On April 26, 2021, Apple released an iOS privacy update that provides the option for users to opt-out of tracking and choose whether to allow third-party sites (such as Facebook and other social media sites) to track their user data, such as conversions, website visitors amongst other things. Other changes include shorter attribution windows (28 to 7-day) meaning the Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) will likely decrease overall & limited to 8 optimization events per domain. To summarize, this update means that advertisers won't be able to get as much data as before.
A pop-up will ask if they want their activity to be tracked and what it is used for. If the user decides to opt out, their information and actions will not be shared with the advertiser.
Source: Apple Inc.
Impact
Retargeting
As a result of people having the option to opt out, the audience size for retargeting campaigns will decrease. We do not expect a significant change in our campaign performances as our focus has been on Conversion campaigns rather than Retargeting campaigns.
Reporting
Ads personalization and reporting will be limited to the conversion events we set up, as the information from people who opt out of tracking will be not collected. In addition to this, reporting will be delayed and the attribution window will be reduced from 28-day to 7-day. This means that if someone went on your page, left, then came back and booked an appointment within 7 days, it would count as an action. If they came back after 7 days, it would not be counted for those days. Additionally, information about the user, such as gender, location, and platform, will not be included.
Side note: we performed an audit on our current campaigns and only a little more than half of the leads are iOS users. This means that delivery and performance should not have a drastic impact as only half of them are iOS users and of those users, not everyone will be opting out.
What We Are Doing
Aggregated Event Measurement
Facebook introduced a new way to track events in response to the iOS update. It allows for the measurement of web events from the devices. We can choose and prioritize up to 8 conversion events per domain for campaign optimization.
Domain Verification
Every domain associated with the ad campaign should be verified to help avoid any future disruptions. This action adds more credibility that you are the owner of the website and prevent misuse of your domain. It is crucial to have access to your domain in order to run the ad campaign as we use your domain to launch your landing page or website. Please provide these credentials in Credential Management.
More information about the changes can be found here.