Today in Digital Marketing - WEEKEND EDITION: Facebook Ads and iOS14 (with Jon Loomer)

Episode Date: February 6, 2021

On this special weekend edition, Jon Loomer (http://jonloomer.com/) joins me for a deep dive into Apple's forthcoming changes to ad tracking. Learn how YOUR ad campaigns and reporting will change.Jon's "Facebook Ads and iOS14" courseJon's "Beyond the Boost" programJon's "Power Hitter's Club" membership programAbout the Podcast:Enjoying the Show? Rate/Review Us!Join Our Free Slack CommunityMore: Ads / Classifieds • Transcripts • Leave a VoicemailFollow Tod: Twitter • LinkedIn • TikTok • TwitchToday in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin and produced by engageQ digital. Subscribe at https://TodayInDigital.com or wherever you get your podcasts. (Theme music by Mark Blevis. All other music licensed by Source Audio.)Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Well, I don't have to tell you that the Facebook ads platform is, to be charitable, confusing at best. There are few people in our space who I trust to know how that platform's many changes will affect our day-to-day work as digital marketers. And John Loomer is one of them. He's a consultant and trainer. And in this weekend edition, he has joined me to chat more about what will happen with our Facebook and Instagram campaigns once this dreaded iOS 14 ad tracking changes goes in. And I guess we should start with the first of, you know, maybe the biggest change, the elimination of the 28-day attribution window and how that will affect us all. But first, John, what is an attribution window? So an attribution window is how, in this case, Facebook determines a conversion or an ad was responsible for a conversion that occurred. So the default attribution window historically has been anyone who clicked on your ad and then later converted within 28 days, which I think most people don't realize then 28 days,

or they just viewed your ad without clicking and they converted within one day. So there are, I think a lot of advertising, it's funny. I just recorded like a little podcast on this today that goes along with the blog post I wrote on it. But I think a lot of the beginner advertisers and intermediate advertisers, probably clients probably understand this as meaning, oh, someone clicked on my ad and immediately converted, but that's not true. You've got all these other people that are included in those numbers. And then as a result of iOS 14, I think Facebook's not real clear why they came up with seven day click, but

basically a lot of these longer windows, the view through stuff is just going to be less reliable, I think. So they're going with a seven day click only default attribution. You could still do seven day view, still include the one day click one day view, but by default, the numbers in your ads manager will be seven day click. The result of that is your numbers are going to go down. If anything, they'll go down and they could go down a lot, especially for anyone with higher price products, higher commitment products, or on the flip side, if you have a lot of one day viewed through conversions

normally, because you do a lot of remarketing, targeting people on your email list, things like that. And I guess the reason that it's sort of the bigger ticket items that are going to be affected is because the sales cycle is longer. You know, if it's a car that you're advertising on Facebook, you know, which some people do, you're advertising on Facebook, you know, which some people do, you're not going to, you're not going to click on the car and then just buy it that day. It's usually, you know, you've got to talk to the spouse and you've got to talk to the banker and you, you know, and all of that happens, you know, often outside of seven days, but before 28 days. So in those cases, we just won't see those conversions at all.

Well, now the question is going to be, so no, you won't see them in ads manager. The question is going to be, can you say that again? For some reason, we got a doorbell ringing there. No problem. Yeah. The question is going to be, are there other ways that you're using to track these conversions that may still be reliable? There are a lot of unanswered questions about this, honestly. So for example, you would think ads manager,

Facebook analytics will both be impacted the same. I have no idea. I haven't seen Facebook respond to that. The thing about Facebook analytics is it includes organic and paid. They include different types of attribution within it as well. Maybe that will help you sort out some of these numbers. Google Analytics, not clear if it'll be impacted at all. Have we heard anything from Google on how they're going to change relation to this?

I read something about Google Apps in general not being impacted. What? I'm not sure why. It's not clear. I'm no expert on Google, but that's what I saw, which doesn't make a ton of sense to me. I'm not sure why it's different. So potentially Google Analytics, if you're used to Google Analytics matching up with Facebook Analytics in a certain way, like maybe it's 80% or whatever, you can kind of carry that forward.

