On April 26th, 2021, Apple rolled out a major update to its iOS mobile operating system. This included a new privacy feature — the AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) prompt — that impacted how Facebook Ads tracks certain types of events.
This article explains what the ATT means for Facebook Ads, and how these changes have impacted the data My Pro Metrics is able to pull from the Facebook Ads API.
About AppTrackingTransparency #
The AppTrackingTransparency framework requires app developers to get express permission from users before tracking them or their device’s advertising identifier. Read more about it in Apple’s developer documentation.
With the release of ATT, any data that relies on this tracking — including conversion attribution or audience targeting — might be impacted by users opting out of it. To account for data that might be spotty or unreliable, Facebook made some adjustments to how its advertising platform works.
Impacted settings #
These changes impact all campaign types in Facebook Ads, not just iOS 14 campaigns or devices.
Changes to aggregation across iOS and non-iOS campaigns #
Facebook no longer aggregates non-inline conversion metric values across iOS 14 and non-iOS 14 ad campaigns due to differences in attribution logic.
Querying across iOS 14 and non-iOS 14 campaigns when using specific aggregation windows will result in no data returning for non-inline conversion metrics (such as app installs and purchases). Inline event metrics (such as impressions, link clicks, and video views) however, can still be aggregated.
Use the “Default attribution” option instead to return correct data for each campaign type. Meta will handle the attribution window and type automatically with this.
If you want to use a specific attribution window, you need to separate your iOS 14/SKAdNetwork Campaigns to report at the campaign or account level. You can use the dimension “Is Campaign using SKAdNetwork” to filter your data. This dimension returns either “true” or “false”, so if you wanted to see only your iOS-specific campaigns, you could set the filter as:
Is Campaign using SKAdNetwork EQUALS truePlain textCopy
Changes SKAdNetwork campaigns #
Data from app install campaigns is sourced from Apple’s SKAdNetwork API. This meant that the iOS 14 update impacted them in several key ways.
- Certain attribution windows and metrics surface only partial data, excluding many iOS 14 users.
- iOS 14 app install campaigns report the attribution window provided by Apple’s SKAdNetwork API.
- Offsite (website) conversion events are reported by time of conversion rather than ad impression. This can lead to fluctuations in cost-based metrics.
- Real-time reporting is not supported, and data may be delayed by up to 3 days.
- Data is estimated, as it is reported in aggregate at the campaign level. Facebook uses statistical modeling to break it down to ad set and ad levels.
- No support for demographic breakdowns (age, gender, location, placement) for either app or web conversions.
