Advertising Data Changes are Coming to iOS 14 – is Your Business Ready?

March 10, 2021

Are you prepared for what’s coming to your digital ads? Apple has announced that applications in the App Store will be required to display an opt-in prompt for personalized advertising. This change, slated to start with the beta versions of iOS and iPadOS 14.5, could impact the targeting capabilities of all advertising platforms.

After the update, users will be presented with the choice to opt-in to personalized advertising upon launching an app for the first time, rather than having only the option to opt-out afterwards in the settings. Advertisers are anxious that a large number of users will not opt in to personalized advertising at all, and that having fewer people that are addressable via audience targeting will cause an overall increase in their cost of advertising on various platforms such as Facebook and Google Ads.

The specific change being rolled out by Apple will cause a decrease in performance reporting only for a portion of app or website visitors that use Apple products, so it will not affect reporting for users of other platforms, such as Windows or Android. Therefore, it’s not all doom and gloom – though many outlets are only focusing on those negative possibilities. We wanted to show you how you can prepare for the coming changes, and why an agency like Rearview Advertising is a safe bet in an unsure time like this.

Getting Your Business Ready

There are steps you can take to ensure you’re not blindsided by these changes – and reduce the impact on your ads’ effectiveness. Facebook is among the biggest platforms getting ahead of the changes, and their guide is useful if you already run an ad account with them. We have a few general tips below, though, that will apply across platforms – take a look to see where you stand.

• Ensure your ads keep running.
  • First and foremost – some advertisers will be automatically pausing campaigns that don’t fit within certain new parameters. You may get a notification if a campaign pauses, but for peace of mind you’ll want to check in on campaigns regularly as the changes roll out.
• Monitor ads performance across platforms.
  • Conversions will take a dip if fewer users are being served your ads (or if your ads are being served to users you’re not targeting) – it’s to be expected – watch for this as an indicator of the changes.
• Keep an eye on reporting.
  • In some cases, the number of conversion events that can be tracked are being reduced – that means less events may be recognized as conversions. Reporting will reflect this, and campaign and measurement strategies may need to change as a result.

If you’re overwhelmed with the changes to advertising data collection in iOS 14 though, not to worry – at Rearview Advertising we’re already prepared for what’s on the way, and you can be too. Simply contact us and we can chat about what to watch for, as well as what we can do to help make these changes as smooth as possible for your business.