Ok so here’s the deal…privacy is becoming more prevalent and it’s gaining velocity as we head into 2022.
Cookies are dying, and the ability to track and measure the performance of your online advertising took a big hit earlier this year with the release of Apple’s iOS 14. This was the first big wave that caught many by surprise. Facebook’s attribution and ROAS suddenly became wildly inaccurate.
We’re about to experience a second wave with the release of iOS 15.
Whether you’re an email marketer, a Facebook advertiser, or someone that uses marketing attribution to track and measure campaign data improve your website, social advertising or online sales…Apple’s new iOS 15 update is going to have an impact on you.
Apple is now prompting iPhone users to block their IP address, which opts them out of tracking.
With almost 50% of smartphone users utilizing Apple devices, this is going to have a profound impact on your marketing. The more your customers use Apple devices, the bigger the impact it’s going to have on your ability to accurately measure data, campaign results, and ROI.
With iOS 15, it’s spreading from Facebook Ads to email marketing. Your email open rates and click-through rates are going to become inaccurate. Your ability to track sales from your email campaigns will also become inaccurate.
But hey, most of us don’t want to be tracked in the first place and that’s ok. Privacy is good.
I’m here to tell you that with the right tools, and the right approach…you can get around this and continue to acquire new customers and grow your business.
What’s Changing With iOS 15
The latest iOS update will impact attribution and your ability to track results from your marketing campaigns. changing the way you collect data on your customers and utilize this information through your various channels. So what are the three most significant changes that happen during the iOS 15 update?
- The ability for iOS 15 users to block their IP address.
- The ability to turn off open pixel tracking when using devices with iOS 15.
- The ability to hide your email, which results in marketers being unable to see clicked emails.
These updates will affect how you and your clients track your marketing online and create benchmarks for your goals. In the iOS 15 update, if any of your customers using this iOS have privacy enabled, you will be unable to see traditional attribution stats like email opens and conversion levels. This will cause the iOS 15 update to affect the primary KPIs you use to track data and create personalized ads.
This requires marketers to switch to methods like defining your base click rates and filtering the relational data between clicks. By utilizing previous KPI data you have saved on your customers while combining this with new techniques, you will be prepared to profit through iOS 15. We must learn the effects this update has on attribution efforts across multiple channels before you can begin scaling your business while achieving a high ROI effectively while marketing in the age of iOS 15.
The Impact of iOS 15 On Social Advertising (Facebook Ads)
iOS 15 will affect any social advertising that is done over an Apple device with this OS. For example, Facebook has done a lot in the last few years to increase its attribution efforts, becoming one of the better attribution providers in the space. Facebook allowed marketers to measure data across multiple devices, publishers, and marketing ads. Facebook’s multi-channel attribution would track marketing efforts over various platforms, measuring touch points from first-click to last-click attribution. The first-click and last-click traditionally take place on multiple platforms if a sale is not made immediately.
With iOS 15, you will no longer easily track these attributions using Facebook’s built-in tools if your customers have privacy enabled, making the data from multi-channel attribution difficult without the proper tools. The data you are receiving based on old KPI metrics are made irrelevant with iOS 15, no longer giving you the ability to create personalized ads based on data. Beyond Facebook, iOS 15 will have an impact on other common social advertising channels.
Traditional methods of social advertising like email marketing have been affected by the latest Apple update as well. When customers utilizing an iOS 15 supported device enable privacy, you can no longer track email click metrics. With the loss of these important attribution tools, marketers must rely on new KPIs to create personalized and practical pieces of social advertising.
New Attribution Methods
Attribution has always been the center of marketing. Now it has become regressive with losing so many pieces of attribution data with the iOS 15 update. Billboard, newspaper, and radio are examples of things with no attribution. This is why you will see commercials that send you to a specialized website address to track this data since click or view information is one of the most influential metrics you can obtain on your customer. If you did keep detailed records of your KPI data from before the update, you could use this information to your advantage.
