What You Need to Know about Facebook’s Updates for Apple’s iOS 14.5

by | Aug 23, 2022

Sometimes it feels like Facebook updates happen every other day. Whether you’re a small business, social media manager, or a general Facebook user, it can be difficult to stay on top of all the changes and know what’s best for social media ad campaigns and digital marketing. While you can spend all day researching the latest Facebook updates and new features, some are more valuable than others. This blog will focus on Apple’s iOS update and how it impacts Facebook marketing.

Apple’s iOS 14.5 Facebook Updates

Beginning in 2021, Facebook changed its advertising tracking for iPhone users. People who use Apple devices with iOS 14.5 (or later) can opt out of being tracked while using apps. This impacts the audience data you’re able to utilize for conversion ads, traffic ads that are optimized around Landing Page Views, app installs, and catalog sales that go to your website. These changes also affect the amount of people within, and accuracy of, retargeting audiences and lookalike audiences.

Learn more about these changes impact Facebook advertising from Facebook’s Resource Center.

How to Optimize your Facebook Ads for iOS Users on Mobile Devices

  1. Verify your website’s domain. Use the homepage of your website. Even though JB Media has many webpages, including jbmediagroupllc.com/what-we-do, jbmediagroupllc.com/what-we-do/social-media, etc, the website we would verify is the homepage: jbmediagroupllc.com. Doing so also verifies all of the subpages. 
  2. To verify your website’s domain, you must be logged into your Facebook Business Manager and have full Admin access in your Facebook Business Manager account. Make sure you are the OWNER of that domain. Multiple Business Managers cannot verify the domain. If you advertise your products on Amazon or a website that is not under your control, you won’t be able to verify the domain. You can only verify the domain if you own the domain.
  3. Here’s Facebook’s step-by-step guide with screenshots that shows you how to verify your website’s domain. You will only need to choose one verification method to verify your domain: DNS Verification, Meta Tags or the HTML File Upload. The Meta-Tag verification is the simplest to use, and the one we recommend.
  4. Once your domain is verified and the conversion events are created, you will need to configure conversion events using Aggregated Event Measurement. You can only choose eight. If you are using “value optimization” for your purchase event, that one event counts as four events. Choosing “value optimization” is a good idea if you are selling a product.
    • Go to Events Manager.
    • Click the Facebook Pixel you want to use.
    • Under Aggregated Event Measurement, select Configure Web Events.
    • Click on the domain you want to configure events for.
    • Click Edit Events.
    • Click Add Event.
    • Select your Facebook Pixel or custom conversion under Pixel/Custom Conversion.
    • Choose the event you want to configure under Event Name.
    • If you choose a purchase event, you have the option to toggle value optimization on or off. Note: You must turn value optimization on in your configuration if you want to use value optimization in your iOS ad campaigns. For optimal performance, events with value optimization turned on should be placed in higher priority slots. Learn more about value optimization.
    • Select the number of value sets you want to set up under Assigned Events. The Assigned Events column tells you how many event slots each event configuration is using. For purchase events with value optimization turned on, you can choose how many value set ranges you want under Assigned Events. The higher the number, the more value ranges you will send with your event. Value sets take up multiple event slots which reduces the overall number of events you can configure. Learn more about value sets.
    • Drag and drop your events from highest priority at the top, to lowest priority at the bottom.
    • Click Submit.

Other Helpful Tips for Facebook Ads With Apple’s Update

  • We recommend that you look at your Facebook Analytics to see how many conversion events (purchases, leads, etc.) come from iOS devices to get a better understanding of your campaign performance and how your ads and reporting will be impacted with these new changes. From Business Settings, click on ‘Analytics’ under ‘Analyze and Report.’ Click on ‘Activity,’ then click on ‘Breakdown.’ Click on ‘Create a Breakdown’ to choose a conversion event. After you choose an event, click on ‘Select Breakdown’ and choose ‘Device OS’.
  • Aside from relying on your Facebook Analytics, we also recommend getting familiar with Google Analytics. Google Analytics doesn’t rely on Facebook’s attribution window and ads tracking. We recommend utilizing UTM tracking links to monitor your ad performance and return on ad spend.
  • If you choose the cost cap or minimum ROAS bid strategy, your ad set needs to be scheduled to run at least three full days.
  • Ad sets optimizing for a conversion event that is no longer available will be paused when Aggregated Event Measurement launches. While not usable for optimization, events not configured as one of the 8 conversion events for a domain can still be used for partial reporting in Ads Manager and website Custom Audience targeting.
  • Unsupported Event: When you try to optimize for a website conversion event that you haven’t set as one of the 8 prioritized website conversion events for your domain, your campaign’s ad set will be turned off. It can’t be turned on again. You’ll need to create a new ad set for the relevant campaign and choose one of the events you’ve already prioritized with Events Manager. To run a similar ad set to the one that was turned off you can duplicate the ad set, edit the website conversion event and publish the new ad set. If your ad set is still a draft, there’s no need to duplicate it; just edit the website conversion event before publishing. Alternatively, you can update your chosen 8 website conversion events in Events Manager, at any time, and try again.
  • Setup Error: When there is no domain associated with a Facebook Pixel event pair and your ad, that ad will be turned off. You’ll need to edit your ad or configure a Facebook Pixel event pair in Events Manager to resolve this error. To turn this ad back on, either select a new domain for your ad or configure a Pixel event pair for your domain in Events Manager.
  • Updating Events: When you, or someone who manages your account, updates your conversion events in Events Manager or imports a new conversion schema from a partner app, your ad sets or campaigns may be paused. It takes 72 hours until the update is complete. Once the update is complete, you can turn on your paused campaign. Please note that paused campaigns won’t restart on their own after the changes are applied.

If you plan to launch dynamic ads:

 

  • We highly recommend you use only one Facebook Pixel per catalog and domain. If you use more than one Pixel, Facebook may not be able to accurately capture and optimize for the conversion events that you care the most about. If you can’t adhere to one Pixel, review the 8 prioritized events for each domain in Events Manager. Ensure that each Pixel reflected there has been installed to the domain and linked to the catalog.
  • If you use multiple domains in your catalog, verify each website domain that you use as a product URL and avoid using any product URLs that redirect to another domain.
  • When you create your ad set you’ll choose only one of the 8 prioritized conversion events to optimize for. You can manage your preferences in Events Manager. Ad sets optimizing for a conversion event that is not prioritized will be paused when Aggregated Event Measurement launches.