Apple users must now give their permission to be tracked online — this is how Apple is changing social media marketing for your business and how we’ve adjusted our Facebook advertising strategy. 

In one of the latest privacy-related changes in a long string of updates to how technology is used to track and gather user data across the web, Apple has issued new requirements effecting digital Facebook advertising. 

In accordance with the AppTrackingTransparency framework, apps will now prompt all iOS 14 users to opt in or out of certain data collection. 

Here’s more about what the iOS 14 updates mean, the implications for social media advertising through Facebook, and how we’re responding to the changes : 

What Is the AppTrackingTransparency Framework? 

The AppTrackingTransparency framework displays a prompt requesting the user to give permission for any marketing-enabled app they’ve downloaded to track them across the web or to access their device advertising identifier. It’s now required for all Apple apps, including Facebook.   

Impacts to Facebook Advertising 

The changes impact how Facebook receives and processes conversion events from tools like the Facebook pixel (an analytics tool.)  

• Reduced audience precision: As some users opt out of tracking, businesses without access to their own custom audience data will see reduced targeting precision and lessened capabilities to personalize ads. 
• Limited conversion events: Facebook pixels will only report and optimize for a maximum of eight conversion events for each domain  
• Delayed conversion data: Facebook now has reporting delays of up to three days and isn’t offering real-time reporting on conversion events triggered from Apple devices running iOS 14. 

Maintaining Effective Advertising Campaigns 

At Attane, we’re always actively working to optimize, target and report on web events from Facebook pixel and other business tools to ensure campaign effectiveness. We’ve taken steps to update the event setup and manage changes for clients, such as: 

• Evaluating and identifying the eight conversion events most important to critical business outcomes. We customize those in Events Manager, and continue to assess whether changes need to be made to campaigns or measurement strategy.  
• Verifying domain(s) in Facebook Business Manager, which will allow pixels to run “normally.” This verification process helps avoid any future disruption of conversion campaigns. 

As privacy remains a prevalent concern throughout the digital advertising environment, more targeting and tracking restrictions are likely to be announced for years to come. We’ll continue to address changes in the marketplace and analyze our own data to stay on top of the latest updates and roll out new strategies to optimize efforts in response.