How to Prepare Your Facebook Ads Account for IOS 14
If you’ve been reading up on digital marketing trends recently, then you’ve probably noticed a lot of bloggers writing about the iOS 14 update that is affecting Facebook ads. If you’ve been using Facebook ads as part of your strategy, you might be wondering:
“How is this going to impact my business’s Facebook presence, and how can I prepare my Facebook ad account for this update?”
You might be feeling anxious, overwhelmed, even stressed about all this.
Maybe you’ve spent a lot of time and effort perfecting your Facebook advertising strategy, and now it almost feels like you have to start all over again.
You’re also afraid that your Facebook ads might suddenly be paused. This would be a huge blow to your business.
That’s why we’ve put together this article. In it, you’ll learn everything you need to about how to prepare your Facebook ads account for the iOS 14 update.
Finally, you can master your Facebook marketing and grow your audience faster than ever. Read on to learn more.
Step 1: Verify Your Domain
The first thing you need to do is verify your domain. This will make it possible for your business to officially exist on the platform. There are several steps you need to take to make this happen so that audiences can see your ads.
Add the Domain to Facebook Business Manager
First, open your account in Facebook Business Manager. Then, click “Business Settings,” after which you’ll click “Brand Safety.” You’ll see the option for “Domains” come up. Click on that, then, “Add,” and type your domain in the window that pops up.
Verification of Your Domain
The next step is the verification of your domain. There are two ways you can do this. One is the DNS Verification and the other is the HTML file upload. Let’s start with the DNS Verification first. To do this, go to Facebook Business Manager.
Then, click “DNS Verification,” and copy the TXT record. Then, go to your domain provider account, log in, and go to the section for DNS records.
Once your DNS record is open, past the TXT record you got from Facebook Business Manager. You might need to add an “@” sign, depending on the domain host.
Then, go back to your Facebook Business Manager. Click on “DNS Verification,” then on “Verify” for the domain you selected. Usually, this happens over the course of a few minutes but could take as long as 72 hours.
You’ll know that your verification has worked when the status changes to “Verified” and has a green dot near it.
The other verification option is the HTML file upload option. To do this, click the “HTML File Upload” tab. Then, download your HTML verification file to your computer. Next, you’ll upload this same file to your website’s root directory.
If it’s uploading properly, you’ll see the download’s progress on the “HTML File Upload” tab.
Once the download is done, click “Verify.” This should take around the same amount of time as the other verification method.
Assign Your Facebook Page to the Verified Domain
Finally, you’ll assign your Facebook page to the verified domain. To do this, go to the Domains page and click “Add Assets.” Then, in the pop-up window, select your Asset Type. One of the options will be your page. Select it in the right-hand pane.
Then, click “Add.” Now you’ve finished verifying your domain!
Step 2: Choose Your Events
One of the biggest changes you’ll experience with Facebook marketing after the iOS14 update is the number of events you can create. They have a limit now, which means that you have to choose eight events to use for tracking conversions.
Then, once you’ve chosen them, you’ll want to rank them in your Events Manager.
The partner can’t do this unless they’re added as a personal admin inside Business Manager who’s assigned to manage the pixel. Otherwise, it has to be the pixel owner who makes this change.
Choosing the Right Events
As you can imagine, this will have a huge impact on how you grow your audience and grow your sales. Fortunately, Facebook has some guidance on this. They recommend that you do a few things, which we’ll cover now.
First off, figure out which conversion events are the most important for critical business outcomes. Then, if you have to change these events, think about your measurement or campaign strategy.
You’ll also want to think about whether you need to optimize for objectives related to the upper funnel, such as link clicks and landing pages.
Once you’ve chosen your eight events, you’ll place them in order of priority. But how do you do all this?
Step 3: Set up and Rank Aggregated Events
To make sure that your sales funnels are filled with customers, you need to set up and rank aggregated events properly. Otherwise, you might not reach as many people after the iOS 14 update as you could. To get started, go to your Facebook Ads Manager.
Then, go to Events Manager. Choose the pixel you want to use. Then, go to Aggregated Event Measurement, after which you’ll click “Configured Web Events.” Once you’re in this area, choose your domain.
Next, click “Edit Events.” In this section, you’ll be able to set up the priority for each of your events.
There are a few things to note regarding this process. First of all, when event measurement is aggregated, Facebook will be able to send customers to only one event after they’ve clicked.
The event will either be the highest priority or the second-highest priority one.
Additionally, when you make these changes, this can impact your ad sets, causing your ads to be delayed for nearly as long as 72 hours before the changes come into effect. And you can only change these rankings once every 72 hours so you want to rank these appropriate right out of the gate.
For this reason, it’s more important now than ever to make these changes.
Step 3: Plan for Restrictive Tracking
One of the biggest changes that the iOS 14 update will have is restrictive tracking. This will limit how much information you can get from your customers. It will also limit how much you can target and retarget audiences. For this reason, you need to take all the right steps to adapt.
First of all, you should understand that Facebook will no longer have 28-day attribution. Therefore, calculate and track what sales you normally receive between days 8 and 28.
Additionally, you should think about how optimization and tracking changes in your campaigns will be affected. To ensure you’re successful, go to Events Manager and turn on Auto-Advanced Matching.
There are other ways you’ll be able to get data from your Instagram and Facebook ad accounts by using tools like Prove It Post-Purchase Surveys.
There are other cookie-tracking alternatives, as well. For example, you can ask users to log in if they want to get something for free. Or, you can provide them with an experience that they can only get if they log in.
You can also use data products that won’t give away too much customer information but that will still give you the data you need to improve your marketing and make more sales.
Examples include Amazon Marketing Cloud, Adobe Experience Platform, and Google Ads Data Hub or Google Analytics.
But don’t worry. Once you’ve taken these steps, you’ll still be able to build up a powerful marketing strategy with the data you get from your customers while following the law and the limits of the iOS 14 update.
Need Help With Your Facebook Ads Account?
Now that you’ve learned about how to prepare your Facebook ad account for the iOS 14 update, you might need some help with your account. Maybe you need assistance determining which events to prioritize.
Or maybe you want to find out more about alternatives to using cookie tracking. Whatever help you need, we can assist you.
At Tyche Digital Media, we’re experts when it comes to Facebook ads and other types of digital marketing.
To learn more about how we can help you, book a discovery call today.
Grab this guide if you need effective techniques to minimize your Facebook ad costs.
Results-driven, dynamic Director of Sales & Marketing turned Certified Master Marketer, Tammy uses all of her digital marketing smarts for good…she has managed millions of dollars in top-line revenue and hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising spend while consistently generating a 2:1 return inside the Facebook & Google Ad platforms. Follow Tammy on Facebook & Instagram.