Facebook Advertising Archives - Vertex Marketing Agency

CBO vs ABO (which to use) Facebook Ads 2021

Sydney Switzer — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 18:52:22 +0000

When creating a new campaign, you might have seen this setting before:

If so, you may be wondering: What does it all mean? Which one is better? Why is the sky blue? WHO AM I? AHHH?!?!

Woah! It’s okay! We’ve got the answers (most answers anyways)! After reading this article, you’ll understand everything in the directory below. Feel free to skip to any section.

Directory:

We know this is a critical concern many people have and continue to ask us about, so you can always send this article to anyone in need!

If you’d rather follow our video, ABO vs CBO (which budget optimization to use) Facebook Ads 2021, we’ve linked it below!

What’s the Main Difference Between CBO and ABO?

In short, CBO, or Campaign Budget Optimization is a budget that is optimized by Facebook at the campaign level, and distributed across your ad sets and ads based on performance. ABO or ad set budget optimization is when the budget is set at the ad set level.

What is Campaign Budget Optimization?

CBO, or Campaign Budget Optimization is a budget that is optimized by Facebook on a campaign level.

When and Why Did Facebook Start Using CBO?

Facebook’s AI is constantly improving and learning. The company wants it’s advertisers to do well with their ads and get good results, since the advertisers are the real customers and the users are really just the the product.

In light of this, Facebook has given its advertisers a more simple way to manage their advertising budget and made the transition into setting CBO as the default budget distribution setting with the intention to produce better results for the advertiser. how it works and when to use it.

In February 2020, it became the default setting, meaning any new campaigns you create would have been automatically set to CBO, but you could easily change them to ABO.

How Does Facebook Use CBO?

Using CBO, Facebook distributes your budget based on each ad set’s performance. (the better performing ad sets get more funds). This means that the ad sets may not get equal amounts of money depending on their performance. This is because Facebook invests in the ads that it deems most likely to achieve the result you’re looking for.

How does Facebook measure ad performance? Simple! Well… as simple as AI is. You heard that right! Artificial intelligence is more present than we thought. Facebook uses AI to collect data on conversions by monitoring different:

Audiences
Creatives
Ad copies and titles
Trends
Geographic locations
Interests
Keywords

And more! This data has been collected from Facebook ads throughout the years to create a knowledge base for the algorithm, which it can use to estimate ad success.

Despite this knowledge, it still needs some data from your own ads, since every ad is different. That’s why it will invest more money in better performing ads.

With ABO, on the other hand, it is up to you to decide how much money goes into each ad set.

What is Ad Budget Optimization?

ABO, or Ad Budget Optimization was the only setting before Facebook came out with CBO. It is a setting that allows you to set the budget at the ad set level. Instead of managing campaign budgets and letting Facebook invest in ad sets with the money, you are managing funds for the ad sets instead!

What is the Difference Between Managing My Budget Using CBO vs ABO?

So if you think about driving a car, using CBO is like driving an automatic car, and using ABO is like driving a manual; a little bit of a hassle to learn, but easier to break when driving in snow! So, essentially you have more control.

CBO uses artificial intelligence to invest in the best audiences AND ads, while ABO uses AI to choose which audience to invest in.

When you are using a CBO model, you are managing your budget on a campaign level, meaning you decide how much money goes into each campaign. Facebook will then take care of managing funds between ad sets, and ads.

With an ABO model, you would still need to think about how much you want to spend on the overall campaign, but the budget is ultimately set at the ad set level.

A CBO budget adjusts dynamically over your audiences and ads (changes overtime) whereas an ABO budget stays static (does not change) unless you manually adjust it.

CBO will machine pick how much budget will go into which audience. However you are still targeting your audiences the same way in CBO & ABO. But if you have 3 audiences within a campaign, CBO will decide that A and B will get more than C.

Pros and Cons of Turning CBO On:

Pros

Lower cost per conversion when used properly!

Facebook is able to prevent overlap of our audiences between ad sets since the budget is centralized to one campaign.

You can avoid wearing the audience down because the budget adjusts dynamically between warm audiences and cold audiences

Less manual work.

Cons

Less control over your budget.

When Do I Turn On CBO?

When you have more data from the pixel for the AI to work with:

When you have a smaller budget: Facebook will optimize what little budget you have if you aren’t supplying enough to fund two campaigns.

