How will the new IOS 14 Facebook Ads UPDATE affect your Martial Arts club?

“Apple has announced changes with iOS 14 that will impact how we receive and process conversion events from tools like the Facebook pixel. Businesses that advertise mobile apps, as well as those that optimize, target, and report on web conversion events from any of our business tools will be affected.”

Specifically, Apple will begin to require that all apps in the App Store show a discouraging prompt to users on iOS 14 devices, in accordance with their App Tracking Transparency framework. Apple’s policy will prohibit certain data collection and sharing unless people opt into tracking on iOS 14 devices via the prompt. As more people opt out of tracking on iOS 14 devices, ads personalization and performance reporting will be limited for both app and web conversion events.” – from Facebook website.

So what does this mean?

Facebook and Instagram are two platforms that are built to serve a personalised experience on everyone’s individual feeds. Let us face it we all rather see ads that we actually want to rather than ads that were unknowingly targeted with. This new update is about an Apple user having more control over the Ads that they see and Advertisers will have little to no control whether they like it or not.

Apples new update will affect three main areas targeting, optimisation and reporting of data. Whilst all AD objectives will not be affected by this, it seems like the main AD objective that will be affected are conversation ads. Majority of you will have the Facebook pixel installed on your website and you will run re-targeting campaigns based on that data this means that if this update goes ahead you will find it difficult to re-target users.

Campaigns will be affected in a variety of ways including:

Delayed Reporting: real-time reporting for iOS devices will not be supported and data may be delayed up to 3 days.
No support for breakdowns: For both app and web conversions, delivery and action breakdowns, such as age, gender, region, and placement will not be supported.
Attribution Changes: The attribution window for all new or active ad campaigns will be set at the ad set level, rather than at the account level. Additionally, going forward, 28-day click-through, 28-day view-through, and 7-day view-through attribution windows will not be supported for active campaigns.
Targeting Limitations: As more people opt out of tracking on iOS 14 devices, the size of your app connections, app activity Custom Audiences, and website Custom Audiences may decrease.
Dynamic Ads Limitations: As more devices update to iOS 14, the size of your retargeting audiences may decrease.

What is the impact on Martial Arts Facebook Ads?

Well its actually good news as a lot of Martial Arts clubs don’t run conversion ads or event based advertising objectives so its safe to say that those clubs will not be affected. In fact if the changes go live what will happen is Facebook advertising will get cheaper! Yes that’s right, because these changes will affect some big industries it means that industries like Martial Arts may actually be able to advertise a lot cheaper than they currently do.

What should I do next?

This is a developing situation, with many advertisers and businesses unhappy with the development but many users happy with the increased privacy controls.

Facebook are in talks with Apple to modify or reverse the decision. NEST will continue to monitor this, and any other digital marketing developments and update our advice accordingly.