And then, you know, UTM parameters, things like that. But again, it's just not clear across the board what is going to be impacted, what's not. Because maybe UTM stopped working. I don't know. So, but the point is first of all, have an understanding of how your ads generally affect your results in general. So hopefully there's some sort of pattern there like, Oh, I spend $10,000 a month in ads that results in this many conversions. And it's this percentage of my

overall conversions so if like your overall conversions are not changing your ads are probably in range of not changing as well little things like that just to prepare and be ready because it's going to be hard to track this stuff i can't imagine that there wouldn't be a way to track this using google analytics past the seven day window, you know, using, as you mentioned, UTM codes so that at least somewhere we've got that data. But, you know, like you say, I mean, we really don't know. And none of these companies, Facebook especially, are particularly good at transparent disclosure about their forthcoming sort of implementations of various technologies. But one thing just to kind of to sort of wrap up on attribution windows, I guess we could safely say that if what you're selling in a Facebook ad campaign is something where people make the purchase decision within

seven days, so downloading an ebook, registering for a program like your Power Hitters Club, which we'll talk about in a moment. Theoretically, that shouldn't affect us at all, right? If the sales happens within seven days. Within seven days and assuming that these are cold audiences, people who aren't hearing from you in other ways, because you will be able to use that one day view uh attribution window it sounds like it won't be as dependable and it's not going to be the default so so yeah it goes both both sides of this if you do a lot of the remarketing to these hot hot audiences they might be on your site already and they saw your ad those may not be counted the way they were before and it's it's so frustrating not knowing one way or the other,

you know because I think a lot of people have got some fairly basic funnel set up, even two stage funnels where, where top is kind of interest. And then the second stage is just constant remarketing. Just, you know, there there's just always a, you know, 72 hours on my website remarketing audience that is just always refreshing and always turning over. And we just don't really know how those will be affected. I know that's the problem. We see a lot of people talking about this like, this is the end of Facebook advertising as we know it. Who knows? It's really hard to say.

A portion of this certainly is like how much of your audience is iOS in the first place. If none of your audience is iOS, it doesn't mean you won't be impacted because Facebook is making general changes across the board, like with attribution. So you'll still see some changes, but the biggest changes will be those with a heavy iOS audience. Is it true that if someone with an iOS device purchases not through an app or through the Facebook apps e-commerce system, but rather just uses Safari to go onto a website and buy it

at a regular Shopify store, are those affected by this or is this just strictly app only? No. So this is the way I understand. I always have to preface this with, this is the way i understand i always have to preface this with this is the way i understand it there are two sides of this right so you've got the app side of it where okay someone has used the the fan the facebook family of apps but also maybe you're promoting your own app and they need to opt in to sharing data in all those cases, not only the Facebook family, but also your app if you're promoting your app. How they behave there is going to impact the results and whether the data is shared, whether it's aggregated data that Facebook ends up getting, etc. However, you've also got the aggregated event measurement side of this which is web based it's mobile web based so if they if someone indicates that they're not going to allow tracking when they

open their facebook family of apps um that will impact when then they go mobile or mobile web as well there. So, so yeah, this is not just the app side of it. It includes mobile web as well. I did not realize that. I thought it was just strictly inside apps. So, so does that mean that Safari is just going to be as one of the many, many e-commerce enabled apps? So like when this all launches, I guess maybe safari will pop up a note that's saying do you want to track stuff in safari uh maybe but i don't know if that necessarily matters like the way i understand this again uh even if you use chrome

instead of safari i don't think that matters yeah it's a matter of you're going from Facebook to the mobile web. Whether or not you allow Facebook to do that tracking, you determine when you open the Facebook app. Oh, I see. I see. So it's the chain going from the Facebook app and then whatever permissions you do or do not have on that app carries over into. Yeah, I got it. I got it. And I guess this is partly why uh mark zuckerberg has been screaming about audience network being so heavily impacted because most of audience networks audience are those you know crappy little banner ads at the bottom of free games yeah well i mean the mobile app side of this will absolutely be impacted. So anyone who's got an iOS app in the Apple app store,

