Prep Your DSP, Social, and Search Campaigns for iOS 14 and Third-Party Cookie Loss

Advertisers and marketers are facing an identity crisis. Major changes to Apple’s iOS 14, coupled with Google’s announcement about the deprecation of third-party cookies, means that we must find new ways to target audiences and measure performance.

While many groups are working towards innovative identity solutions, media planners are wondering what they can do now to adapt to these changes.

Read on to find out how you can prepare your DSP, social, and search campaigns for iOS 14 and the loss of third-party cookies.

DSP Campaigns

1. Try Private Marketplace (PMP) Deals

   PMP deals have proven to be a successful alternative to connect with the right audience. Many publishers offer their first-party data as PMP deals.

2. Expand Your Contextual Targeting

   Contextual targeting has a variety of benefits beyond privacy compliance, such as the ability to safely target sensitive categories like healthcare, real estate, and cannabis.

3. Use Your Own First-Party Data

   Convert offline records, such us e-mail or physical addresses, into custom targetable segments for your digital media executions.

4. Leverage Machine Learning

   Enable machine learning to gather knowledge for your campaigns.

Social Campaigns

Update Your Facebook Account

• For Web Event Tracking
  • Verify your domain in Facebook Business Manager
  • Prioritize a maximum of eight pixel events per domain. You won’t be able to optimize a campaign to events that fall outside this priority list.
• For Mobile Events Tracking
  • Ensure that your app’s privacy details are updated in Apple’s App Store Connect.
  • Update to Facebook SDK 8.1 or above
  • iOS14 campaigns need to be implemented in separate ad accounts—one per app, with a maximum of nine campaigns per app, and five ad sets per campaign of the same optimization type.
  • If you’re using the Facebook SDK & App Events API, plan to configure conversion schema for App Event Optimization, Mobile App Install and Events with Automated App Ads and Value Optimization campaigns.
  • If you’re working with a Mobile Measurement Partner, consult on their SKAN integration and conversion configuration.
  • If you’re using just the App Events API, plan to integrate SKAN API via Events Manager instructions.
  • Review Facebook’s update process.
• For Compliant Attribution and Reporting
  • Adjust your conversion lookback windows following Facebook’s guidelines.
  • Seven day click-through and one day view-through are the new defaults. This could have an impact on results reporting if your sales cycle is typically longer than 7 days, or when comparing to data that was collected under a longer look-back window.
• For Reach and Scale
  • Some audience sizes may also decrease, such as website-based retargeting audiences. Consider broadening your audience definitions if scale becomes an issue, or creating audiences based on in-app engagement (video views, lead form fills, ad clicks, etc.)
  • Facebook also recommends using offline data when possible to move beyond online actions, as well as their Conversion API to ensure data that is trackable can be sent server-to-server.

Prepare for Changes to LinkedIn Ads

Apple’s iOS 14 will have a limited impact on the following (for more detail, check out LinkedIn’s help center article):

• Gradual shifts in delivery across audience networks
• Reduction in matched IDs resulting in smaller target audience sizes
• Possibility of smaller sizes in retargeting audiences
• Possibility of decline in conversions when conversions are reliant on IDFA

Search Campaigns

The impact on Google Products will include:

• Standard SEM: The impact is likely to be minimal, and will potentially see some gains from otherwise de-duped conversions.
• Local Campaigns: There’s no expected gap in reporting store visits, which use location history data from signed-in users that have opted in to sharing location settings.
• YouTube: Audience sizes are likely to decrease. Consider testing other audiences and expanding your usual sets.
• Modeled Conversions: Conversions reported directly in the UI contain aggregate, anonymized data to attribute conversions. They are rooted in machine learning and apply statistical models based off known conversions when signals may otherwise be missing.

Looking for more content on the future of data privacy? Check out this episode of AdTech Unfiltered featuring Facebook’s head of privacy, data policy, and advertising; or this Centro Institute webinar featuring IAB Tech Lab’s senior director of product management.