When you have less experience with Facebook ads: you can rely on AI until you get a better understanding of the system.

When you are scaling: If you increase the budget, Facebook already knows which ad sets are performing well and will spend wisely, so you won’t have to change each individual ad set budget.

When Do I Use an ABO Campaign?

When you have a new ad account with very little data on the pixel: if the algorithm doesn’t have much to work with, it might not know what to do. If you’re starting off with a fresh ad account, try collecting enough data to guide the AI once you start using CBO.
When you are testing new creatives, audiences or copy: it’s good to keep test budgets the same, so that you know exactly how much better other ads are doing with the same amount of funds.
When your audiences are very different in size: Facebook will generally favor a larger audience size, without necessarily knowing what kind of audience you are looking for. If you are hosting a location-specific, niche event that has a very small but very warm audience, you might know who would be best to reach instead of Facebook. CBO will try to get the most reach, so if you really want to reach a smaller audience, you can control how many funds go into them vs your larger target groups.

How to Set Your Budget to CBO:

1. In your ads manager, click on Create a new campaign.

2. Scroll down to find the Campaign Budget Optimization setting. If you turn this option on, you’ll see options appear, where you can set your budget. If you turn it off, you’ll need to set your budget on an ad set level instead.

Click on the Campaigns section and edit your budget in the Budget column.

If you turn CBO on, some options will appear. Keep your bid strategy to the default, which is lowest cost. We tend to see the best results with this.

Enter in your campaign budget.

Our Proposed Strategy: How to Test with ABO, then Scale with CBO

There is no right or wrong way of running Facebook ads. However testing new ads is always a confusing topic. Here’s how you can use ABO to test, then use CBO to scale your best performing campaigns.

For each angle (method in which you want to present your product as the solution) you want to advertise for, create a different campaign. This way, you can experiment with :

Different topics (angles) in each campaign
different creatives in each ad set
different texts and titles in each ad

For these testing campaigns, we recommend you start by using ABO, since it’s good for testing. This will also let Facebook collect data on the ads performances so that it can know where to invest.

Try making sure you keep a smaller budget for this strategy, since you are only running tests.

To up your ad game, try out some of our creatives in our article on 5 Facebook ad Creatives That Convert.

After getting enough data from Facebook, try to figure out which campaign is getting the best CPA (cost per action).
Create a “golden campaign” with the best performing ads and be sure to target a large audience. We suggest keeping the targeting as broad as possible. Turn on CBO.
If your golden campaign is working well, try scaling up by increasing the budget by 5%-10% every 48 hours

DO: make sure you are doing this with a larger audience to avoid oversaturation. Investing too much money in a small audience may spam them, scare them away or worse: get your ad flagged!

DON’T: overspend! Make sure the reach you are getting does not surpass your capacity to serve new customers. If you invest in too many ads, you may get too many customers at once! Yes, it is possible to have too much of a good thing, especially if you are a service based business, or you have a limited inventory.

Summary

At the end of the day, there is no one-size-fits-all method, which might be why Facebook backtracked on their plans to make campaign budget optimization the only option.

As with any intelligence, AI has room to grow out of infancy. And who knows? We may find ourselves in a world where we have robot best friends and drone flown pizza delivery. Why not leave marketing up to the computer!

We advise you to take it slow and use both setups to experiment which drives better results. Make sure YOUR marketing strategy works for YOUR business.

If you’re not quite sure how to get there, don’t be afraid to book a free strategy session with us, where we can help you come up with a plan!

As always, feel free to leave any comments or questions on this page, so that I can leave no stone unturned!

About The Author:

Sydney Switser

Facebook ad specialist

Sydney Switzer is a Facebook ads specialist who is always on the lookout for new, creative ways to catch an audience’s attention. She is drawn to the visual aspects of content creation, and will always value creating unique relationships with all her clients and customers.

The post CBO vs ABO (which to use) Facebook Ads 2021 appeared first on Vertex Marketing Agency.

Not Getting Conversions With Facebook Ads? Follow These 5 Steps!

Cedric Potvin — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 13:33:36 +0000

Are you not getting conversions with your Facebook ads? When it comes to Facebook marketing, problems unfortunately can’t be solved by “turning it on and off again”. In this article, we’ll show you five things you can do in order to fix those issues.

As you may have already gone through some of these tricks, feel free to skip to any section you’d like in the directory below.

