You may or may have not heard the news, but Apple has recently announced changes with the iOS update that will impact how we target, receive, and report conversion and traffic from social ads through your Facebook pixel. To put it blankly, anyone who is on an iOS14 mobile device will be prompted to either share their data or keep private. Should they decide to keep it private, Facebook’s pixel will no longer be able to track from this specific device.

The overall impact that this will have on Facebook and Instagram advertising, is it will reduce the ability to retarget your website visitors, which will result in reduced audience sizes for website retargeting across Instagram and Facebook mobile ads.

We don’t know at this stage what the uptake rate of this will be from a “not to track” perspective, however, Thoughtful will be measuring these metrics very closely and reporting back to our clients at the end of February and ongoing. We will be working closely with our clients to monitor re-targeting audience size, and how this pool is impacted on a month-to-month basis. We will be measuring the decline, and come up with counteracting strategies to balance this.

In response to this, Thoughtful will be rebuilding campaign funnels with a focus on Facebook ThruPlay video campaign, collection, and experience ads being used to drive engagement. We will focus and pivot spend towards new audience targeting, and identify middle of the funnel activity and engaged audiences.

Content featured within advertising needs to be more considered with the brand tone of voice, messaging, imagery, and video being important via Facebook ThruPlay video campaigns with the ability to retarget audiences who viewed the video
Content planning for social ads will become more important than ever before as ad funnels via through play will become a key player for the campaigns
Thoughtful will be providing strategic advice around this to our clients

I know your mind is racing, but just remember that all businesses are going through the same change, and change is often a welcomed challenge, and we at Thoughtful feel ready to undertake this new challenge. There will be so many opportunities to drive performance and revenue through social ads and other channels. Thoughtful will continue to provide insights, guidance, and support through these times, always looking for ways to grow our brand’s online presence, site traffic, and revenue.

We will keep you updated as we continue to receive more updates and insights from Facebook and the effects of the iOS update, and as we always do, keep tracking forward.