You may have heard that Apple’s upcoming iOS 14 update will affect how you handle your school’s personalized ads on social media. Permission will be required to update iOS apps to proactively ask users to monitor them on other apps and websites; previously, users could be enabled by default.
Given the prevalence of iOS devices, this policy can affect your school’s ability to reach its full audience on iOS devices, especially if you rely heavily on digital advertising or have a mobile app; for iPhone and iPad.
While we can’t tell you the real impact of this change, which will vary from school to school, we want to help you prepare and set the right expectations despite this policy.
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What This Will Impact
1. Audience Targeting & Conversion Tracking
- This will affect digital targeting and conversion tracking on multiple platforms, including Facebook and third-party digital providers. The targeted audience size may decrease as more people use iOS 14 and tracking is limited. The retargeting audience may also decrease.
2. Location Data
- Changes to location data may be approximate rather than precise. Approximation means that the device will have an overall distance of approximately 10 square miles from your location, which may affect the location of the destination, geographic boundary, etc.
3. Adverting
- Many types of targeting will not work for users who have chosen not to share their Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA). Platforms like Google and Facebook have other definitive variables that they can use to identify devices (email, phone number), but other programming platforms that don’t have that definitive information on the ID graphs are likely to see a decline in their target group.
How does this impact your school?
Since the iOS 14 update applies only to iPhones and iPads, the performance of users of those devices is expected to decrease; however, this is only part of the long-term effect.
Currently, users are no longer added to a device. We have our phones, tablets, home computers, work computers and more. So while these ad platforms can track you on some of your devices, there is a big black hole in your online behavior as you browse your phone.
Even without mobile apps, this change may affect your school if you spend money on digital ads served on iOS devices. If a user does not consent to tracking and receiving personalized ads on any advertising platform, including, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest etc, they will not be able to redirect them to these applications. This means that users of these apps are likely to see less relevant ads.
What You Can Do
For each platform that you advertise on, Digithrive For Schools encourages you to check how your data is being used and understand the changes required for iOS 14. If you rely on Facebook or Instagram ads, as we do, here are some specific changes to be aware of and the actions Facebook recommends that you take:
- Going forward, you will be limited to using eight conversion events per domain for optimization. If you use more than eight events daily, you will need to prioritize the top eight in Facebook Business Manager.
- Domains with pixel events shared by multiple Facebook Business Managers should be verified with the appropriate Business Manager. Verification determines which account has the authority to configure and prioritize the available conversion events for a particular domain.
- Windows assigned for 28-day target click-through, 28-day view-though, and the 7-day view will no longer be supported. The new default will be the 7-day click-through and you can set your attribution window at the notification level, instead of the account level.
Digithrive For Schools understands the value of digital advertising for your school and is committed to supporting you in these ever-changing times.
The iOS 14 update represents a significant shift in the direction of digital privacy as more control is given to users and their data by companies and not governments, a trend that will undoubtedly continue in the future.
If you would like to learn more about the impact of these changes on your business or what you need to do to maintain performance, contact us here