Have You Heard About IOS 14.5?

On the 26th of April, Apple launched the second version of iOS 14 (iOS 14.5 to be exact) and it seems that the whole internet has blown up about what this means for marketing. We wanted to explain what you can expect now from IOS 14.5 and what we are doing at 303 to make sure that your paid ads perform as well as they have been.Firstly, What Does This Update Mean Again?Essentially, on all apps owned by a third party – meaning Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Google Chrome etc. – there will now be a prompt on Apple products using iOS 14.5, requesting permission to track a user. It is fair to expect that a substantial proportion of users are likely to click ‘No’, meaning that it will be very difficult to track a user through from an ad, through to a purchase. There are a range of alternative methods we can use to track users on ads, however, this update means it is going to be increasingly difficult to ensure we are attributing the correct number of purchases to ads from Apple iOS users.What Have 303 Done To Resolve The Issue?As Facebook relies heavily on tracking to increase their revenue, they have introduced an alternative tracking feature that aims to increase the number of users tracked from ads. This is called a Conversions API and uses aggregated event management – essentially this is another layer of code, that works with the Facebook Pixel, to improve the accuracy of tracking. We have installed this for all of our clients already, so we are entirely up to date with this advisory point from Facebook.In terms of Google, we have ensured all of our client’s websites are tagged properly, so that we can track through from page view, to add to cart, to initiate checkout to purchase. We are also using UTMs on all URLs, in all of our ads, so that we can track everything using Google Analytics. We will be using Google Analytics more and more now, as we may be able to see more data there than we can on the Facebook or Google Ads platforms themselves. What Can You Expect In The Short Term?We believe that the adoption of iOS 14.5 will be a gradual uptake. It will be a relatively slow process for every iOS user to upgrade, so we would like to emphasise that this isn’t an overnight thing. You won’t see purchases drop off tomorrow – however, you may begin to see a drop off in our reporting as we work to understand if there are other alternative ways we can track users.What Can You Expect In The Long Term?Unfortunately, as we are not able to track as many purchases, you are likely to see some metrics increase or decrease on our reporting. You will still see the same volume of purchases coming in on your website – or if you are scaling your marketing, you will see more and more coming in! However, our reported CPA may fluctuate adversely. The reality is that we will have less visibility over what’s happening on the ad platform – we are working hard to get as much visibility as possible, however, some purchasers may slip through and will not be attributed to ads, leading to a lower conversion value result and ROAS, as well as a higher reported CPA.This isn’t all doom and gloom – as consumers, Apple is allowing users to have much more control over what businesses are seeing, and it gives us some privacy back. As marketers, this is just another challenge for us to overcome on the road to success, and we are ready for it! It is entirely reasonable to assume more data privacy challenges will come in the future, along with solutions to them!