1. Check notifications in resource center

2. Make sure ads are approved and spending money

3. Try troubleshooting your pixel

4. Test the landing page experience and page speed

5. Experiment with your audience and ads

For all the images of our Facebook ads account and online store, we’ll be using our demo versions instead of real accounts.

If you’d rather a video format, click on the video below!

1. Check Notifications In Resource Center

1. Inside your Facebook Ads Manager, click on the Resource Center tab, next to Campaigns.

This is where Facebook will notify you of any problems with your campaigns. If you are seeing any warnings in this area, it may be why you’re finding it harder to get conversions.

2. Make sure all of the events that you wish to track with the pixel are there.

If you can’t see things like site visits and purchases, you can’t get very far.

Imagine placing a billboard in a desert, without checking if anybody lives there or not. Unfortunately, Camels don’t make good customers.

If you see the warning in the image above, it’s because your events aren’t set up. Simply follow my blog post about how to set up Facebook pixel events to learn how to add all eight conversion events, and come back after!

1. Make sure that your domain is verified. This helps Facebook confirm that you are the owner of your business, but it also helps with tracking.

Learn how to verify your domain via DNS HTML upload, or through meta verification by following our blog post.

2. Make sure your ads are approved and spending

This may seem obvious, but errors can be hidden in plain sight.

1. Navigate to the campaigns tab of your Facebook Ads Manager.

2. Scroll left to find the Amount Spent row. If you aren’t spending any money, Facebook won’t run your ads.

If your campaigns still aren’t working, make sure your ads are approved by Facebook.

1. Navigate to the Ads tab of your Facebook Ads Manager.

2. If you have any ads that were rejected or appear to have alerts, it’s because they aren’t following Facebook’s Advertising Policies.

3. You can either edit your existing advertisement or create a new one.

4. Press the “review and publish” button at the top right of ads manager. This can take anywhere from 10 minutes to 24 hours.

3. Try Toubleshooting your Pixel

Here is how to make sure your pixel is working:

1. In your Ads manager, click on the hamburger in the top left.

2. Click on Events Manager.

1. Make sure you have the right Pixel selected.

2. Click on the Test Events tab.

5. Scroll down to find the box entitled Test Browser Events.

6. Enter your website URL and click on Open Website. This will allow you to test your website by acting as a user. Here, I am using a demo store to show you how it works.

7. Navigate your landing page/website the same way a user would. Click buttons, view products, initiate checkout and even buy a product.

8. You should be able to see a new Pageview and a View Content event in the Test Events tab in your Events Manager. If it’s tracked properly, you should be able to read “processed” in green.

9. Perform any other tests on your website like entering your email as a lead or add to carts.

10. In the Events Manager, select any event to open up more information.

Make sure that the URL in there matches the one you opened when testing your website.

11. If all the necessary events are being sent, this means that your pixel is working properly.

4. Test the Website Experience and Page Speed

Website experience and page speed are not only good to check for the users, but also for how Facebook grades your ad, since they prioritize user experience.

1. Clicking on the hamburger in the top left again, navigate to your Ads manager.

2. Select a Campaign, an Ad set within it, and an Ad within the ad set that you would like to troubleshoot.

3. On your ad, click on edit.

4. Scroll down to find the box marked Website URL.

You should have a URL in it which you can copy and paste into your browser.

5. Make sure the URL leads you to an actual page that is:

Secure. If it isn’t, call your hosting company. If it is, you will see a small lock icon in the URL bar.
Free of errors like typos.
Relevant in the context of the ad (for example: when advertising a specific product, insert the URL that brings the user directly to the product in your shop instead of the home page).

6. Test the page’s speed by using any speed tester like GTmetrix.

This will tell you how fast your page is, and how you can improve it.

5. Experiment With Your Audience And Ads

If all of the technical problems above are ruled out and you still aren’t seeing results, the last thing to look at would be your audience and ads.

This is something that I strongly recommend you don’t jump to immediately if you haven’t gone through the rest of this guide, since recreating a campaign can mean a lot of work.

A solid ad campaign usually starts with this question: What are you really paying for with Facebook ads?

Your money goes to User Attention, like paying more for the biggest billboard in Time Square.

Here is how to get an idea of what is missing from your ads:

Navigate to the Facebook Ad Library, where you can search up your competitors or similar companies to see what kind of ads they’re running. This can give you an idea of what kind of ads you can run yourself.

