You’ve probably seen, heard or shared Facebooks full-page ad in US newspapers over the past week. The pretty in pink advertisement (pictured below) aims to share how Apple’s IOS update, scheduled for sometime early 2021, will give Apple users the opportunity to opt out of tracking.
The App Tracking Transparency framework (or ATT), will affect Facebook ads in terms of the ability to optimize, target, and report on events off your website or app.
Facebook has quite publicly engaged in a PR campaign against this with paid ads in newspapers (of all places) and this blog supporting small business. With Facebook and Apple at odds over the issue, as well as a number of smaller stakeholders, it’s very possible that the ATT update could be delayed until later in the year – but it is indeed coming.
The reality is that most of Facebook ad spend ends up generating an ad on an Apple device – anywhere from 60-80%. Apple’s shift is going to drastically impact tracking & reporting in the Facebook ads platform.
From what we know so far, the major impacts for advertisers are:
Attribution – Reported results will be down since we’ll no longer have wider attribution windows to evaluate longer customer journeys.
Events – The number of events or signals from the website will drop to 8. These events will also be reported based on priority, so we’ll see the highest value event rather than all steps taken.
There are still more questions than answers at this stage – but we’ll continue to learn as much as we can before the expected launch date.
So what can you do now?
The most important thing is to be aware of is that there is a large change coming to the industry.
Keep an eye out for updated information from WebSavvy and Facebook itself.
In the meantime, the smaller step you can take is to ensure you have your domain verified. Check to see if your domain is verified in business manager here
