Huge Changes Coming to Facebook Ads
TodayInDigital is a daily podcast showcasing the latest in marketing trends and updates. Today, Tod touches on:
Breakdowns, gone. Attribution windows, restricted. Real-time reporting, deleted. These are just a few of the massive changes to the Facebook ad platform coming early next year — and you have Apple to blame for it.
Today, we breakdown the details as digital marketers around the world struggle to make sense of what’s to come.
Below is the transcription from this episode
It’s Wednesday, December 16th, 2020.
Happy stupid toy day.
I’m Tod Maffin from engageQ digital. And here is what you missed, Today in Digital Marketing.
FB and iOS
Pretty soon, people who visit your brand’s web site from Apple devices like iPhones won’t leave behind the same data footprint that they do now. Tracking cookies, conversion events from your pixels… a lot of that will disappear early in the new year, as Apple introduces new privacy features in its operating systems.
And Facebook, whose entire advertising ecosystem is built on top of their pixel, is pissed.
This morning, they lashed out with a series of full-page newspaper ads, saying Apple’s move will be bad for small businesses.
Which, you know, is a little rich coming from Facebook. The platform that will just turn off your ad account for no reason, no appeal, no human review — and doing that to lots of small businesses. But sure, Facebook, you’re the good guys.
To be clear, Apple isn’t actually turning anything off. BUT they will pop up a scary looking dialog box that will read: “Facebook would like permission to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies.” and then there are two buttons: Allow Tracking or Ask App Not to Track
What do YOU think most consumers will pick.
So that’s the news out there for the public. Now, how will this affect YOUR work?
Buckle in, lots to unpack here.
First, Facebook says: expect to see a significant decrease in the number of reported conversions — which makes sense — if buyers aren’t firing the pixel any more. And it’s possible that some of your ads may be paused or could stop delivering to certain devices.
When all this kicks in, Facebook will limit some parts of its platform. For instance, your pixel will only optimize for a maximum of 8 conversion events for each domain. And it’s going to be Facebook deciding which events are most relevant to your business. All other events will be made inactive for campaign optimization and reporting.
Let me say that again. When you create your campaign, you’ll only be able to choose one of the 8 designated conversion events to optimize for.
If you HAVE a campaign with a custom conversion event as your objective, that campaign will be paused.
And it gets worse.
Real-time reporting for iOS visitors will no longer be supported, and their data could be delayed up to 3 days.
Oh, and worse: Kiss your breakdowns goodbye. Yeah, for both app and web conversions, delivery and action breakdowns, like age, gender, region, and placement will not be supported. Facebook didn’t specify this, but I assume they mean only for iOS users. Hopefully, they’re not pulling the whole breakdown system offline. But as you know, stranger things have happened.
Facebook also says they might end up just straight-up shutting off Audience Network. Like the whole thing, since that’s all about ads on third party websites and apps.
Let’s talk attribution windows.
Once Apple’s changes take effect, the attribution window for all new or active ad campaigns will be set at the ad set level, rather than at the account level. And the default for all new or active ad campaigns (other than iOS 14 app install campaigns) will be set at a 7-day click attribution window. Yes, that means some of the others will be gone, specifically: 28-day click-through, 28-day view-through, and 7-day view-through attribution windows won’t be supported for active campaigns.
And all your automated rules will change to a 7-day click attribution window. And that’s all you’ll get. All other attribution windows for automated rules will not be available.
There are other things you’ll likely see — website custom audiences and app activity custom audiences may decrease in size, as more and more people opt-out.
There’s a lot more in their help document, and you’ll find a link to it in the transcript of today’s episode. For your convenience, right below that link, is a link to a company that will deliver gin to your home.
Facebook Does Cameo
Speaking of Facebook, they’ve found a new successful app to rip off. This time — Cameo.
Cameo is an app where celebrities ranging from A-listers to D-listers will record a short little shoutout to your buddy or kid or whatever. Prices on the platform range from $5 to $3000. Cameo takes 25%.
And now Facebook wants a little piece of that action too. So they’re working on something they call Super which is basically the same as Cameo. Apparently, it may contain the ability to host private live streams too, like mini-concerts. Or, according to someone familiar with the feature, you’ll be able to pay to “appear” alongside one of these stars in Zoom.
As of last June, Cameo was fulfilling 2000 video requests every day, on average.
The top earner — this guy:
CLIP
That’s Brian Baumgartner, but you may know him as Kevin from the U.S. version of The Office. He is reportedly on track to make more than a million dollars this year off these clips, making him their top earner.
RIP Periscope
The reports were true, Periscope — Twitter’s live streaming platform — will be shut down by the company in March.
We knew this was probably coming after someone found a hint of it in their app’s code last week.
It’s not a huge deal, really. Twitter has been building its own live streaming tools directly into Twitter these days, and probably working on that functionality in their Stories product called Fleets. Periscope, meanwhile, has been left to grow mold — or, as Twitter called as: “an unsustainable maintenance-mode state.”
Broadcasts you may have done that were shared to Twitter will live on as replays, and all broadcasters will be able to download an archive of their Periscope broadcasts and data before the app is removed.
Reddit Gets Verification
Reddit continues to bulk up its ad platform to become more enticing to buyers like you and me. Today announcing they’ve cut a deal with Oracle to bring independent, third-party verification of Reddit ad views.
It says early numbers show that Reddit’s in-feed ads outperform Oracle’s benchmark for the same placement by up to 17%. That said, “outperforming” is not a metric, and it wasn’t clear exactly WHAT was outperforming — clicks? Reach? Conversions?
Reddit’s Global Head of Marketing Sciences — what a title, said: “Third-party verification is an important part of campaign measurement, and we want to ensure our advertisers have the tools they need to feel confident and satisfied with their investment in Reddit.
If your brand already uses Oracle’s Moat tool, you’ll find your Reddit data on your Moat dashboard now. Those reports will make their way out to other advertisers shortly.
In the coming months, they’ll add verified reporting on video views.
LinkedIn Product Pages
LinkedIn added something that, honestly, I could have sworn was already there. And that’s Product Pages on your company’s profile. Maybe I was thinking of Facebook’s product pages?
Anyway, LinkedIn has announced they’ve added them too. They are, as you’d expect, sub-pages off your main company page, and can showcase more detailed information about what you sell.
A few nice things that Facebook’s product pages don’t have — custom call-to-action buttons, including demo request forms or contact sales forms.
We don’t seem to have it yet on our company page, so it’s probably rolling out still.
Google Rollout Done
Finally, Google announced that the rollout of its big search engine algorithm update is now complete. These do take a couple of weeks to fully get into all the nooks and crannies of their system, so if you haven’t done it yet, maybe now is a good time to check where your brand’s web site appears in the new algo.
And Call History data is in the Google My Business Dashboard on the desktop now.
Okay, talk to you tomorrow.
Credit to Tod Maffin and the Today in Digital Marketing podcast, Produced by engageQ.com.