Setup Guide: Your Facebook Ads and the iOS14 Update
It feels as though digital marketers have heard about the iOS14 update and its impending doom for months. It’s true, this update is massively changing the game by introducing new policies around user privacy and Facebook ads, specifically to allow users to stop third-party apps, including Facebook, from tracking their user data.
Ready or not, the iOS14 update is here and shaking up Facebook
You can prepare for this change and ensure your ads continue to run as smoothly as possible by following a few key steps below!
Verify your domain within Facebook Business Manager
Before moving onto your pixel, let’s make sure your domain is validated on the backend of Facebook. Get started by going into your Business Manager and into your Settings, which can be accessed via the wheel in the bottom left corner of your screen. From there, you’ll click Brand Safety and take a look at the domains that are listed as verified, if any.
If your domains are listed, then great! You’re all done. If not, it’s time to add them. After clicking the “Add” button and typing in your website name, you should be taken to another page with some code on it. Here, you’ll see a red circle that indicates an unverified domain.
The easiest way to get your domain verified is by using a meta tag. To do this, you simply click the meta tag to copy to the clipboard, go into the backend of your website, and paste it into your head tag. On Shopify, this would be housed under Theme > Theme File, and you would paste it right above the closing head tag. The other options to verify your domain include via HTML or DNS, but these are both a bit more complicated and can cause website issues if not done properly.
Therefore, we recommend against using these methods unless you are familiar with the processes. Once your domain is properly verified, the red dot next to your domain name will change to green in Facebook Business Manager.
Prioritize events within your Facebook pixel
Now that your domain is verified, we can move into optimizing your pixel. To get here, click the grid in the top left corner and go into Events Manager.
Here, you will see a new tab at the bottom of the events manager called Aggregated Event Management. This is where you will set up and track events for your ads. To get your events set up properly, click Configure Web Events and click into your verified domain. Note: to set up and track events, you will need to have your domain verified, and you will also need to be getting events on your pixel (e.g., website visits, adds to cart, purchases, etc.) Once you click your domain, click Manage Events > Edit Events, where you will see a list of events and their priority. Here you will have the option to prioritize eight total events, which will all be standard as laid out by Facebook (custom events, RIP.)
Now, you will be able to prioritize the events. The priority indicates which event the pixel will capture from a user. The pixel will only capture the highest-priority event the user engages in. So, if your priorities are laid out as above, your pixel will send back a purchase event for a user who purchases a product but will NOT send back initiate checkout, add to cart, view content, etc. So, this means marketers must be careful which event to give top priority. If you do not receive many purchases and tend to run your ads by optimizing add to cart, you will want to make sure you prioritize add to cart at the top and purchase below it.
While you may lose out on purchase event data through this method, whichever event is most important to you and your ad setup should go at the top of the event priority. Finally, the value optimization on the purchase event indicates Facebook’s option to optimize for those users who are likely to spend moreover those who are likely to spend less.