For ideas, check out our video on Five Facebook Ads that Convert.

2. If the quality of the successful ads is equal to yours, it may be an audience issue.

Make sure it’s made up of people who are interested in your product. Try to put yourself in your ideal customer’s shoes

Make sure your audience is large enough. With new IOS14 measures in place, your audience should have AT LEAST 4 Million people in it.

Try using lookalike audiences based on your previous customers or clients.

Run A/B split tests with different audiences.

3. If you’ve tried everything and you still aren’t getting conversions, ask yourself if you’re ready for Facebook ads. It helps to have all your grounds covered before investing money in campaigns.

Make sure you have:

Enough products to seem established.

A stable and realistic budget that can comfortably allow for campaigning.

A good-looking website that is user optimized.

Trust built with customers (with things like reviews, pictures of products received, ratings, etc.)

Social media profiles with decent followings.

There is no need to give up: If you do feel ready, but you need a little more guidance, we’re here to help! If you have a shoe selling business, chances are, your expertise lies in the field of shoes, and less in marketing. That’s why it can be a great option to have a team like us to help with your advertising!

With the constant evolution of new technologies, it can be very hard to keep up. Get ahead with our Facebook Advertising services and book your free strategy session today!

To Summarize

Campaigns can often be hit or miss, without any indication of why. It can sometimes feel like a stab in the dark, but there are ways to turn on a few lights:

Checking the resource center
Making sure your ads are approved and spending
Troubleshooting your pixel
Testing the Website experience and page speed
Working on your audiences and ads

I hope this article has been helpful. For any questions, comments or fun dad jokes you would like to share, feel free to do so in the comment section on this post. If you have any tips and tricks that you like to use when your ads aren’t getting conversions, we’d love to hear those too!

About The Author:

Cedric Potvin

Facebook ad specialist

As a Facebook ad specialist at Vertex Marketing Agency, Cedric manages a lot of different ad accounts and spends a lot of money on Facebook ads. His goal is to share what he learns with the rest of the population.

The post Not Getting Conversions With Facebook Ads? Follow These 5 Steps! appeared first on Vertex Marketing Agency.

How To Setup Facebook Conversion API On Shopify (All Events)

Cedric Potvin — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 17:27:06 +0000

Like many aspiring business owners and marketers, you may be looking for new tools to help you work smarter instead of harder.

Shopify’s Conversion API will allow you to sync important data between your Shopify and Facebook accounts which you can analyze to better your marketing strategy.

Since the Facebook Pixel has lost its power due to privacy policies, it is less effective. It pulls data from the user’s browser using cookies, unlike the Facebook Conversion API through Shopify, which uses the server.

So what’s the catch? Well, you may find it slightly confusing. That’s why we’re here! In this article, you’ll find a clear guide to downloading this API and using it to your advantage by sending all kinds of events to your Facebook Pixel.

If you would like a more audiovisual step by step guide, we made a video on the topic linked below.

1. Enable Shopify as a Partner

1. Navigate to https://business.facebook.com/

2. In the sidebar to the left of your screen, click on the hamburger (three lines stacked on top of eachother marked as More tools).

3. When opening the hamburger sidebar, click on Events Manager.

4. In your Facebook events manager, open your settings. This is where the magic happens!

5. Scroll down to turn on Advanced Matching.

6. Scroll down to the conversion API and choose a partner. You’ll want to remove any current partners if you have any, choose Shopify and click the finish button.

2. Add the Facebook App in Shopify

You’ll then need to head over to your Shopify store and log in to your dashboard. Then follow these steps:

1. Go to apps and click on shop for apps.

2. Type Facebook into the search bar. You’ll find several results for that query, so look for the Facebook Channel and click add app.

3. Once the page that notifies you of the download appears, scroll down and click add sales channel.

3. Setup the Shopify and Facebook Integration

The next page you will be brought to should look like this.

It’s quite possible that you already had the app downloaded if you recognize the icon and sales channel.

If you’ve made it this far, congrats! You have successfully installed the Facebook app on your Shopify.

Now, we have to set it up; click the start setup button.

1. Hit connect account and verify your Facebook account and password. You’ll then allow Shopify to access everything it needs in order to continue with the setup (by giving permission).

