Start relying on the internal data

With these new changes in the making, you need to start relying on the internal data provided by CRM or Google analytics. It’s essential because Facebook may allow you to choose only 8 web conversion events but you can still see the data present on the back-end. It means that you will know what your visitors are doing on your website or landing page or where they are from. This can assist you in proper decision-making for your marketing strategy and business.

Plus, you get a much shorter attribution window so you get lesser room to connect your internal data with your Facebook ads. Therefore, it is highly important to secure your internal data and keep it accurate.

5. Monitor the size of your audience

With this new version of iOS 14, many people will consider opting out of tracking because nobody wants to be tracked. In this way, the number of persons using your website or landing page will decrease profusely. In order to tackle them again or to increase your audience size, you need to remarket or customize your strategy list.

Let me explain this. You need to pay close attention to the frequency and speed of your visitors by monitoring your remarketing ads or campaigns. Maybe, you already do this but if your audience is decreasing, you may want to rethink your spending on the ad sets to decrease ad frequency and fatigue.

It is unclear that how much drop all the advertisers are going to witness in their audience sizes but I’ve heard a rumor that Facebook is currently undergoing some tests to check the amount of damage this new iOS 14 version can do. However, we recommend you go out of the ways to remarket or customize your list, target a broader audience, especially those who are opting out.

Facebook conversion campaigns in iOS 14 will help you in setting up for continuous achievements  

When you’ll update your device to a new iOS 14 version, there are a lot of conversion-related changes that you may find annoying at first but as time will pass, you will get used to them and they’ll become a lot easier. But the one thing that you won’t get used to is the decrease in your audience size. There is a threat that your target audience won’t be as effective as it were in the pre-iOS 14 phases. To overcome this problem, many businesses will target a much broader audience which can increase the costs and decrease the reporting abilities. Many businesses believe that they won’t ever return to Facebook to advertise their ads but let’s just not go there yet.

To conclude it all, below mentioned is the summary of what you can do to make sure your business keeps on thriving despite the new iOS 14 changes:

1. Start by verifying your domains so that you can manually change and prioritize your web conversion events.
2. You can manually change your conversion events per domain by going to the business manager, but they are limited to 8 web conversion events.
3. Select the attribution window for your ad set.
4. Start relying more on your interval data provided by CRM or Google analytics to keep it more accurate.
5. Keep a close eye on your shrinking audiences and then come up with a budget according to it so you can avoid ad fatigue.