The new iOS14 Update has broken the ability of every third-party app to get your website and ad performance data directly, which would ultimately help with better ad targeting.
While this may seem discouraging for most marketers, there are still a few ways to track the performance of your ads. As a social media agency dealing with this issue first-hand, we have rounded up a list of tools that will help you track your Facebook ad results post iOS14.
How Does IOS14 Affect Facebook Ads? What Has Changed?
The release of iOS14 has led to a number of changes for both Facebook and the advertisers who use it. The majority of these changes revolve around the fact that Apple no longer allows ad tools to track your data.
Previously, Facebook could track which websites you visited and then show you targeted ads based on your interests, but now they only have very limited access to this information. This means that the targeting capabilities you would previously come to expect and rely on are no longer available.
Since people will have fewer ads targeted to their interests, the probability of users not engaging with your ad campaigns is incredibly high.
And because your ads won’t reach as many people as before, you will need a higher budget in order for them to perform well enough so that you can see any kind of return on investment.
Additionally, without full access to user data, it will be harder for you (and Facebook) to get a full picture of how effectively your ads are performing — which would make optimising them even more difficult than usual!
But here’s how we are doing it:
Facebook Ad Manager
Of course, the Facebook Ad Manager is already available to all Facebook advertisers for free! It is a powerful tool, which allows you to create and manage your ads, as well as provides you with detailed analytics about how your ads are performing.
The Ad Manager is the best option for beginners who don’t have a lot of experience with Facebook advertising and want to take control of their own campaigns.
It is simple enough that you can easily learn how to use it on your own, but it also has enough tools to really help you create effective ad campaigns. You can even use the tool’s built-in analytics dashboard to see how your ads perform and make changes as needed.
Now, you may ask why you should be using the ad manager if it isn’t allowed access to your data anymore.
Well, before you optimize or make any sort of changes to your campaign, you need to know where you stand. And Facebook ad manager is the perfect tool to give you a clear picture of your analytics.
Facebook Pixel
The Pixel is a small piece of code that runs on your website or landing page that tracks who visits it. It is simple to understand and easy to set up, so anybody can use it.
Quite simply, the Pixel collects data from visitors on your website or landing page by sending that data back to Facebook.
For example, if someone visits your website but doesn’t convert, you can target them with different ads that will hopefully turn them into paying customers.
Now, since it is a code and there is no third-party app intervention, iOS14 allows the Pixel to access user events (data) directly from servers via Facebook’s Conversions API. You can then use this data within your ads to get the most out of your ad spend.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a great tool for measuring your audience, traffic, and conversions.
It can help you to find out which website channels are performing best, show you which landing pages are converting the most visitors as well as give you data on how users interact with your overall site content. It is easy to set up, easy to use, and most importantly, it is free.
Because Facebook can’t track your metrics, you can directly log in to GA to evaluate your campaigns, compare your strategies across different platforms, and measure your ad performance across every marketing channel that is driving traffic to your site.
Although you might not get individual data as before, you can work with larger groups or even smaller customer segments to tweak your Facebook ads. Based on specific data sets gathered by evaluating
- The number of sessions generated from your paid ads
- The average session duration
- Demographics
you can create better-performing ads for all the different customer segments –just like you would with email marketing campaigns.
KPI Reports
A KPI or Key Performance Indicator report helps you demonstrate the ROI of your social media campaigns to clients. The report is typically created as a presentation, with each slide containing text and/or images such as graphs, charts, and photos.
These visuals can help businesses better understand their campaign performance without reading through lengthy paragraphs explaining the results.
Before the update, you could automatically get KPI reports through third-party apps. But now, you would have to manually set these up to get the best results. And since KPIs will help you better understand how your ads behave, investing in creating in-depth reports is crucial – especially post iOS14.
Let a Social Media Agency Deal With Your Ad Tracking
If you are overwhelmed by the technical jargon and the many available options, it might make sense to hire a social media agency to track your ads for you.
An agency can provide you with holistic ad management services, including customizing pro-level tracking strategies with specialized tools that won’t require your intervention. And although it won’t be as automated as before, as long as you are outsourcing the headache, you don’t have to bother yourself with understanding the nitty-gritty of the process.
With a full-service social media agency handling your ad tracking, you won’t have to worry about keeping up with ever-changing algorithms or optimizing your campaigns in line with them.
You also get advanced data analysis that will help you make better decisions based on what’s working best for your company (and what isn’t).
Finally, hiring an agency is a good way of staying competitive in a crowded market.