Facebook Ads and Apple’s iOS 14.5: What Contractors, Dealers, and Manufacturers in the Outdoor Living Industry Need to Know
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Content Team,
HALSTEAD.
In the world of Facebook and Instagram advertising, there is only one constant you can count on: change. For those who work deep inside the backend of these giant platforms like the paid media team at HALSTEAD does every day, change no longer surprises—it’s part of the challenge. But not all changes are equal in magnitude.
On the back of the major platform and device privacy updates pushed out in 2021, the blogosphere flooded with a lot of content covering exactly how things have changed, with many also attempting to predict the future by offering their thoughts on how things may continue to change.
Great stuff, right? Yes. Well, kind of.
Most of this content is covering the privacy changes and their resulting effects from a rather…generic angle. And the problem with this is that it can lead to unnecessary panic and confusion. See, these recent changes—not unlike most changes—affect different types of business in different ways. It’s not a one-size-fits-all briefing. A large e-commerce brand, for instance, will have a totally different set of implications than a small brick and mortar paver and stone yard.
So we thought—let’s put out some information that is more specific to the outdoor living industry that we work in every day. What do landscapers, hardscapers, pool builders need to know? Which elements in these updates are relevant to dealers and manufacturers in the outdoor living space? Fueled by hundreds of ad accounts right within that very niche, rest assured this guide is hyper-relevant.
But first, let’s cover some foundational ground.
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What happened: 2021 Facebook advertising updates as a result of Apple’s new privacy push.
Reduced Interest & Behavior Profiles
The Update: Apple launched a new privacy push with iOS 14.5 in 2021. This feature allows users to maintain more control over their privacy. Specifically, users gain the ability to opt out of mobile web tracking on an app-by-app basis.
The Implication: Imagine a user searches for a new home, either through a mobile web browser or a company app like Zillow. Before, Facebook would almost always receive that data point and therefore be able to match the user with specific behaviors and interests. For example, this particular user looking at houses might be categorized as a “new mover.” The user may also be categorized into a certain level of income—for example, those browsing for $2M+ homes, who were not seen as window shoppers, would likely be categorized as “affluent.” Post update, if the user chooses to disable tracking on either the mobile web browser or the Zillow app, Facebook will no longer receive this critical data, which means that advertisers may not have access to as much interest and behavior data when creating their campaigns.
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Change highlights:
8-Event Conversion Tracking Limit
The Update: Facebook reduced the number of conversion events available on a single domain down to eight. At the time of the update, if an ad connected to the domain isn’t optimized for at least one of the eight chosen conversion events, that particular ad will be paused automatically.
The Implication: More tracking means more intelligent data. With only eight conversion events available, advertisers are now forced to pick and choose which events to track, potentially leading to less precise analysis of campaign performance and less opportunity for funnel optimization.
Aggregated Event Measurement
The Update: If a user chooses to opt out of tracking on Facebook itself, Facebook will be able to offer only one conversion event data point to advertisers. Advertisers will gain the option to sort their eight conversion events in order of importance. If a user opts out of tracking on Facebook, only the most important conversion event will be tracked.
The Implication: This update substantially reduces the ability of advertisers to track conversion events. Conversion events are one of the most important data points when assessing point-by-point performance of Facebook advertising campaigns.
Removal of 28-Day Click Attribution Model
The Update: Pre-update, advertisers were able to track actions of users that were made as the result of a Facebook ad campaign for up to 28 days. For example, if a user clicked an ad on day one, then made a purchase on day 25 (or filled out a contact form), Facebook would connect the dots to inform you that the ad campaign was the catalyst that resulted in the purchase. Now, since the timeframe has been reduced to just seven days, purchases made on the 25th day after the initial click will no longer be associated with the Facebook campaign.
The Implication: Advertisers who utilize a lengthy conversion process in their marketing efforts will become significantly more restricted in their ability to gauge the results of any specific Facebook ad campaign over time.
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How these changes affect the outdoor living industry specifically.
The most disruptive update for HALSTEAD clients—or any outdoor living pros running Facebook Ads for that matter—is the reduced interest and behavioral targeting capabilities that Facebook now provides.
Reduced targeting options potentially means higher costs seeing as the same number of advertisers will be competing to reach a smaller number of users. Smaller audience sizes may also increase frequency for any particular campaign, which may require a different approach in terms of ad creatives. Lastly, due to fewer users being tracked overall, retargeting campaigns will also become slightly more limited in scope.
Although this new lack of data is a major change that has certainly shook things up, rest assured that the sky is not falling. Interest and behavior targeting options for Facebook advertisers are constantly changing in the first place—for example, a year ago, we could target users with the job title of Property Manager, whereas today, that option is no longer available. Adaptability has always been a necessity when working with the Facebook ad platform, which, thankfully, the paid media team at HALSTEAD possesses in spades.
Additionally, just because Apple made this update regarding user privacy doesn’t mean that Facebook will ultimately become a less effective way to advertise. Facebook is well aware that its targeting options are the main appeal of the platform, so they’re guaranteed to get resourceful. They already have multiple sources of acquiring user data outside of traditional web tracking. For example, they are known to partner with large companies to harness customer transaction history and gain more information about a particular user. So, this small roadblock may even lead to more effective targeting options in time.
On a more tangible note, the removal of the 28-day click attribution model will mean that conversions across all campaigns will likely decrease. That doesn’t mean the campaigns have necessarily become less effective—the same number of conversions will happen in the backend, but fewer will be attributed to the Facebook campaign.
The 8-event conversion tracking limit won’t affect the majority of our clients, as most of them use just one to three conversion events to effectively track their campaigns. When a user opts out of tracking on Facebook itself, the potential requirement of needing to use just one conversion event may reduce the comprehensiveness of tracking data and in turn the potential for campaign optimization, but overall, our clients will be less affected than most as a result of these particular changes.
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Adjustments & key takeaways.
Adjustments
The first thing we did to stay ahead of the curve was to proactively help our clients set up domain verification sooner rather than later. By ensuring compliance regarding the new updates, clients were able to continue gathering essential data for use in retargeting campaigns.
Additionally, as soon as Aggregated Event Measurement became available within the Facebook advertising dashboard, we helped clients configure these new parameters in advance. By meeting the requirements early, unnecessary delays were avoided when the changes rolled out.
Ongoing, we’re continuously helping clients get the most bang for their advertising buck—whether that means moving budget between platforms or changing the way we use the platform. We are continuously testing and learning, learning and optimizing, testing, testing, testing.
key Takeaways
Across the board, we are still seeing great ROI for the spend with Facebook and Instagram Ads. It’s all relative, right? Even if slightly less effective than before the update, Facebook is still one of the most insanely powerful ways to reach people in a specific service area. It’s the most popular social media advertising platform by a wide margin, and less effective doesn’t mean ineffective.
That said, as more time passes and more data populates, our team—and all advertisers—must continue to critically analyze ad performance on the platform, as with any other marketing effort.
