New features available with iOS 14.5 and what to know about the new privacy tool

At the end of April, Apple company presented the latest iOS update with new privacy features. What is App Tracking Transparency? How the new update may affect your Ads? What was the reaction of Facebook? Find the answers below.

What happened

The information was in 2020, but the update release happened only in April 2021. Apple made one of the biggest privacy changes. The company will require that apps have to show a message to iOS users, according to the new AppTrackingTransparency framework. App Tracking Transparency lets users control which apps are allowed to track their activity for ads.

How it works

First of all, the user needs to update his device to the latest version. After that, the user will get a pop-up message to permit applications to track activity for advertising purposes. If the user does not give permission, the device’s unique identifier (IDFA) will not be shared with the app developer or site owner.

The Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) is a random device identifier assigned by Apple to a user’s device. Advertisers use this to track data and campaign optimization.

How it affects Facebook work

It is not a secret that all our actions are recorded and then used to optimize advertising campaigns. The more information, the more efficient the optimization is. Apple’s new feature may block this important component. Users commit actions, but they are not recorded, so the advertiser has no data to optimize the campaign.

Ad creation limitations

• You can only associate your app with a single ad account
• Each app is limited to 9 campaigns, each campaign is limited to 5 ad sets
• Auction is the only available buying option when you create an ad, Reach and Frequency are not available
• Once your campaign is published, you can’t turn on or turn off the iOS 14 campaign toggle. You’ll have to turn off or delete the campaign

Facebook Pixel changes:

• Your pixel may only optimize for 8 conversion events for each domain
• Facebook will configure the most relevant conversion
• Ad sets that are no longer available, will be turned off

Facebook/Instagram reaction

After the update, Facebook and Instagram started to threaten that users will need to pay for their services (in case, if you don’t allow them to track your data after installing iOS 14.5).

The reaction of Google company was calm. According to some sources, they are going to create something equal to App Tracking Transparency for Android.