When running your small business, it’s often hard to navigate your time to adapt to the new advertising changes, let alone keep up with them. So what do you need to know right now?
Here’s what you need to know about the latest changes in data privacy and how to adapt your approach to doing Facebook and Instagram ads.
Apple’s mobile devices
With iOS 14.5, the default on Apple’s mobile devices is now opting out of in-app tracking. What does this mean? It means Facebook is not getting nearly as much data back as before about what’s happening within their app if used on an Apple mobile device. This has two significant implications for businesses advertising on Facebook:
- There’s now less accurate and less reporting in general than there was before.
- Custom, retargeting, and lookalike audiences will likely be significantly smaller.
How this impacts your small business
What this iOS upgrade implies is that your business will have two newly reduced abilities. Firstly, your ability to personalize your Facebook advertising and secondly, your ability to target broader audiences. These changes should alert you to re-think how you would like to spend and optimize your Ads spend.
Despite this, Facebook’s algorithm is already set in motion to improve this hiccup over time. There are already signs that it has changed to adapt to the new data available, and there are new features Facebook has built into its platform to minimize the impact of this change. However, the effect of these changes will vary from case to case as well.
How to adapt to the changes
If these changes heavily impacted you, it’s worth considering the option of scaling back the channel to rebuild over time. Retest your audiences to find good groups and optimize your ad performance. If you’re struggling to do so after the change, it’s essential to test slightly wider audiences than before, given the reduced data resulting from the changes. Start by experimenting with interest-based audiences if you haven’t done so already. Or by expanding the size of these audiences if you have to.
What hasn’t changed is the importance of testing new and different creatives in ads on these platforms. Testing creatives means refreshing your images and using video assets where possible. Depending on your business, you may not have the time to create these, or your creative output has dropped in performance over time. It’s time to switch these out. If this sounds like you, learn more about how you can save time and optimize your performance with trusted and high-performing Creative Services.
Keeping up with Facebook and Instagram policies: In summary
Policies will change on social media platforms from time to time. What’s important is that you continue to test your audiences to optimize your ads performance and continue testing your creative content. Learn more about how you can optimize it all with our marketing AI services.
