What we know about the rollout of iOS 14.5
Since rolling out iOS 14.5 in April, adoption has been fairly slow for consumers. According to this article from Branch, only 20% of iOS users had updated to iOS 14.5 as of June 2021. And for those that updated to iOS 14.5, the team at Flurry have been watching closely and reported a 13-15% opt in average by the third week after the rollout. This means, approximately 14% of users who saw the Apple Prompt agreed to opt into app tracking (yes, that means 86% did not).
Now it’s important to keep in mind that the 14% benchmark is still only a measure of the ~20% of users who upgraded to iOS 14.5 by this point. And your Facebook targeting includes devices outside of iOS (like Android, desktop devices, and more).
As time goes on, it’s certain that we’ll see iOS 14.5 adoption and Apple prompt engagement grow rather quickly. But for now, let’s ignore the numbers.
Because here’s the thing…they shouldn’t really matter. A strong foundation and following the basics will always win. And regardless of adoption and fluctuation during these iOS changes, Facebook is rolling out updates and producing new resources to help advertisers maintain performance during this time.
But we can’t ignore the fact that these changes have had an impact on advertising performance. So, let’s review what we’ve learned, what it means, and what actions you should be taking.
1. Delayed conversion reporting: as an advertiser myself, this is where I’m experiencing most pain from the changes. Before the iOS changes, advertisers could feel confident in the significance of data within a recent timeframe to make account decisions and optimizations. But with the delay in conversion reporting, your performance results can dramatically change overnight. This makes it difficult to optimize based on Facebook reported performance data over the last 7 or 14 days.
2. Initial increase in costs: many advertisers noticed an increase in costs overseas chinese in europe data across the board during the peak time of these changes. Especially in CPM (cost per one-thousand impressions) and cost per result. The good news is, as long as you follow the recommended steps, focus on the basics (more on this later) and have been patient with your account management during this time, you should start to see results regulate back to baseline.
3. Reduction in custom audience sizes: with the loss of tracking coverage, it’s likely that your custom audiences decreased in size. If you rely on custom audiences for remarketing or lookalike audiences, you should consider opening up the filters on your list. You should also keep in mind that your exclusion targeting that relies on custom audiences will be less effective as they once were.
4. Limitations to reporting: while updates like Aggregated Events Measurement and conversion modeling has helped to maintain total performance reporting, there have been significant losses into advertisers’ visibility into performance with Facebook Ads. This includes:
Delayed reporting: no more real-time reporting.
Estimated results: Facebook is not modeling your conversion data to help backfill the assumed loss in data from users who are opted out via ATT.
No support for breakdowns.
5. Changes to conversion windows: as we reported previously, Facebook has officially removed the 28-day attribution window and now advertisers must rely on the 7-day or 1-day windows to attribute conversions.
Those are the most noteworthy updates we’ve seen so far. Now let’s talk about the actions you should take.