2. Connect your business manager by selecting the desired account.

3. Under Domain Verification, enter your domain and hit make sure it is verified and hit confirm.

Yes, your domain has to be verified: This will ensure that nobody uses your domain and Google service without your permission. You’ll also be able to send emails @yourdomain.com (example).

Google needs you to verify that you are the owner of your buisness before you can sign up for cloud identity.

If it isn’t verified, I made a video on the topic, where you’ll find three different ways you can verify your domain in Business Manager.

4. Connect your Facebook page. In this example, we’re using a demo page.

5. Moving onto the Data Sharing section, it will ask you to choose the level. Select Maximum, since it uses the Conversions API.

This is the purpose of this whole article!

It will allow you to share data directly from your Shopify server to your Facebook server (explained more in depth below).

The Maximum Setting: Explained

At this point, you may be thinking: “Cool! We’re sending events. Wait… what events does it even share? Does it only send purchase events from Shopify to Facebook?”

Up until recently, yes. In an email from their support team, shopify explains that you can now track all six of the standard Pixel events between the platforms as well as through javascript via the browser.

They have yet to update their documentation on the API with this information, which may lead you to confusion.

In our experience with clients, the events were successfully transferred from the browser and the server.

We have, however, noticed some difficulties with integration, so make sure everything is enabled and is sending correctly. Pay attention to any error messages.

Now, on with the rest of the setup…

5. Connect a Facebook Commerce Account. If you don’t have one already, click on the button to create one.

6. Review the Terms and Conditions and accept them…

And finally, DRUMROLL PLEASE,

7. Click on finish setup and give yourself a one person high-five! (We suggest against this practice if you are at an internet cafe, a park, or anywhere in public, as people may think you are crazy).

To summarize

Adding the Conversion API on Shopify is as easy as 1,2,3!

Enable Shopify as a partner.
Add the Facebook app in Shopify
Setup the shopify and Facebook integration

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to add them to the blog. Our team is always happy to help!

About The Author:

Cedric Potvin

Facebook ad specialist

The post How To Setup Facebook Conversion API On Shopify (All Events) appeared first on Vertex Marketing Agency.

Verify Domain On Facebook Business Manager (2021)

Cedric Potvin — Mon, 05 Jul 2021 21:46:00 +0000

Verify Domain On Facebook Business Manager (2021)

Verifying your domain is an important step when creating & setting up your business manager. Facebook tells us that “domain verification establishes which Business Manager account has the authority to configure and prioritize the 8 available conversion events for a given domain.” So, without a verified domain, there could be disruptions in your ability to track data.

So, in this article, I will show you the three different ways you can verify your domain on Facebook!

Would you prefer to consume this content in a video format?

Step 1. Add Your Domain

So the first thing we will do is navigate to business.facebook.com and choose the business manager that is associated with the domain you wish to verify. There should be a few that pop up once you log in, or you can choose it from the drop down on the left hand side.

Once you’re on your business manager homepage. You’re going to want to click on business settings. It should bring you to this page.

Please Note: If, for some reason you see something different when you log into business.facebook.com you’re most likely in business suite (not business manager). You’ll want to scroll all the way down to the page and on the left side, press the “Give Feedback” button and revert back to business manager.

Business suite is a more simplified overview of your business, but doesn’t have all the setting that business manager does!

Once you’re sure you’re in business manager and business settings, scroll down to where it says brand safety, and click on domains.

Add your domain that you want to verify.

Once you’ve added your domain, it’s time to verify your domain to prove to Facebook that indeed, you own that domain. To verify your domain you can use one of the three methods shown below.

Option #1: Verify Your Domain Via DNS

I decided to start by showing you how to verify your domain using this method because this is my preferred method.

The image below represents Facebook’s instructions sharing how to verify your domain via DNS. Please use the TXT record that is given to you by Facebook and not the one below.

So they saying that you need to log in to your domain registrar and visit the DNS records section. So let’s do that!.

P.S in case you’re wondering, I’m using Cloudflare for this demonstration

So Facebook says we need to add this TXT record (as shown in the screenshot) in your DNS configuration.

Hit save. If for some reason you need to answer more values or more questions in order to save your TXT record, let me know in the comment section in this video (youtube), and I can help you if you’re stuck trying to create that TXT record.

But for the majority of cases, it’s just going to be as simple as selecting your type, your name, the TTL, and you can set it to “auto”.

