Are Facebook Ads Dead?
I’m not going to lie, since the iOS14 update rolled out on 26th April 2021, Facebook and Instagram Ad performance has been bumpy, to put it mildly. With only 3% of iOS14 users opting-in to having their data tracked, the data loss is expected to get worse as the year goes on.
Facebook isn’t going down without a fight though.
Last week, four developments were revealed that are giving hope to advertisers that they can adapt and still make a profit advertising on the platform.
1. Relaxing the 72-hour reset period for all ad sets optimising to the top 8 prioritised events in Events Manager
What does this mean?
Currently, every time an advertiser wants to modify the 8 aggregated events, such as replacing one of the events, in their Events Manager, all ads containing that event and all events in the lower priorities are paused for 72 hours to allow Facebook to accurately optimise and report for their campaign. The advertiser then needs to manually un-pause these ad sets once this 72 hour period is over.
Starting from 16th June, this changed. Advertisers will not have their ad sets paused if they are using a certain configured event when the prioritisation is changed in Events Manager. HOWEVER, they will still only be able to make changes every 72 hours.
2. Expanding the use of conversion modelling to include it in Facebook’s 7- day click default attribution setting
You may have noticed some small numbers appearing against data in your Ads Manager since the iOS14 roll out began. This is ‘conversion modelling’ where Facebook uses the data they have available and AI algorithms to predict when a purchase has been made. Currently this is only available on the 1-Day Click attribution, which is not the default setting for ad accounts.
The default setting is 7 Day Click. The conversion modelling for this setting will begin to roll out on 30th June 2021. This should result in an increase in how many sales appear in Ads Manager.
3. Providing additional flexibility for Website Conversion campaigns, allowing optimisation beyond the top 8 prioritised events in Events Manager.
This has a huge impact for advertisers that have a check out on a third party provider. Up until now, they have had to optimise for ‘Clicks’ rather than conversions and this can have a huge impact on the results of campaigns.
4. Shopify’s one-click checkout will become available to all merchants selling on Facebook and Google—even if they don’t use Shopify
Shop Pay is the Shopify one-click checkout and ‘the highest-converting checkout on the Internet’. Facebook and Google signing up to a partnership with Shopify enables merchants to complete transactions, even if they don’t have a store hosted on Shopify. This has a huge impact on Facebook advertising. It means merchants can keep transactions on the Facebook/ Instagram platform and therefore the valuable purchase data! The purchase data that is being lost when people opt out due to the iOS14 update.
This is great news for advertisers as they can then rebuild their lookalike audiences based on who has bought from them in the past and also retarget buyers who may have abandoned cart within the platform.
The ad ecosystem will continue to shift. With Google announcing a similar update to iOS14 for Android users, Google no longer using Cookies from 2022 and iOS15 limiting email tracking in the future, data privacy is the new normal and advertisers need to be smart on how they weather these changes to continue to serve their customers.
Conclusion
Not sure if you’re ready to start advertising on Facebook? Check out my checklist here.
If you’re finding this overwhelming, follow me on Instagram as I keep you updated.
I also offer consultations on Facebook advertising. If your Facebook Ads have you concerned, check out if my consultations are what you need to get your confidence back and a strategy in place. Learn from me.
