You must have been under a rock recently if you haven’t heard the marketing industry losing their minds over the recent iOS 14.5 update which rendered much of Facebook’s more intrusive targeting nigh-on obsolete.
Initial numbers show that around 89% of worldwide users, and 96% of US users have opted out (or rather, not opted-in) to be tracked as part of the update. People want their data back. It’s a move that’s curiously interesting and divisive among marketers. Some taking the side of ‘little businesses will suffer’ and others applauding any move towards better privacy for end-users.
Everyone and their cat has got an opinion on what this means for the future of Facebook advertising, and digital marketing in general. Here’s what our guys have to say about how the change has affected them, or will be felt across the industry.
“Right now, it would be easy to say “I’m not a Facebook advertiser so this isn’t something I’m worried about”, but that would definitely come back to bite you. Apple have seen to it that Facebook are the first platform to lose a huge amount of user data, but with cookies on the way out and legislation like Europe’s GDPR and California’s CCPA limiting our options for workarounds, we’ll all see a similar change eventually.
Whatever Facebook advertisers are doing in 6 months time is what the rest of us should expect to end up trying too, and the more we can learn from their initial panic the easier the transition will be for those of us on Google, Snapchat and everything else. Because we’re next.”
Joe
is watching the response to these changes because it’ll happen to every other channel eventually.
“The iOS14 update has ruffled a few feathers in ecommerce land. It goes without saying that we’re going into this blind, we won’t really know the true effects until 6-12 months down the line.
What is apparent though, is that Facebook isn’t going to be as effective as it has been as a customer acquisition tool. With the tracking changes, remarketing to folks and creating perfect lookalike audiences is 10x harder, if not completely off the table altogether.
My advice as always is to focus on the timeless principles, the stuff that’s never at the mercy of Apple’s policies or an algorithm change.
Nail your brand position, niche down into the smallest viable audience, create something that your customers would tell their friends about. That will always be the best marketing.”
Guy
urges marketers to go back to basics…
“It’s too easy for a digital marketer to get drawn into the fight for online sales attribution, but I actually side with Apple on this one, even if it makes my life more difficult. The erosion of our privacy and right to own our own data over the last decade is nothing short of abysmal. With iOS 14.5, will Facebook now track us across the entirety of the internet as effectively? No. Is that such a a bad thing? No.
As it’s been so bloody good at reaching the right audiences, there’s been a growing over-reliance on Facebook/Instagram advertising which is objectively a bad thing for those trying to build brands. Instead of crying over the spilt milk of Facebook’s loss of control, data, and easy money, consider, “how else can I attract new customers?”. Being solely or even heavily reliant on Facebook for your business is almost as bad as having no business at all.”
Jeff
is enjoying watching the unfolding privacy battle between the tech giants with a bowl of popcorn.
“iOS 14.5 had been available in its test version to developers two months ago. While the official rollout has been highly anticipated, marketers (and said developers) are still scrambling to determine how they’ll be able to successfully serve targeted ads and measure their success.
The update has almost made Facebook rebuild its adtech – and even if that produces initially sort-of-scary results, where was the harm in ever reworking a model to improve it? It makes the case that personalised advertising is good for people and for businesses. If Facebook processes that to a point of quality without invasion of privacy, the picture just becomes clearer.”
Lauren
wonders if the advertiser is still in control?
“As a consumer I can get behind the impending changes as I think more and more people are becoming aware of how their data is being used. I don’t believe that a corporation like Apple would implement these changes out of the goodness of their hearts, so it’ll be interesting to see what their true long-term intentions are with all of this.
From a marketing perspective, it may make our jobs a little harder, but being creative and solving problems is what the job is all about, so I welcome the challenge.”
Joe
thinks there’s more to come from Apple
So…do I need to worry about it?
It’s the multi-billion pound question, isn’t it?
If your business is super-reliant on Facebook traffic to bring new customers, you might want to be thinking about how you can add some eyeballs to your products. It’s a loss of some reporting, and less aggressive targeting today, but what tomorrow? What will you do when your Facebook account is erroneously banned? Or your pixel data is lost? Or when the same happens to Google?
As we see the data rolling in from clients of ours, the early impressions have been a mixed bag of ‘no change’, ‘turbulent times’ and ‘absolute disaster’. We’d love to know what you’re seeing, is it a bomb site, or business as normal?
Let us know if you need help diversifying your website traffic
