It’s been a big few months since we first started jabbering on about the iOS14 changes [or #AppleGate as we fondly refer to it here at TDP], and now that they’re [nearly] officially live we thought it high time to give you a bit of an update.
First things first, if you have no idea what we’re talking about we recommend you check out this blog and then come on back with a nice relaxing cup of tea and your fluffiest pair of socks so you’re feeling your chill best.
Feeling nice and cosy? Good.
Let’s have a little chat about where we’re currently at…
We’re now living in an iOS14.5 world
After remaining extremely tight-lipped about when the launch would happen Apple finally made it official recently.
While this is BIG news, the changes to the Facebook Ads Manager platform started mid way through January, so many of the technical changes have already happened on the platform. What happens now is we start to learn how many people are going to opt out, how this will impact audiences and reporting and if there are any functionalities that also lose their effectiveness.
Just like you we’ll be learning as we go but there are a few things we either know or are pretty sure about already.
Look out for warnings, HINT: they’re important
In an attempt to prepare advertisers for the impending changes, Facebook have added a resource centre to every account and have been adding notifications [in retina-burning-red in many cases] to make sure all of your ads remained interrupted.
If you haven’t checked out your resource centre and resolved all issues already, we’d recommend that you get onto that ASAP, as you may have campaigns that aren’t able to run until you make those updates.
Aim for as much data capture as possible
Realistically, we’re all going to lose some data visibility through Ads Manager but we’d recommend using each and every tool in your belt to give yourself as much clarity as possible.
To do this, you’re going to want to make sure your conversions API is set up and tracking. This works with your pixel to gather more data about users on your website. Depending on which web platform you’re on it’s relatively easy to install and Facebook leads you through how to do it from your Events Manager in Business Manager.
We’d also recommend setting up shops for anyone, if you have the option. This will enable you to hold onto that precious browsing data for anyone who has checked out your products here and gives you some sweet,*sweet* retargeting opportunities as a result.
Changes to your prioritised events will impact ads running
Hopefully you had your aggregated events all set up and ready to go by the time the changes went live so you didn’t see any downtime on your ads.
If you’re ever in need of making edits to what your priorities are, you’ll need to factor this into live dates for your campaigns and any ongoing ads as it’s going to take 72 for edits to take effect and your ads likely won’t run in the meantime.
We’ve also been instructed by Facebook to make sure ‘value optimisation’ is switched on wherever possible for conversion tracking to maintain the best accuracy on ROAS reporting. A personal tip from Aunty TDP to you!
The ROAS playing field has changed
We’ll admit, this one hits us in the feels a little. But we’re now working with a different platform and that means ROAS expectations are no longer the same.
We still love Facebook advertising and are seeing some great results across accounts, but it’s important for us to acknowledge this as it’s just a fact.
If you’ve seen your ROAS drop since 7-day attribution took over from 28-day attribution you’re definitely not alone. This is the new normal so we’d highly recommend you also empower yourself with other reporting tools where possible such as Google Analytics and Shopify. No point beating yourself up for the drop in performance, it’s indicative of a much larger change to the functionality of the platform rather than your specific results. #Promise.
Keep your eye on those overall figures such as your total monthly revenue, traffic, leads etc. If those numbers are stacking up that’s great news, go on and give yourself a pat on the back!
It may be time to look at alternatives
While we’re still learning the full impacts of this new landscape at the moment, it’s probably a good time to start thinking about diversifying your ads strategy to remain effective. If that sounds a bit airy-fairy perhaps you’d like some tangible ideas instead? That’s *exactly* what we’re going to give you!
💡 If you’ve seen delivery decrease on your catalogue sales retargeting campaign instead try the same objective with prospective broad new audiences.
💡 If your website visitors custom audience size is shrinking you can build up your audiences through lead gen campaigns [the database audience is one you can own and that makes it INCREDIBLY valuable], video views activity or even engagement.
💡 If your ROAS ain’t looking so flash within the 7 day window, you could add in a promo code for a limited time to add some urgency and try to encourage immediate purchases.
💡 If your conversions activity has taken a bit of a hit it might be time to decrease your budget slightly on this area of your strategy and use the opportunity to try out some of the other objectives on offer.
By no means do we expect that this would be the last we’ve seen from Facebook, they probably still have some ideas up their own sleeves to continue to develop the platform in line with the new rules.
In the meantime though? Be kind to yourself and give yourself time to adjust to these new updates.
We’re all in this together and we’ve *totally* got this!
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Feeling like you need a little brush up on your ads strategy? We’ve got the force.
Check out our Facebook Ads Trilogy here to get you up to speed!