Have the iOS14 changes really affected paid advertising results?
Last year Apple announced that the Identifier For Advertisers (IDFA) would become opt-in in its next mobile operating system update, iOS 14. In case you missed it, the IDFA helps advertisers measure ad effectiveness as well as track devices and people. Naturally, this has meant that agencies and marketers have had to pivot and change the way they target users online.
A study by Flurry Analytics unveiled that in the first three weeks of the iOS 14.5 rollout, the global opt-in rate for data collection average is 13%.
When a user doesn’t opt-in, marketers wouldn’t have access to the user’s Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA). This means:
If Facebook isn’t able to track iOS 14.5 user behaviours, tracking pixels wouldn’t be able to serve their function properly.
Facebook Ad targeting options will be limited. This means less opportunity for granular targeting, which may result in having to serve less personalised ad copy.
So far, this change hasn’t dramatically changed ad spend, instead, it’s changed how we target users. Consolidating spend within a smaller number of ad sets and audiences has allowed budgets to be focused on high intent audience pools. This change has also removed audience overlap (which can drive up CPMs).
Ad personalisation has also evolved as we’ve had to move away from the user-centric approach to focus more on larger audiences. This has created an opportunity for advertisers to adapt their message, leveraging the user’s context to maximize their ad impact.
Advertisers with strong first-party data have a clear advantage in this new environment, as they’re incentivised to push opt-in permissions for consumers. This means that publishers should start working now (or yesterday!) to solidify the relationships with their audiences that will encourage people to opt into tracking.
Here are some workarounds to consider for your paid ads strategy:
If you have a Facebook ad with a conversion objective, consider excluding iOS devices completely.
Try creating campaigns that don’t have the objective set for conversions. Leverage your website domain’s tracking and UTMs etc, to determine if a conversion occurred on your website.
So far, Facebook has come away unscathed, with ad revenue for the platform rising 56% to AUD$39bn in the three months to 30th of June. However, this is due to the slow rollout of these audience changes, meaning Facebook is yet to feel its real and long-lasting impact. In Facebook’s Q2 2021 earnings call, CFO David Wehner concurred, “We continue to expect increased ad targeting headwinds in 2021 from regulatory and platform changes, notably the recent iOS updates, which we expect to have a greater impact in the third quarter compared to the second quarter.”.
At this point, there still remains much to be seen in terms of how the industry will collectively respond to these changes. Few industries are as innovative as digital advertising, and it is clear that agile marketers, along with their agency partners, will successfully adjust and turn uncertainty into opportunity.
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