Actions for Companions and Cellular Net Advertisers

Today, January 19th, we’re updating our previous guides to prepare you for the changes caused by Apple’s iOS 14 requirements. We’re introducing new experiences with our advertising tools that will walk you through some of these changes, including some actions that you will be able to take shortly. While Apple hasn’t made it clear to the industry when they’ll enforce their AppTransparencyTracking prompt, we’re taking steps ahead of time to prepare you and reduce disruption to your advertising and integration with Facebook apps.

If you’re using the Ads Insights API, the measurement will change immediately starting today. Please see details below.

RESOURCE CENTER

We’re going to be launching the Resource Center, a dedicated tab in the Ad Manager with a custom checklist of tasks that will guide advertisers through specific actions to make sure your advertising is set up optimally and to prepare for the upcoming impact of iOS 14 requirements.

The Resource Center provides a list of relevant updates that summarize how the iOS 14 requirements may affect your specific ad account. Most tasks and updates are linked to help articles to further assist you with these changes.

EVENT MANAGEMENT

Starting today, advertisers can view all of their events through new tabs in the Event Manager, Pixel / Conversions API, and Aggregate Event Measurement. The Aggregated Event Measurement tab contains information about web events processed with Aggregated Event Measurement. Pixel / Conversions API tab Full data events include all other web events that are not limited by aggregated event measurement. Initially, the Aggregated Event Measurement tab contains events that have been automatically configured for the account domains based on ad activity for accounts.

Advertisers can edit and prioritize the auto-configured events for a specific domain in a new event configuration tool in Events Manager.

Below are previous guidance and additional details for measuring aggregate events and event boundaries.

Aggregated Event Measurement: Facebook will introduce aggregate event measurement to help measure web events from iOS 14 users as soon as Apple needs the ATT prompt. It’s designed to help you measure campaign performance so that it is in line with consumers’ choices about their data.

Event restrictions: You can only use 8 conversion events per domain (i.e. 8 or per domain) for campaign optimization. You don’t need to make any changes to the Pixel or your Conversions API implementation as the event selection is done in the Event Manager.

  • Before immediate enforcement, advertisers can view, edit and prioritize the 8 conversion events for a specific domain.
  • Configuring the 8 conversion events for a domain prior to enforcement has no effect on optimization or reporting
  • At enforcement time, ad sets that have been optimized for an unavailable conversion event will be paused.
  • The 8 conversion events per domain are sorted according to priority. If a user has completed multiple events (i.e., “Add to Cart” and “Buy”), only the higher priority event will be reported.

Actions to be taken now:

Domain verification in Business Manager: We recommend that all advertisers verify their domain using the steps outlined in Facebook Help. However, if a domain contains pixel events owned by multiple business managers or ad accounts, a business manager must review the domain to edit the event configuration.

Note: The domain check must be carried out in the effective top-level domain plus one (eTLD + 1). For example, for www.books.jasper.com, books.jasper.com, and jasper.com, the eTLD + 1 domain is jasper.com.

Schedule 8 conversion events per domain: If you are using more than 8 conversion events per domain for optimization, create an operation action plan with 8 conversion events per domain based on your business priorities. You don’t need to make any changes to the Pixel or Conversions API implementation as the event configuration is done in the Event Manager.

DELIVERY

VALUE OPTIMIZATION (VO)

  • VO changes from the ad manager to the event manager and the value set must be activated
  • If you have previously used VO, value sets are automatically assigned based on historical data and activated in the Event Manager.
  • If you are authorized and rarely use VO or have never used VO, value sets need to be configured manually.
  • You can have a maximum of 8 value sets. Note: When activating value sets, 4 of the 8 events that are allowed for campaign optimization and reporting for a particular domain are automatically used.
  • For best performance, events with value sets enabled should be placed in higher priority slots in the Event Manager.

Actions to be taken now:

DYNAMIC ADS

There are no specific changes to dynamic ads for retargeting. However, it may decrease performance and audience size. We expect minimal impact on you when using dynamic ads to reach large audiences.

Actions to be taken now:

  • Check the product URL domains in the catalog feed and avoid using URLs that redirect users to a different domain.
  • Prepare to use just 1 pixel per catalog to optimize prioritized conversion events for all catalog items.

MEASUREMENT

Ad reporting (Ad Manager, Ad Reporting, Ads Insights API):

The changes listed below will take effect on January 19, 2021. You can find more information in our business help.

  • We’re going to be replacing the account-level attribution window with a new ad-set-level attribution setting that will be accessed during campaign creation, and we will ensure that the conversions we measure are the same that affect campaign optimization, which gives better clarity when analyzing ad performance enables. This setting can also be queried via the Ads Insights API. For more information on two new fields related to attribution settings that can be used, see the latest Ads Insights API blog post: use_unified_attribution_setting and attribution_setting.
  • In order to prepare our advertisers for the upcoming changes resulting from Apple’s enforcement of the AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) prompt on January 19, 2021, we are initially using a 7-day click and a 1-day view mapping setting by default. Due to restrictions on the look-through signal, the mapping setting for newly created campaigns after immediate enforcement is by default used as a 7-day click instead of a 7-day click and a 1-day view.
  • All active campaigns as well as future campaigns will report on the new attribution setting and optimize it. These changes won’t affect how your ads will run, and we’re not changing the Optimization Window for Active Campaigns. However, the new default attribution setting may result in a decrease in the number of reported conversions, especially for advertisers who have currently chosen to report based on longer attribution windows like 28-day click and 1-day view.
  • Until Apple begins enforcing the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) prompt, you can still use the window compare feature to access data for all existing attribution windows (e.g. 28-day click, 28-day view, 7th Days view). Once Apple enforces the ATT prompt, 28-day click, 28-day view, and 7-day viewports will no longer be supported. Historical data for stale attribution windows can only be accessed through the Ads Insights API.
  • Statistical modeling is used for certain attribution windows and / or metrics to account for the lower data availability from iOS 14 users. Communicate in-product notes when modeling a metric.
  • Certain association windows have partial reports and the metrics do not include all events from iOS 14 users. Communicate in-product notes when a metric is partial. This will be initiated in early 2021 after Apple enforces the ATT prompt.
  • Delivery and action crashes are not supported for offsite conversion events.
  • Offsite conversion events are reported based on when the conversions were made, not when the ad impressions were made. As a result, you may notice small fluctuations in cost metrics as the cost per conversion reflects spending over a period of time divided by conversions made over the same period, whereas today cost per conversion is a reflection of spending over time divided by conversions powered by Ad impressions that occurred during the same period.

For automated rules: In early 2021, the settings of the attribution window for existing and newly created automated rules will no longer be supported. A standard 7 day click window for non-iOS conversions and the SKAdNetwork window for iOS conversions are implemented.

Actions to be carried out now Specifying changes in the assignment window (discarding 28-day click, 28-day review and 7-day review windows):

  • Use the Compare Windows feature to see how conversions assigned to ads are compared in different attribution windows. This allows you to better predict the impact of changes to the attribution window on reported conversions.
  • Update any automated rules that currently use a 28-day attribution window to avoid unexpected adjustments to expenses once the new default 7-day click window goes into effect.

DEVELOPER APIs (Marketing API, Ads Insights API, Targeting API)

Please read the latest instructions published here.

For information on the impact of iOS 14 on app-based developers, please see our separate developer blog post here.

For information on planning changes to our Marketing & Ads Insights API, please see our blog post here.

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