If you’re often in the digital marketing space, you’ve probably heard about the recently announced iOS 14.5 privacy update in April 2021. With this update, Apple is taking big steps to promote privacy by giving users the ability to choose whether or not they want to be tracked. With 96% of users opting out of tracking, it seems to be a popular update. However, for PPC advertisers, this means we may have less data to optimize our PPC campaigns.
The update hits Facebook more often than some other advertising platforms. Because on Google, the user shows interest in your product or service by actively searching for a relevant keyword. On Facebook, the advertiser is more reliant on targeting the right interests and audience personas. More data is required and this data will be removed here with the iOS 14.5 privacy update.
If users are supposed to benefit from free software and online tools, should the software owner have the right to track its users and monetize their data? Regardless of which side of the debate you are on, the fact is that the iOS 14.5 privacy update is here and the Facebook advertising community needs to find ways to be as little affected by the update as possible.
Adapting to change is an important part of being a successful digital marketer. We have had to do it in the past, we have to do it now and we will have to do it in the future. In this blog, I share six tips on what Facebook marketers can do to minimize the impact of the IOS privacy update.
Tip one: Use interactions with Facebook and Instagram pages in the retargeting campaign
A good place to start with paid Facebook advertising is to use a prospecting campaign to increase awareness of your product or service. Then you would retarget users who have interacted with your website.
The IOS privacy update means Facebook has less data about its users. This means that the retargeting audience size for website visitors will become smaller
Frequency rate is the average number of times your ad is shown to each user. A high frequency rate means your ads won’t be shown to many people. Instead, the ads are shown multiple times to the same group of people. With fewer users to target, you risk increasing your frequency rate to the point where it negatively impacts your campaign’s performance.
To increase the number of users who see your retargeting ads, you can also target users who have interacted with your Facebook or Instagram pages. This should increase the size of your retargeting audience and prevent your frequency rate from increasing too much.
Tip two: Go broader
At Pepper PPC Agency, we have always recommended that advertisers think about their audience and use the targeting options available in Facebook to reflect their audience as accurately as possible. This has always been a good starting point because Facebook has so much information about its users.
Now that Facebook has slightly less information about some iOS users, your account’s performance could be affected by targeting too granularly. It may be better to target a slightly broader audience. This gives Facebook algorithms more leeway to start testing and learning which audiences are performing well for your business.
As you create your campaign, keep an eye on the Audience Definition section. In general, you don’t want your audience to be too broad. As can be seen in the image below, the arrow should not point to the yellow or red area. As long as your audience size doesn’t fall into the yellow zone, you should consider targeting broader than you normally would.
Tip three: Install the Facebook Conversion API
If you run paid Facebook advertising, we recommend installing the Facebook Pixel. It can significantly help improve the performance of your paid Facebook campaigns, and without it, you’re at a disadvantage.
In addition to the Facebook Pixel, Facebook also allows advertisers to install the Facebook Conversions API. This works with the Facebook Pixel to maximize the data Facebook can track about its users.
What is the difference between the Pixel and the Conversions API? Well, the Facebook Pixel is a browser-side tool while the Conversions API is a server-side tool. The pixel tracks the user through their browser. However, cookie blockers can be installed to prevent the pixel from tracking the user.
The conversion API is not cookie-based. This allows advertisers to track users through their website’s server. It tracks server events, not browser events, which can be blocked.
Tip four: Upload CRM data
Use the information in your CRM to improve your audience targeting by uploading your CRM data to Facebook and creating a lookalike audience.
You can upload information, such as people who have purchased from you in the past, completed a lead, or subscribed to your newsletter. The file you upload must have at least one of the following primary identifiers:
- address
- Telephone number
- Mobile advertiser ID
- Facebook app user ID
- Facebook page user ID
- First name
- Last name
Facebook uses the main identification information to identify the user account. The more information about the user is uploaded, the higher the probability that Facebook will find the user on Facebook.
Once you upload this list to Facebook, a lookalike list can be created and used in your paid Facebook campaigns.
To start uploading data from your CRM, click “Customer List” when creating a new audience. Then follow the steps to start uploading your CRM data.
Tip five: Use Google Analytics data
Because Facebook now has less data about its users, conversion data is no longer shown broken down by segments such as age, gender and platform. You can still see basic data like impressions, clicks, and amounts spent. However, you can’t see how many sales you made in each age group.
If you can’t see how your campaigns are performing by segments like age, gender, and placement, it’s difficult to further optimize your campaigns.
As long as you add UTM tracking to your campaigns, you should see the transactions and goal completions you receive from your Facebook campaigns in Google Analytics. UTM tracking of your Facebook data allows you to take advantage of all of Google Analytics’ data segmentation features to further optimize your Facebook advertising campaigns.
This includes age, gender and location data in Google Analytics. However, keep in mind that Facebook tracks users differently than Google Analytics, so the segmentation data reported by Google Analytics won’t exactly match what you would have seen on the Facebook platform.
When adding UTM tracking, if you add the website source name in the campaign source, you can split your sales from Facebook and Instagram. Adding CPC to the campaign medium allows you to segment between organic and paid Facebook traffic. By adding the campaign name to the Campaign Name column and the ad group name in the Campaign Content sections, you can see performance by campaign and ad group in Google Analytics.
Tip six: Use external sources to monitor performance
There is a possibility that the Facebook advertising platform is not adequately reporting the sales, leads, or other conversions you want to achieve with Facebook advertising.
Make sure you compare the conversion numbers to an external source. This could mean reconciling the numbers in Facebook with your CRM. For example, if Facebook reports a decrease in sales but your CRM reports an increase in sales, it may be because some Facebook paid sales are not being reported.
Wrap up
The enormous amount of data that Facebook has about its users is one of the reasons why Facebook advertising is so successful for so many companies. With the new IOS privacy update, the amount of data Facebook has about its users will decrease, which could negatively impact advertising performance.
But online advertising has always been a fast-moving industry. Successful online marketers will find a way to overcome any challenges and continue to increase their advertising profits. Use these six tips to get around the latest iOS privacy update and keep your Facebook paid advertising performance on track.