there's lots of restrictions on campaign ad set, optimization, everything for that as well. And just looks like the reporting you're going to get is going to be far less dependable. Because again, we're only looking at iOS at that point when you're trying to promote an iOS app. There's a lot of guesses about what's going to happen, but that seems to be where it's going to be impacted the most. The date that I have heard, the closest date that I've heard from Apple has been the phrase early spring, which to my measurements would be somewhere between mid-March to mid-April.

Do you have any? I haven't heard that. Here's to make it even more confusing. I have heard, I have done searches on this and people reporting that they had started seeing a prompt already, which was news to me when i saw it and now this was just over the last few days uh so i don't i don't know yeah this this is like the most confusing damn thing ever like there's so much documentation out now thank thank

thank you facebook so that's helpful except uh there are times where it's like i think i believe i understand it this one way but there's something else that facebook said that is completely contradictory but it's also clear that facebook doesn't even completely know what's going to happen until i have because they because they are relying on apple and the way some of this stuff is rolling out so when is when is it going to hit to me the biggest question is when is this prompt going to hit facebook apps as i don't know if it's going to happen at once or not uh but when is it going to hit facebook apps yeah and i would probably i was hoping soon i i'm gonna say i hope soon but yeah let's just get it over with. Yeah. Yeah, we're ready.

So attribution windows, big change. Audience networks, big change. Reporting, we don't know for sure, but probably big change. Certainly huge change if you are trying to market an iOS app. Let's talk about the optimization events limitation. So this is a Facebook restriction, as I understand it. Is that right? Right. So they are going to limit you

to eight different pixel events, which includes custom conversions that you can optimize for. To make it more confusing, if you optimize for value, so value optimization, that takes up four of those eight. What?

Yes. Well, wait a minute. Hang on. Hang on. So when you say optimize for value, can you explain what you mean by that? So not everyone qualifies for value optimization in the first place.

So like an e-com business, you need to, now the rules have changed on value optimization. So off the top of my head, I can't even tell you what... But I believe there's a certain number of purchases that you need to send during the week, but also a certain number of unique values that you need to send over a week to qualify for value optimization. So at that point your your optimization is not just for a purchase or a conversion it's for a high value purchase so if you use that if that's one of your eight that automatically takes up four why i don't know it doesn't even make any sense i don't know. It doesn't even make any sense. I don't know. So, but yeah, so now you've got these eight events.

But those could be like add to cart, payment info, checkup. I mean, eight's a lot outside of the fourth line, isn't it? It is, unless you're going to optimize for something that's not a standard event. So like a custom conversion, if you want to optimize for a purchase of a specific product and that takes up, and then that start, that starts getting a little dicey, right? And especially if you do the value as well, but, but here's the deal. You've got to prioritize and rank those events in order one through eight. And the reason

for that, if this is some, so this is again on the mobile website, if somebody opted out, then that's when aggregated event measurement comes into play. So what happens then is they come to your website. They go to a landing page. That's a view content event. They add the cart. There's add cart event. They purchase. Those three events happened.

Facebook's only going to report the highest ranking event of those three. What would qualify as a high rank so you you order it so by default it's going to be purchase first add to cart view content etc what you know however is you're going to you're going to order it and if in in a visit they perform three different events only the highest ranking is going to be going to show up in your, your numbers, which is another reason why your numbers can be down. So, so it'll capture the data,

but Facebook just won't show it to us. Facebook won't get it. Oh, it won't even capture it. It's so, it's so bizarre. It's so technical. Yeah. It's technical and weird.

