Dishing the dirt on data (RECAP)

January 31, 2022

In today’s blog we’re looking back at the iOS 14 update and its effects on Facebook ads. Stick with us as we take you deeper into the subject, exploring the impacts, changes and how you can handle it.

Apple released an iOS 14 update for advertisers (IDFA), which is intended to help advertisers measure ad effectiveness as well as track people and devices. The IDFA is essentially a cookie that can pick up data across all apps used, including health and location.

But what does this have to do with Facebook? Prior to this update, Facebook could track individual app activity, including the Facebook app, Instagram, as well as Safari, Chrome and other browsers where conversion might happen on a brand site. The data was then stored and segmented by Facebook, measuring app consumption, sites visited and search history. Using this data, the algorithm could then build a picture of the user. Are they a foodie, or a fashionista? Do they have a family? Are they interested in dogs or cats? When a brand or agency built a Facebook or Instagram campaign, the detailed user data was available to build specific target audiences.

Another element impacted by the update was conversion tracking. The data from the IDFA could tell whether users were shown an ad on Facebook and tracked their path to conversion as a direct or indirect action.

Fast-forward to the update, where this data was removed from Facebook’s view and therefore the target audience is now tougher to find. But before you get too concerned and switch on your Facebook ads off, it’s not that the data doesn’t exist, it’s just less available from Apple. Apple still receives this data, but it then passes the limited data back to Facebook. The brand still gets news of that conversion to purchase, along with the time and date – it’s just not quite as connected. Facebook, of course, is keeping advertisers closely apprised of how to deal with these changes so that people don’t pull out of advertising.

Belle Lawrence was live on Serious Social a few months back covering this very topic. If you want to find out a bit more, watch the full video here.

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