Once your TXT record has been added, Facebook says that you’ll have to wait about 72 hours because that’s how long sometimes it can take your DNS to update.

Now just click the big green “Verify” button. And that’s it!

Option #2: Verify Your Domain Via HTML File Upload

So now let’s talk about verifying your domain via the HTML file upload.

What you need to do is download this file right here:

Now, head over to your website’s file manager and locate the public_html folder and simply upload the file I made you download.

Don’t forget to click the “Verify” button once the file has been uploaded.

Option #3: Verify Your Domain Via Meta-Tag

Now let’s look at the third way of doing it, which is the meta-tag verification.

Facebook is saying that you need to add this meta-tag to the head section in the HTML of your domain homepage.

So this is what we’re going to do! I’m going to go into my demo WordPress store for this one, but if you’re using Shopify the process is the same, all you have to do is locate the head section and then paste the code.

In WordPress, you can easily do so by navigating to appearance and after theme editor, and you’ll want to locate the header file.

So once you lace the theme header file you’ll want to past the meta-tag code Facebook gave you in the section of the file (see image below).

Conclusion

There you have it Three different ways that you can verify your domain with Facebook and business manager.

I strongly recommend that you verify your domain using the DNS verification method. The reason for doing that is the following:

Let’s say you decide to make some changes to your theme or change 5 years from now… Well, you’re always going to have to add that code back in your new theme in order to keep that domain verified.

However, with DNS verification, even if you change your theme it’s still going to be in your DNS records and that’s not really going anywhere unless you actually go in there and remove it. Once it’s set up, you can essentially forget about it and make as many changes as you want to your website without even worrying about domain verification!

About The Author:

Cedric Potvin

Facebook ad specialist

The post Verify Domain On Facebook Business Manager (2021) appeared first on Vertex Marketing Agency.

How To Set Up Facebook Pixel Events For iOS 14 (Aggregated Event Measurement)

Cedric Potvin — Fri, 19 Mar 2021 17:02:47 +0000

Are you getting a warning like this from Facebook?

If Facebook is warning you that some ad sets using this pixel and optimizing for EVENT TYPE will be pause once Apple starts enforcing their iOS 14 policies, you should keep reading this article to learn how to resolve this.

In this article, I will show you exactly what you need to do to make sure none of your ad sets gets paused due to aggregated events when Apple enforces their iOS 14 policies.

If you prefer consuming this content in a video format I’ve also made a video on the subject (see below).

Recognising The Problem

If you’ve found this article then there’s a high chance that you haven’t set up your pixel events and you’re wondering how to do it.

That’s exactly what I’ll cover in this article. For those of you that might be working with an agency or maybe have someone in charge of your ad account internally and you’re wondering if they’ve done it…

Here’s how you’ll know if it has been set up:

1. Go to your ad account, and edit a campaign on the ad set level.

2. Scroll down to where you would pick your “Conversion Event” if you see a warning message appearing underneath, this means that your events hasn’t been set in the aggregated event measurement.

3. In the Resource Center you’ll be able to find the tasks you need to do in order to prepare for iOS 14 changes.

How To Configure Your Pixel Events:

Step-By-Step

Verify Your Domain

If you haven’t verified your domain in business manager yet, it’s really important that you do it. I’ve sat on many private Facebook webinars and they make it clear that it is no longer optional but a must.

Add your domain in Business Manager

Inside Business Manager click on business settings.
Now select Brand Safety, and select Domains.
Click the Add button, and simply enter the domain you wish to verify in the pop-up and click Add Domain.
Once that’s done you’ll need to confirm your domain ownership by adding the TXT record they give you in your DNS configuration (GoDaddy, Hostgator…)

Please Note: It can take up to 72 hours until your DNS configuration changes have spread across your website’s domain servers.

Aggregated Event Measurement

Aggravated Event Measurement is a new feature that Facebook released that allows you to pick up to 8 events your business wants to track with Facebook ads.

To access this new feature, navigate to Events Manager.

Pick your pixel and you’ll see a new tab that appears called Aggregated Event Measurement. Click on it.

Once you’ve clicked on the Aggregated Event Measurement tab you’ll be able to see all the domains that are attached to your business manager.

Choose the one you’d like to set up and click Manage Events.

Now you’ll be able to add the events that you are CURRENTLY sending to Facebook. It’s important to note that if you’re not currently sending purchase events to Facebook, it won’t appear in your options.

