Apple has announced new changes with iOS 14 that will affect how advertisers receive and process conversion events from tools such as the Facebook pixel. Companies that advertise mobile apps and businesses that optimize, target, and report on web conversion events such as eCommerce transactions from Facebook ads platforms will be affected.
What Changes Has iOS 14 Released?
Apple will start requiring apps in the App Store that engage in what Apple determines as “tracking” to show a prompt to iOS 14 users and ask the users if they’d permit opt-in tracking on their devices. If users don’t opt-in tracking via the prompt, Apple’s policy will prohibit advertisers from collecting and sharing certain data. It’s highly likely that many iOS 14 users will opt out of tracking on their iOS 14 devices, which will significantly affect ads personalization and performance reporting for both app and web conversion events.
To counteract these changes, Facebook will start processing pixel conversion events from iOS 14 devices using .
Facebook’s Aggregated Event Measurement allows for measurement of web events from iOS 14 or later devices. Here is what you can do to prepare so that you can continue to deliver and measure the performance of your campaigns.
If you plan to deliver ads optimized for conversion events that occur in your business app, you can update to Facebook’s SDK for iOS 14 version 8.1 to help personalize ads delivered to iOS 14 users, and continue to receive app conversion events reporting. You can do this from and will need to be an app admin to do so. Facebook’s SDK for iOS 14 version 8.1 currently supports and enables measurement for app install ads. If you don’t have the latest version of our SDK installed, you won’t be able to track app installments from app campaigns.
If you plan to deliver ads optimized for conversion events that occur on your business website:
Ad creation limitations
You can use your existing ad accounts to advertise to iOS 14 users, but you’ll need to create separate iOS 14 app install campaigns due to reporting limitations from Apple’s SKAdNetwork API. The following are additional limitations that you’ll need to consider.
If you plan to deliver ads optimized for conversion events that occur in your business’s app:
If you plan to deliver ads optimized for conversion events that occur on your business’ website:
Reporting limitations
Under Apple’s new policy, businesses will be limited in their ability to measure the performance of iOS 14 app install campaigns on Facebook. For iOS 14 app install campaigns, reporting will need to rely on data from Apple’s SKAdNetwork API for mobile app installs and other app conversion events. Similar limitations will apply to the measurement of some web conversion events because of reporting limitations of iOS 14 devices.
The following limitations are expected across Ads Manager, Ads Reporting, and the Ads Insights API.
Delayed reporting:
Changes to account attribution window settings:
Once Apple enforces their iOS 14 requirements, the attribution window for all new or active ad campaigns will be set at the ad set level, rather than at the account level. The new ad set attribution setting can be accessed during campaign creation. This ad set level attribution setting ensures that the conversions measured are the same ones used to inform campaign optimization, and will allow for increased flexibility and clarity when analyzing ad performance. In addition, the default for all new or active ad campaigns (other than iOS 14 app install campaigns) will be set at a 7-day click attribution window. iOS 14 app install campaigns will report based on the attribution window provided by Apple’s SKAdNetwork API.
Going forward, 28-day click-through, 28-day view-through, and 7-day view-through attribution windows will not be supported for active campaigns.
However, inactive campaigns will still report using the legacy account level attribution window, and historical data for the attribution windows that are no longer supported will continue to remain accessible via our Ads Insights API. After these changes take effect, except for iOS 14 app install campaigns and automated rules, the default 7-day click attribution window can be modified by you to one of the other windows that are still supported. The following windows will be supported under the new attribution setting:
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