How Apple iOS 14 Could Change Your Facebook Advertising Strategy
Apple’s iOS 14 update will completely change every Facebook advertising strategy. Facebook’s CFO acknowledged iOS 14 changes are a headwind to the company’s business model and will affect ad spends. Facebook rebuked the impending update for over a year.
Social media managers must adapt to iOS 14 changes. Social media managers who don’t adapt have no place on your payroll.
Apple’s iOS 14 changes are hurting Facebook’s revenue. If you wonder how the changes will affect your Facebook advertising strategy, keep reading.
Explaining The Apple iOS 14 Update
Consumers are more skeptical over how companies gather and profit from their data. Recognizing this problem, Apple began portraying itself as the hero of privacy. Apple’s new focus altered many apps, including Facebook.
The Apple iOS 14 update reflects their vision by allowing users to opt-out of data tracking. All apps in the App Store must request permission to track their users, a significant change that affects advertisers.
Facebook device usage leans towards mobile devices such as the iPhone. This skewed usage means this change affects a significant percentage of Facebook’s audience.
Facebook’s inability to track users reduces the company’s targeting capabilities. Typically, Facebook could track users visiting websites of fast-food restaurants. Using this data, Facebook could then present fast food restaurant ads in the user’s Facebook feed.
Apple’s iOS 14 update prevents Facebook from making that connection if the user opts out of tracking. Therefore, Facebook cannot provide retargeting ads for some iOS 14 users. Losing retargeting ads will hurt companies, but a silver lining exists.
If an iOS user opts to get tracked by Facebook, it’s business as usual for that user. However, Apple automatically opts its users out of tracking. Each user must manually opt in to get tracked by Facebook and other apps.
What Stays The Same For Your Facebook Advertising Strategy?
The Apple iOS 14 update restricts Facebook’s retargeting capabilities. However, optimizing Facebook ad spend remains the best way to achieve an ROI on the platform.
Focusing on vanity metrics such as likes, comments, and shares is a waste of time. Facebook prioritizes advertisers over organic posts, making all organic strategies obsolete. Any marketing agency emphasizing organic reach is toxic to the industry.
Boosting a post on Facebook presents similar concerns. While boosting Facebook posts helps with vanity metrics, they produce questionable ROIs. A successful Facebook advertising strategy must rank ROI above any other metric.
While the iOS 14 changes will make your iOS ads more expensive, a high ROI can justify the extra costs. Profitable Facebook advertising strategies focus on what happens after the ad click. Continue to optimize every part of the process, and your Facebook ads will churn out higher ROIs.
High profit margins give you more room to run Facebook ads without the fear of losing money. You can further ease these worries by turning off ads that exceed a set cost per lead.
If you can profitably convert leads at $30 apiece, and it suddenly costs $40 per lead for your ad, Facebook can pause the ad. Some Facebook advertising strategies unpause their ads each day to collect more data. This practice helps ad managers discover if one day’s poor performance was a fluke.
When significant updates such as the iOS 14 changes affect Facebook ads, it’s common for people to panic. Rather than panic, continue monitoring your data. An ad manager should only make changes if an ad’s performance dwindles.
Do not shut off your top-performing ads.
What Changes For Your Facebook Advertising Strategy
Facebook advertising provides unparalleled retargeting capabilities to help small businesses create personalized ads. Facebook’s retargeting capabilities still work for non-iOS devices.
You can still run targeted ads for iOS users. The custom audience size reach for iOS users will be smaller. However, you will get regular numbers for non-iOS audiences.
Some Facebook advertisers will abandon iOS audiences due to insufficient retargeting capabilities. Ignoring this segment can hinder your company’s ROI.
Ad managers must adapt to lower conversion rates across iOS audiences. Businesses still have some targeting capabilities for iOS users.
Targeting expansion is a viable alternative to custom audiences for iOS users. This feature lets you reach users based on their demographic, interests, and behaviors.
Create less personalized ads for iOS users, and provide others with customized ads. You can set your personalized mobile ads to target Android users. This audience segmentation offers your business regular retargeting benefits.
Your Facebook advertising strategy should remain the same for every non-iOS audience segment. With that said, interest-based audiences represent the future opportunity in Facebook advertising.
This change is a direct response to skeptical consumers worried about their data. While retargeting provides businesses with better results, this feature will face heightened scrutiny.
Some fear Apple’s iOS 14 update is a sign of more to come. Retargeting people based on web history seems to be entering its closing act.
Facebook will feel the brunt of these new changes. But a company with a robust Facebook advertising strategy will continue thriving.
Adjusting Your Facebook Advertising Strategy For The Future
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