Facebook IOS 14 Update - What's Working Now

Welcome to Everybody new. My name is Aaron Pearson. I'm one of the co-founders here at BitBranding.

We've been helping frustrated store owners just like you since 2015 become impactful store owners through tutorials, tactics and strategies. We would truly appreciate it if you would continue to support this channel by hitting that subscribe button and turning on the notifications so you don't miss out on any of our content we put out every single week.

What Is IOS 14.5?

All right, so before we jump into the IOS 14.5,  what is working, I want to talk about what it is. 

So real quickly in 10 seconds, the IOS 14.5 is an update from Apple. They announced way back in 2019/2020 and said that they were going to give more privacy over to the user. So what happens is we all got a notification on our phone, if you've updated yet, that said I will allow tracking or not allow tracking on your iOS device which is your iPhone, your iPad, anything Apple related. And what it does is it says, hey, I want Facebook to track what I'm doing off of Facebook. What this is ultimately going to do is allow you to have personalized ads or not have personalized ads. So go check that out. What it means is that there's less data for Facebook to make actionable decisions for you online. So you may get random ads from people trying to sell you snake boots all the way to trying to sell you a treadmill. It does not matter what it is. They don't have enough data yet. So you may have some funky ads going on if you don't opt in. 

Use. Video. Ads.

So number one is something that we've been a proponent of since the very, very beginning of our company that still works today and is still a very actionable way for you to continue to grow your business, no matter if it's a product based or service based, it still works. And that is video ads. 

The reason that video ads still work is because it's videos that are on Facebook. Facebook still has that data. You've never had to wonder whether or not somebody actually watched your video because Facebook has always had the ability for you to retarget people based off percentage. For those of you who have those higher ticket items or you have videos, you can actually run video ads, test those to new people, and then people can watch the video and you can retarget them that way. 

Super easy, super easy to implement, and it gives you a better advantage. Facebook's always wanted more video anyway. And now that you can create more video and actually target people, you haven't been doing video as a business, It's going to set you up for success because you get more data. It's actually the way that we've continued to create audiences for ourselves and our company is by creating more content and doing video views campaigns to get more people to watch them and then remarket back to those people so you can use them for your product based businesses as well. 

Open Your Targeting

Number two is opening up your targeting. So the more that you constrain your targeting, which we talked about in another video, the less data that Facebook has. Even more so now, think of it as like a filter that continues to get clogged up if you continue to constrain or squeeze out the least amount of data as possible, Facebook's not going to have the confidence to learn, which means that you are ultimately going to pay more per ad or it just won't spend your money because the confidence is too low. 

Let us show you what we mean when we’re talking about broad retargeting or our broad marketing in general. What we mean by opening this up is you need to set up a campaign based off of age, gender and location and then let your creative do the work. It could be on video ad, it could be something else, but here is what we mean. 

So your campaign, set it up just as you were before, but the ad set level, open it up to your audience. If you know your audience’s age range, put that in there. If you don't, do 18+, just give Facebook as much data as possible because it needs that data right now. It's eventually going to learn and eventually get smart again. Right now, let's just give it as much information as possible. This is literally somebody who got knocked down. We're just trying to help them get back up and get back on their feet. So give more data to Facebook and it's going to get up on its feet faster, which means you're going to have better ad results.

Depending on when you're watching this video, most people haven't even opted into the iOS update and they haven't opted out of tracking yet. So you may not see a ton of results or a ton of changes yet, but more than likely you are, especially if you continue to constrain your targeting. 

So go into your ad set level, open it up. 

You can see here we have one campaign, one ad set, one ad that's very, very purposeful because it gives more Facebook data to make decisions. Again, as you can see, we have 18+, this target audience is women, and that's pretty much it. We have manual placements, but honestly, we can even do all placements. Doesn't matter. We want to get Facebook as much data as possible. 

The only other thing that we would tell you as a side note or a side tip, make sure that1 day click is on because most purchases are going to happen within a one day window and you need to know how much you spend one day and make the same day as well. 

