iOS14.5 is upon us and to most iphone users it’s just another update. For Facebook Advertisers it’s the end of an era.

With the rollout of iOS14.5 comes with it Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework which will be requesting the using to give permission to allow the App to track actions.

This data has been used by businesses to enable them to promote their products on Facebook to people who would be most likely to buy their product. Providing a free platform to the 1.84 billion daily active users. Much like free to air TV is paid for by advertisers, Facebook is a platform to connect with friends and family, sell your stuff on Marketplace and see an ad every now and then in your newsfeed which you can easily just scroll past.

So if you are a Facebook Marketer or a business who uses Facebook Advertising in order to grow your business and pay your staff, here’s some things you need to know about these updates.

What to Keep in Mind

iOS 14.5 and ATT applies to Apps on Apple mobile devices — iPhones and iPad

Tracking for Androids and Tablets is not affected

Tracking on Desktop is not affected.

Ad Creation Limitations apply to App Install Campaigns eg. limit of 9 Campaigns and targeting iOS only.

How Apple’s iOS 14 Release May Affect Your Ads

It will impact how Facebook receives and process conversion events from tools like the Facebook pixel. Businesses that advertise mobile apps, as well as those that optimize, target, and report on web conversion events from any of our business tools will be affected.

Delayed reporting: Real-time reporting will not be supported, and data may be delayed up to 3 days.

No support for breakdowns: For both app and web conversions, delivery and action breakdowns, such as age, gender, region, and placement will not be supported.

The default for all new or active ad campaigns (other than iOS 14 app install campaigns) will be set at a 7-day click attribution window — no more 28 day attribution

What this means for your targeting:

Facebook will not be capturing as much data so this will affect the audience targeting

Custom Audiences and LAL Audiences will be affected

Purchase data — when optimizing for Purchases

Retargeting audiences will be greatly impacted

It’s expected to see a gradual decrease in data in our Ad reporting as iOS is rolled out over the next 2 weeks and as people get around to updating their iphone/ipad with the update — some people never will.

If you’re running ads, here’s what you need to do now to have the least disruption to your campaigns and having them paused if they are non compliant:

1. Business Manager

You must use Business Manager — no more Personal Ad Accounts. You can add a Personal Ad account into a new Business Manager.

2. Domain Name Verification

If Domains have not been VERIFIED then any ads running when when Apple launches iOS 14.5 and Facebook updates accordingly, will be paused.

Domains need to be verified in the Business Manager of the owner (your client). Only Admins of the Business Manager can Verify a Domain. If you are setting up for a client, then you will need to be added as an Admin to their Business Manager.

3. Aggregated Events (AEM)

You will need to select “Aggregated Events” to optimize your ads for. You have a limit of 8 conversion events per domain. You need to assign your events (up to

in order of priority Highest to Lowest. If you make moderations to your web event configurations, including reprioritization, it will automatically pause ad sets that are impacted by the event change (the changed event and all lower priority events) for 72 hours in order to help minimize the risk of incorrect attribution

4. Third Party Platforms

If you are using a 3rd party domain eg. mydomain.clickfunnels(dot)com you may not be able to verify this domain. Therefore you will need to create a Custom domain for these sites so that you can verify the domain. IMPORTANT — make sure the final conversion event is firing on a page that is the same domain that you are sending traffic to.

5. UTM Parameters for Tracking Ad results

While Facebook’s Pixel tracking will be severely diminished, Google Analytics will not be affected. Therefore using UTM Parameters in your ads and combining with Google Analytics and Google Data Studio will help you to see which Campaign, Ad Set and Ad generated the sales without costly software.

6. Conversions API

Conversions API (CAPI) formerly Server Side API (SSAPI) installs code on a website so that you can create custom events that are then sent from the site’s server to Facebook and capture the attribution.

With the current Facebook Pixel set up, tracking can be prevented by browser (like iOS and Firefox) and ad blockers. By setting up CAPI it allows data to be still be passed from the server side (as opposed to the current browser side). So setting this up is essential and sooner rather than later.

I have created a training which goes further into depth on each of the above points and how to set your Domains and Aggregated events the right way.

It’s called

“The Facebook Ad Manager’s Survival Guide for Apple’s iOS14.5 Rollout”

If you’re an Ad Manager, I’ve got you. There’s also a section on “Communicating with Clients”.

You can catch the training here >> https://eliteadmanager.com/ios14