By comparing the data you have from your current analytical efforts and the open information you have learned about your customers, you can create practical and personalized ads, even in the age of iOS 15. Look to build future segmentation on other engagement indicators like clicks and forwards. Get as creative as possible in any way that allows you to measure heightened engagement from a subscriber. Rules that segment consumers based on this info will put you in a position to succeed in the future and throughout the holiday season.
Must-Have Tools To Mitigate The Impact of iOS 15
With attribution metrics valuable for social marketing and iOS 15’s updates, it may be best to utilize paid tools to improve your marketing efforts. To further use attribution with iOS 15, you should use other tools such as CAPI to integrate your online store utilizing Facebook conversions API easily. Other programs like Google Analytics are necessary to your website while being a free tool.
Facebook was reliant on the pixel code that attributes everyone on your website and tracks them. While Facebook would usually provide this information with cookies, CAPI utilizes server tagging instead to measure attributions such as conversions. But if someone visits using iOS 15 and blocks privacy, then they can not have cookies applied. What CAPI does is if someone gives their information on your website, you can send that info back through the server and the API to Facebook—allowing CAPI to supply you with current attribution metrics that tie back to your marketing efforts. Especially with iOS 15, CAPI is one of the most straightforward solutions, and every one utilizing attributes should install it.
Google Analytics is a free tool, and everyone should have it on their website. With Google Analytics, you can utilize Urchin Traffic Monitor data or UTM data. UTM tracking gives you a clearer insight into your online market performance while Google Analytics allows you to easily add short parameters to the end of a URL, giving you a way to track traffic and conversions on your website, even with customers using a device with iOS 15. This feature allows you to see what campaigns and ads are causing clicking among your customers. With these UTM’s from Google Analytics, you can then use this information for new attributes, which you can use to create personalized marketing ads by utilizing the latest version of Google Analytics while ensuring you use UTM parameters in all of your advertising efforts.
In addition to free tools, several paid tools can be helpful to your attribution efforts. If you are willing to invest in monthly tools to get the most out of your marketing efforts, Google Manager 360 is a fit for your business. While the device is costly, it is very comprehensive. Google Manager 360 is essentially a centralized ad service that allows you to track metrics like TV, YouTube, and other channels. Google Manager 360 primarily offers tools for Google products but is similar to UTM’s. You can use this software for a variety of solutions.
Elevar is another good solution for anyone that utilizes a Shopify store. The Elevar team can install CAPI for you and take care of all the attribution channels. You can even have the Elevar team supply you with this data with none of the work. Elevar allows the easy installation of CAPI and the tracking of events, but you can get even more out of your marketing efforts with cutting-edge tools. Hyros software, for example, is costly per month but offers a plethora of tools that you can use to track and utilize attribution.
Hyros software stores all of the data on customers visiting you online on their server. Hyros associates attribution parameters together based on IP addresses and other parameters. The software has a chrome extension that plugs in, so when you are signed into Facebook and looking at your campaign performance in Facebook’s back end, you will have added columns from Hyros. This will show how things are doing and their results from all of those forms of attribution. Before the iOS 15 changes, Facebook would track users for 28 days. Now Facebook only utilizes a seven-day click and a one-day view for attribution using click-thru attribution and view-thru attribution. Hyros will continue their tracking past the date faces FB has done.
If you get an ad and make a purchase, that is click-through attribution. If you get served an ad, see it, don’t click, go to Google search and make that purchase; it will be a view-through conversion. View-thru modifications are usually used for retargeting ads that use cookies, a feature lost in iOS 15 if people do not enable tracking. With the ability to gain attribution info, that leads to conversions being much more complex. iOS 15 tools like Hyros can help manage all the features your marketing effort needs to gain relevant customer information.
Conclusion
It’s going to become increasingly difficult to track and measure the performance of your digital marketing campaigns. Nearly every business will experience this shift, it’s an unfortunate reality that we all face.
The best approach is to go on the offensive and take action. We have the right tools, and the tactics to navigate the transition into iOS 15.
But you’ll need a plan that matches your goals. And you’ll need to change your marketing attribution model in order to properly measure the performance of your social advertising and email marketing efforts.
Good luck out there, Contact Fetch & Funnel if you need professional help!