Yeah. So I'm not, I'm not a Facebook developer, but yeah, that's the way a facebook developer yeah but yeah that's the way i understand again that's what i understand let's talk about your course john because you know one of the things that has been so helpful uh here at our agency has been a membership in your power haters club facebook often tries to try to help people with with this stuff i mean i know for the last what has it been like it feels like a now. Every time you go to ads manager, there's that big block and iOS, everything's going to hell

and you have to click X every time. But it's not really that helpful and it's awfully technical. One of the things that's great about the work that you do, I find is it is broken down into fairly easy things and case studies. You know, it's like, if this is the kind of stuff you do, here's how it'll apply and so on.

So can you tell us a bit about sort of briefly what the course is? And then I want to talk about Power Hitters Club as well. and case studies. You know, it's like, if this is the kind of stuff you do, here's how it'll apply and so on. So can you tell us a bit about sort of briefly what the course is? And then I want to talk about Power Hitters Club as well. Sure. So the way I've been creating courses, especially over the last year, is in a video series format where it's blocks. Okay, let's tackle one topic at a time,

explain this thing. Then I'll walk you through a screen, screen share to show you how it's done kind of situation. So show you how, how you can do it too. But also some background and like who it applies to and, and different things to consider, like how, how this is going to impact you and things like that. So the idea of the course,

and there could be a ton of videos in this one when I'm all done with it, um, is to fully help you understand what this is, how it's going to impact you, how can you prepare if it hasn't happened yet, which at this moment it hasn't. And, um, you know, the, the various things you're going to have to do, uh, within ads manager, within events manager guarding, you know, the various things you're going to have to do within ads manager, within events manager, regarding, you know, ranking your events, regarding confirming your domain or verifying your domain, things like that. So, yeah, that course is in prepay right now. And so when is this going to go out when's this going to be published this uh this podcast uh this is going to be um probably a clip today and then it'll be the weekend edition

this saturday there you go so you'll still be able to prepay at this point if you go to johnlimber.com slash facebook dash ads dash ios 14 nice and. Or just go to johnlimmer.com and you'll see stuff about it all over the place. But you can prepay, get $100 off right now until it's ready. That's basically the way we have it set up. And that's the one course, the larger value for people, I think, that are doing Facebook marketing as a constant basis is that much broader package of the power hitters club which which we've been a member of for four years five years i don't know a long time um tell us a bit about about that so power hitters club elite uh includes access to all the training i've ever done uh so last year i did facebook analytics and the Facebook pixel, and we did a beyond the boost course for,

for people trying to get beyond, you know, the, the simple stuff too. But I also do weekly webinars that keeps everyone updated on what's going on, which is especially useful right now with iOS 14. And, and then we have the community as well. So the Facebook group where people can share their own experiences and, and obstacles and get questions answered and a whole bunch of other stuff as well. And emotional support. You know,

I don't think a week goes by when someone doesn't post a, my God, I've been locked out of my Facebook account and there's not a ton anyone can do, but sometimes it's nice to just be on the receiving end of, I wish you well, I've been there, hang on, it'll get fixed. You know, if you're managing, if you're, if you're, you know, working at an agency and you get locked out of your personal account and your business manager account, and you have 30 clients that are responsible. Well, and I don't know if you follow Dennis Hugh, but I mean, he's, he's been in this game for years and trying to do things the right way and spends probably millions in Facebook ads uh someone on his team was just

locked out like it's just like there's no rhyme or reason to who gets locked out and why uh and you don't get any answers like because basically the way he explained it was the person who appeals it so the person responsible for managing his appeal does not get the information from the person who reveals reviews the appeal so they're not able to communicate with you why why you got shut down in the first place to help you get it corrected it doesn't surprise me you know we we've had we've had pages. In fact, ironically, the page for this very podcast has got a big, huge, this page is no longer allowed to advertise. And I've had no less than eight separate conversations with Facebook people over chat.

And they're like, we don't know why it was shut down. It claims to be shut down for multiple account policy violations, but you know, it never was. It's a, it's a boring business podcast. So it's just, it's just part of, you know, Facebook is our John. Thank you for this. I appreciate it. Thank you, John. John Loomer. And you can find his website at John, which is spelled J O N L O O M E R.com. Highly recommended. One of the best in the business. J-O-N-L-O-O-M-E-R dot com.