Why is iOS 14.5 becoming a growing concern among marketers and Facebook advertisers?

The latest iOS 14.5 updates have created quite a buzz in the market with its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework concerning user privacy.

Starting with iOS 14.5, iPadOS 14.5, and tvOS 14.5, app developers including Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms are required to receive permission from its users under the App Tracking Transparency framework to track them or access their device’s advertising identifier. As per Apple, examples of tracking include, but are not limited to:

Displaying targeted advertisements in your app based on user data collected from apps and websites owned by other companies.

Sharing device location data or email lists with a data broker

Reading this along with Google’s Privacy Sandbox initiative announced last year will redefine the way the user data is collected and used for advertising. Definitely a great initiative from Google and Apple, but as a digital marketer, should you be worried about the phasing out of google’s ad-tracking and iOS tracking privacy changes? To understand this first we need to understand what is changing.

Google’s Privacy Sandbox initiative

  1. Google is not phasing out all the Cookies. First-party cookies commonly used for better user experience will not be removed or banned as part of the privacy sandbox initiative. Providers like Kapitalwise can still support personalized ads and retargeting for you through an extensive personalization framework built on first-party cookies.
  1. The introduction of new web advertising frameworks such as interest-based advertising will provide advertisers with tools to target interest-based audiences a.k.a Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC). As per Google,  “Results indicate that when it comes to generating interest-based audiences, FLoC can provide an effective replacement signal for third-party cookies. 

iOS 14.5 impact on Social Media Advertising such as Facebook and Twitter

You might have recently received an email from Facebook, stating that the Facebook Analytics platform will retire on June 30th, 2021. Even though this may not have a direct correlation with the upcoming iOS 14.5 updates, we believe that Apple’s privacy policy change has created a domino effect on micro analytics tools like Facebook Analytics. 

While we cannot measure the impact of the iOS 14.5 change until it is officially released to the public, as a digital marketer, you need to anticipate much meaningful impact on how your social media campaigns are targeting and retargeting audiences and optimizing the campaign data. As per Facebook, if you plan to deliver ads optimized for conversion events that occur on your business’s website you should make sure that you:

  • Complete domain verification – All businesses should verify their domain as a best practice. However, it’s important to prioritize verifying your domains if they integrate pixels that are owned by multiple businesses or personal ad accounts.
  • Plan to operate with 8 conversion events per domain – You can only configure up to 8 unique conversion events per website domain that can be used for campaign optimization. This signifies limited use of Facebook Pixel for micro-level tracking and optimization in your digital campaigns based on Facebook data. You can read more about how Apple’s iOS 14 Release May Affect Your Ads and Reporting here. 

As a next-generation customer engagement automation platform for banks, credit unions, and fintech, we are here to support you on your digital transformation. You can subscribe to our newsletter here to stay on top of the latest news and happenings in the fintech digital marketing space.