Value Optimization: If you decide to enable this feature, Facebook will optimize your ads for those likely to produce a high return on ad spend (ROAS) and bid for your highest value customers. Learn more about Value Optimization.

Once you have all your events configured, click the Submit button and after 72 hours your events should appear in ads manager.

To Summarize

Setting up your Facebook pixel web events for iOS 14 using the new aggregated event measurement is a simple process.

Verify your domain
Configure your events

Where this can get a bit complicated is when you haven’t yet configured your events on your website. If that’s the case, Vertex is here to help and you can learn more about our tracking & optimization services.

About The Author:

Cedric Potvin

Facebook ad specialist

The post How To Set Up Facebook Pixel Events For iOS 14 (Aggregated Event Measurement) appeared first on Vertex Marketing Agency.

Impact Of Apple’s IOS 14 Update On Your Facebook Ads (& Workarounds)

Cedric Potvin — Fri, 19 Mar 2021 00:25:00 +0000

Last year on September 16th, 2020, Apple released IOS14, and with it came an updated privacy policy. For the most part, this update has been a headache for advertisers. Results seem to be dropping off, data reporting is delayed, tracking could be inaccurate, etc.

I’ve done a ton of research on this update. I’ve probably read the majority of the articles that are available online, sat on all of Facebook’s private webinars and I even read Apple’s entire privacy policy to see what this update entails, and what the workarounds could be for us advertisers.

In this article I’ll be covering:

– What is this privacy update?
– How does the IOS14 privacy policy update affect advertisers?
– Why did Apple do this?
– What can you do about it?

If you prefer to consuming this content in a video format, you can watch the video here:

What Is This Update?

Apple’s IOS14 privacy policy update will affect businesses of all sizes. This update was put into place as of January 2021.

This update consists of two main changes.

The first one and most talked about is a pop-up that will appear when a user downloads an app and opens the app for the first time. It will look something like this:

This is essentially what the pop-up will look like and if the user clicks on “Ask App not to Track” the app won’t be able to send data to 3rd party trackers, like the Facebook Pixel.

This means that Facebook will have some difficulties tracking engagement, behaviors, and actions. These are at the core of the advertising platform.

The problem is that the majority of people will most likely click on “Ask App not to Track” because in their mind they’re asking … “Why would I want an app to track me?” and I understand that point of view.

But when a user asks the app not to track them, it just means they will see fewer personalized ads and not fewer ads.

Now, let’s talk about the second biggest change, and if you ask me that’s the one that concerns me the most.

Apple has implemented something called “Cross-Site Tracking Prevention“.

By default, cross-site tracking is prevented. This means that a user would actively have to go in their iPhone’s settings and check it on in order for the site/app to be able to track them.

Again, I don’t think a lot of people will do that.

So to recap, the biggest impact the IOS14 update will have on advertisers is that by default, people using IOS14 will not be sharing any data to 3rd party trackers.

The user will be reminded of this when they open the app for the first time.

At the end of the day what this update does is it blocks you from sending data/information to 3rd parties like Facebook, Google Analytics…

How Is This Affecting Advertisers?

You won’t be able to send data to other 3rd parties (Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel…). Platforms like Facebook rely heavily on the Facebook pixel to track things like conversions.

You might be asking yourself how Apple is able to block all your 3rd party tracking code on your website? To do this, Apple partnered with REALLY GOOD enterprise adblockers to prevent data from being tracked.

So anything that collects data and sends the data to a domain that doesn’t contain “yourdomain.com” is considered a 3rd party domain and there’s a high chance it will block it.

The Ripple Effect

With data tracking prevented, the user will continue to see ads. However these ads will not be personalized.

Personalized allows businesses of all sizes to reach their target audience. Less relevant ads mean fewer results for the advertiser.

Fewer results for the advertiser means they are paying more money for fewer results.

Businesses of all sizes use ads as a source of revenue and lead generation. Margins decrease, prices increase, and the ripple effect continues indefinitely.

Affecting All Types Of Advertisers

Unfortunately, the solution isn’t to switch platforms because this update is affecting any social platform that runs on an Apple device with the IOS14 update.

Expected Changes To Your Facebook Ads

There are 3 main big changes that Facebook announced and I’ve listed them below.