Don’t overcomplicate things here. Don’t narrow by interest. Trust Facebook and give it as much data as possible. I know there was a really quick overview of what's going on for the targeting, but just leave it open and you're just going to have to trust it. And if you don't trust it yet, eventually, whenever those iOS updates do go through and people opt out, you're going to have to force yourself to something like that or move somewhere else. So what I would tell you is to open up your targeting. 

Stick around to the end of this blog. We’re going to be sharing with you the number one reason you should not be freaking out about this update. It's not all doom and gloom. It's not all bad. Actually, all it is, is a shift and it's a shift that's already been happening. So stick around to the end and we’re going to share with you why you don't need to be freaking out. You can take a breath of relief. 

Use Creative

So number three is creative, and if you've watched any of our videos, you know that it is extremely important. 

The best way for you to continue to win on Facebook is through great creative. Facebook and Instagram have always and will always prioritize great creative over not so good creative. When you are thinking about creating content, think about your audience and your user on the other end of the screen first. If you do that, you're going to be a lot more successful. 

So one way to test creative and one way to look at this is to jump into ads manager and set up dynamic creative ads. We did create a video on dynamic creative ads that you should go and check out as well. This is how to set up those campaigns. You can find that video here. We're not going to do that in this video, so make sure to watch that video. 

It's super simple. Dynamic creative, allows you to put in 10 different images or videos, 5 different headlines and 5 different descriptions. What that allows you to do is Facebook gets more data. So the theme of this blog is to give Facebook more data, create great content, and be successful at Facebook. That's really all it is. 

So if you scroll through here, you can see we have multiple images, multiple videos, multiple headlines. That's because we want to get Facebook as much data as possible. And when you do that, you have a higher chance of winning. That's all it comes down to is, hey, can I put more favoritism towards my campaign and my ads and give Facebook the data over somebody else? That's it. You're just competing. It's an auction. How can I win the auction over somebody else? 

The Two Most Important Numbers

All right. So this is the information that you really wanted to know about. This actually has nothing to do with Facebook but has everything to do with growing your business. 

You need to focus on two numbers and two numbers only when you jump into Facebook. 

So let us show you exactly what we’re talking about. When you go to Facebook, you can scroll over and see the data In the last seven days for this particular campaign, they spent $1600, almost $1700. That doesn't matter. Even this website conversion number where it says they made two times their money does not matter. 

You need to know how much you spend on Facebook and how much you made on your Shopify store, your Comment Sold store, your WordPress, whatever it is, you need to know how much you spent and how much you made. Facebook's effectiveness has not dropped. What has dropped is the data inside of it. And in previous videos, we've talked about this in more depth. 

But I want to explain to you really quickly, Facebook is still reaching the same amount of people. It wasn't the iOS update that just said, oh, stop showing ads to people. You're still going to get ads showing to people, but what isn't as effective is the data inside of here. You can see here when we hover over this it says these results may not include convergence from people who have opted out of iOS 14. 

So she had 47 purchases here. She probably had more than that. We don't care. We just want Facebook to show it to the same people we've always been showing it to and look and check the one number that matters the most. How much have you actually made? And if you have an ads team or if you have a marketing team or whatever else and they're still showing you data inside of Facebook instead of how much money you made on your store, you should probably look at checking out somebody else because these numbers are not going to be accurate. The numbers inside of Shopify or Comment Sold or whatever you use are going to be accurate. 

So just take a breath. Just think about that for a second. It does not matter what's inside of Facebook. Facebook is only a tool to drive traffic. If you spend the same amount of money and you make the same amount of sales, which is likely to happen, then you don't need to worry so much about the data in Facebook. There are certain numbers and metrics to look at, we talked about those in another video, but it doesn't matter because all you're looking at is how much you spent and how much you make. 

All right, guys, thanks so much for reading. If you would like to watch our “How To” video on this subject, you can watch it here . We want to hear from you. Drop a comment in the video. What is your biggest AHA moment about the iOS 14 update? And while you’re there, make sure to subscribe to the YouTube Channel and hit that bell so that you don’t miss out on any of the videos that we put out. Also hit that like button for this How To video because that will tell YouTube that we are pretty cool, which we believe that we are and hopefully you think so too. And this will help you see our videos more and also share this video to more people, which helps our channel grow and helps us create better content for you guys. All right, so that's all we have for this blog. We'll see you guys next time.