Since the update announcement business owners and marketers have been trying to figure out how this update will impact advertising online.

Already these are the some of the top searches related to the update:

• How Apple’s iOS 14 release may affect your ads?
• How does iOS 14 affect Facebook ads?
• Does iOS 14 Kill facebook ads?
• Will iOS affect Google ads?
• What iOS 14 means for advertisers? 

The answer isn’t fully clear yet, as the details are still incomplete. This update was expected to roll-out on April 15, 2021, but now in May all the expected changes haven’t happened. According to the latest news, only 4% of iOS users in the USA are letting apps track them.

In this blog, we’ve curated important information to help you to be prepared for the changes:
 

What is Apple’s New ATT Framework?

ATT is meant to “give users more transparency and control, empowering people with the tools and knowledge to protect their personal information.” (Apple Newsroom). In simple words, it includes the ability to stop apps from tracking your activity for ad targeting purposes.

Is this a digital marketing game changer?

YES, here’s why:
 

• It gives the users an option to opt-in or out of being tracked across apps. On mobile, it restricts access to IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers) and cross-app tracking.
  
   
• For websites, it introduces PCM (Private Click Measurement) and limits user identification across websites.
  
   
• If a user opts-out, apps and websites won’t be able to communicate with each other about what users are doing on the apps or websites after the user has clicked on an ad.

If you are a digital marketer or a business owner, be prepared to experiment, also to adjust your strategies and ways of reporting.

Strategy 

Move towards more contextual advertising. By this we mean instead of targeting specific user demographics in the ad platforms, you can look for places (blogs, sites, etc.) where you know your customers spend time and that make sense for your brand. Create more placements targeted ads here.

Reporting 

With this change there will likely be less granular data available (the data will pretty much only be available on a campaign level), and there will be a delay of up to 3 days for the data. This means that optimisation will need to be delayed, and you won’t be able to report on certain metrics, like ROAS (Return On Ad Spend), in the same way you currently are. 

The ad platforms will have fewer data points to optimise on, but the data they have within the platform will remain unaffected. This means that you can still work off of impressions, interactions, views, clicks and other metrics that happen in the same app.  

 

Tracking 

Be prepared for opt-in rates to be low. 

There are some early promising numbers that Appsflyer has reported, but the expected opt-in rate is closer to 10-20%. 

If we look closer at this data and how the different app categories perform, we see utilities, non-gaming and shopping apps have the highest opt-ins, whilst gaming is near the bottom. A fact to keep in mind for gaming businesses. 

Since data privacy impacts marketing, it is important for businesses to fully understand and prepare for the upcoming big changes. If you have any questions, please reach out to our team of marketing strategy experts at Mo Works today!