You’ll only have access to 8 events per domain. An event is when a lead submits a form, someone buys your product, adds a product to their cart… Those are all different events, and you can only set up 8 per domain.
Facebook is moving to a 7-day click and 1-day view attribution window. You used to be able to use a 28-day click, 28-day view, and 7-day view attribution windows but now it won’t be supported.
There will be a 2-3 day delay in reporting. You’ll most likely need to wait 2-3 days before making data driven decisions because the metrics won’t be updated instantneously like they used to.

I strongly recommend that you read Facebook’s article “How Apple’s iOS 14 Release May Affect Your Ads and Reporting“.

Why Did Apple Do This?

There’s probably a long list of reasons why Apple did what they did but from my research, there are two main reasons they released this update.

More Money For Apple

I wasn’t really surprised to learn that this update would actually favor Apple’s ability to make money because this update has definitely impacted Apple’s relationship with other social platforms… so it had to be revenue-driven.

Most free apps rely on advertisers to make money. This is why they can be free.

“The Ripple Effect” will comprise an app’s ability to make revenue from advertisers, because we already know that the majority of users will ask the app not to track them when the pop-up appears.

But even free apps have a team running them, and these people need to make money. If they don’t make money from the advertisers, the app owners will either need to pay to use the app, or have in-app purchases.

Every time a user makes an In-App Purchase or actually has to pay for the app, Apple receives a 30% commission.

People Have Been Asking For It

All big tech companies have been receiving a lot of pressure from the media about privacy. There has even been a documentary released on Netflix about this called The Social Dilemma.

The population definitely cares more about privacy and bigtech needs to respond to the demand in some way.

Most people asking for more privacy don’t understand the full picture… They think they getting everything on the internet for free while also protecting their privacy… and unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.

So there you have it. The two main reasons why Apple did what they did,

1. More money for Apple

2. People have been asking for it.

What can you do about it (AKA workarounds)?

Please Note: You should never do something without your user’s permission. Always make sure that you have your user’s consent to track them.

This is probably the part of the article that you’ve had all been waiting for… “What can I do to keep tracking my users?”. Well, this is what I’m going to be talking about in this section.

Connect Your Domain To Business Manager

This probably the easiest thing you can do to help Facebook track the users that are coming to your website. Although this doesn’t guarantee that all users will be tracked it will definitely help, especially when it’s done aside from these other workarounds below.

Step-By-Step How To Connect Your Domain To Business Manager

1. Open Facebook business manager

2. Click on “Business Settings”.

3. Click on “Brand Safety” in the left side panel and then choose “Domains”.

3. Click on “Add” and enter your domain in the pop-up.

Once you’ve followed these steps Facebook will give you some more instructions on how you can add the codes they give you in your DNS records.

Keep The Action On Facebook

Remember the tracking problem is caused by ad blockers that are blocking 3rd party vendors to collect data and send it to their servers but any apps and websites can collect their own data with no problem. This means Facebook won’t have any problems measuring any metrics that are happening on their platform.

Take a look at the image below. Everything highlighted in yellow are Facebook campaign objectives that are not being affected by the IOS 14 privacy policy update.

So we still have plenty of options but obviously, if you’re in an industry like eCommerce, you can’t really do much with these campaign objectives because the action needs to happen on your website.

Your main campaign objectives would be Traffic, Conversions, or Catalog Sales as your campaign goal (unless you’re looking for brand awareness).

Server Side Tracking

Now, this is the real workaround… It’s called Server Side Tracking.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the blog I did a lot and a lot of research studying what Apple blocks and what they don’t block and they make it clear that they block anything that collects data about the user and sends it to their servers (3rd party).

But because of fraud and a few other things, you need to be able to collect data about your users and send it to your own server (internally) and Apple can’t stop you from doing so.

Here’s How It Works

You collect the information about your users manually with the help of a tool like Google Tag Manager.
Create a subdomain and send the data that was collected about your users to that subdomain (internal server).
Send the data to Facebook using the Conversion API.

So this method is the real workaround and it’s also way more secure but it will require you to work with a developer and a technical marketer like Vertex Marketing Agency.

Final Words

Although the IOS 14 privacy policy update has given users more privacy, which is good, the ripple effect it has on businesses, big and small is devastating.

Facebook continues to be the leading advertising platform for it’s reach, targeting, and incredibly low cost and even though there have been some major changes to Apple users, Facebook still dominates.

About The Author:

Cedric Potvin

Facebook ad specialist

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