What Do the New IOS Privacy Changes Mean for Your Facebook Advertising?

28
Apr 2021

This week, Apple rolled out its newest product and privacy changes that will impact data sharing for all IOS users. This policy puts the control of data back into the hands of users. Consumers now have the ability to decide what pieces of their search data they share with advertisers. As a result, this puts new limits on businesses trying to reach Apple users through methods like Facebook advertising. Here are the impacts you may experience and how you can navigate these changes. 

How the Update Works

Similar to mobile devices asking for permission to use microphones or locations, Apple’s new privacy changes will prompt users to opt in to share their data with advertisers. This App Tracking Transparency (ATT) directly applies to sites like Facebook that rely on mobile applications for their business. Although all businesses will have to navigate these changes, small businesses may be the most affected. According to Facebook, small businesses receive an average of 60% of their sales from Facebook audiences. If users choose not to opt in to share their data, Facebook doesn’t know how to accurately target people and these small business owners’ audience to market will shrink. Fewer people will be open to receiving advertisements via Facebook feeds, messages, stories, and more. This results in fewer eyes on your content and an even smaller number of qualified potential customers. In turn, this smaller audience could negatively impact sales. 

The Impact You’ll See Facebook Advertising

The effectiveness of your personalized Facebook ads is predicted to be impacted significantly by ATT. With personal search data limited, the performance of your Facebook ads could decrease over time meaning you will not reach as many people in your audience, you may spend more money on each of your leads, and the number of people who click or engage with your ads will decrease. As a result, you could be missing out on many lucrative prospects.

Prepare to experience impacts in these specific areas as well:

  • Engagement ads
  • Conversion measurements
  • Relevancy and frequency of delivery
  • Cost per action optimization

Overall, advertisers will see changes in the ability to reach the most relevant audience members and properly analyze ad campaigns. The changes will limit your ability to target and track certain customers and make it more difficult to identify those consumers that are most likely to make a purchase from your business. This lack of clarity on how well your ads are working could require you to maintain a higher advertising budget just to connect with the right people. Less data from potential customers also makes it difficult to know what services or products are resonating with your audience the most. For example, if your main audience responds well to request for consultations. Today, you start promoting that offer to this audience on Facebook but see a lower response than ads you ran before the update. It appears that their needs have dramatically changed. However, this may not be the truth. If this audience now limits data, you may receive inaccurate information about what they are truly interested in.

What You Can Do

If Facebook is your main resource for reaching customers, you may want to consider broadening your reach and creating a more holistic digital marketing strategy. This could mean trying retargeting ads based on your website’s data on multiple social media platforms instead of only relying on predetermined Facebook audiences. Additionally, your business may be able to mitigate negative effects on your sales by incorporating email marketing tactics such as newsletters, eblasts, and email drip campaigns.

Although these IOS modifications were official on April 26, you may not see changes in your ad performance for a few weeks. Now is the perfect time to reevaluate your marketing strategy. Look at the areas that you can improve in order to overcome these potential ad performance challenges. 

megaphone83% of marketers say Facebook advertising is critical to their business.

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