What we're seeing...

As iOS 14 changes continue to drip out, here's a rundown of what's going on. Hey, {NAME}! A little over a week ago, Apple released their long-awaited update, iOS 14.5. We've been preparing for this for months (or at least, hopefully you have!). I've been writing about it since 2020. The expectation was that everything we've been expecting would roll out at once. That, of course, hasn't happened. Since everything is changing so quickly, I've resisted writing a blog post on this that will be quickly outdated. Instead, I wanted to share my experiences here, in your inbox. Let's walk through what has happened so far, what hasn't happened, how you can continue to prepare, and how I can help... THE iOS 14.5 UPDATE Last Monday, Apple released the iOS 14.5 update and users began to update their devices. The result was more users being exposed to prompts like this one asking if they would like to be tracked across apps and websites... [image] We can guess that possibly a majority of users will opt not to be tracked, though Facebook is doing all they can to convince users of the value of tracking to their experience on Facebook. Realistically, though, we know that there is going to be a negative impact to targeting, reporting, and optimization, at least in the short-term. TARGETING AUDIENCES SHRINK You may have seen a message like this one in your Resource Center tab in Ads Manager, letting you know that your audiences are shrinking... [image] I'm seeing this message. It makes sense that audiences -- particularly website and app engagement custom audiences -- would shrink. If users opt not to be tracked, their activity from their iOS device will no longer be used in these audiences. Of course, the question is how much these audiences have decreased. The message above isn't particularly helpful. When I click the button to "Review Ad Sets," it directs me to my active ad sets. All of them. I have no idea which audiences are shrinking, by how much, and if it's even a problem. Honestly, this feels like a universal prompt that's being sent, rather than an actionable, helpful alert. REPORTING IS IMPACTED This is a big one that people need to understand. The default attribution window is now 7-day click, removing the 1-day view window (it can be changed, but it's 7-day click by default). [image] If some of your conversions of the past have happened outside of the 7-day click window, you'll no longer see these (of course, this changed by default in January). But if you also get 1-day view conversions, those, too, will go away (by default). That will lead to fewer reported conversions. You may have also noticed a [1] or [2] in your results column next to the reported number (1 for app ads and 2 for website conversions). If you dig a bit, Facebook tells you that these numbers may not include people who have opted out of tracking. [image] How much is reporting impacted? We don't really know. For one, it doesn't appear as though Aggregated Event Measurement is even active at the moment. If it were, I assume we'd see some helpful data here... [image] We can expect that advertisers will blame any drop in reporting on iOS 14. Let's avoid that. The truth is that performance fluctuates generally anyway. Sometimes, competition is high. Sometimes, your ads just aren't that good. We need to prepare for that possibility, too. But, you should also have a sense of how large your iOS 14 audience is in the first place. For example, only about 8-percent of my total traffic comes from iOS mobile devices. A big reason for this is that I continue to get a lot of desktop traffic. I also have an international audience that may not be iOS-centric. As a result, I don't expect to see a major change here. It's also possible that reporting impact is minimal right now, outside of attribution changes. Why? Because of this... AGGREGATED EVENT MEASUREMENT We're still waiting on Facebook to activate Aggregated Event Measurement. Or, more accurately, we seem to be waiting on Apple. Aggregated Event Measurement is the system Facebook is implementing to handle conversion reporting for those who opt-out of tracking. It involves an 8-event limit per domain. Advertisers can only optimize ad sets for conversion events within those eight. And for users who opt-out of tracking, Facebook will receive only the highest ranking event from a given visit (and delayed up to 72 hours). But, as I said, this doesn't seem to be fully live yet. Maybe there are some elements of reporting that are live. But as of this moment, I can continue to run ad sets that are optimized for events that fall outside of my eight configured events. I still get this message... [image] Note this says "once Apple starts enforcing their iOS 14 policies." Facebook, it appears, doesn't control when this starts. So, for now, we wait. In the meantime, feel free to optimize for any of your conversion events. Just know that ad sets optimized for events outside of your configured eight events will be paused once this finally goes live. COMPARING CONVERSION WINDOWS We've known for some time that 28-day attribution windows would be going away, and that you wouldn't even be able to pull data on these windows once the update went live. What we didn't know, however, is that the ability to compare conversion windows -- even those that remain active -- would be disappearing. Previously, this feature was found when customizing columns. It's unclear why this would go away for even the active windows. While it's possible this will come back, my hunch is that the big issue is the up-to-72-hour delay on reporting for iOS 14 users who opt-out of tracking. Do those conversions fall under a 1-day click window or 7-day click window? It's entirely reasonable to assume that Facebook won't know. GET HELP This is just a quick snapshot of where we are right now with iOS 14 and what I'm seeing. This is constantly changing and I expect more changes quickly. If you need additional assistance, there are a few ways I can help. First, here's a resource list that I put together: [( That list includes an [FAQ]( and list of blog posts that I've written on the topic. If you want some direct assistance, you can sign up for one-on-one sessions with me here: [( Note that [PHC - Elite members]( get a cost savings on these sessions that non-members don't get (feel free to ask me more about this membership). I also conduct weekly strategy sessions and webinars that often cover the topic of iOS 14 for this audience. If you have any questions at all, don't hesitate to ask. Cheers, Jon [Unsubscribe]( Jon Loomer Digital 17503 Ruxton Ct Parker, Colorado 80134 United States