Mystic Mike’s predictions: What does 2026 hold for paid media?
By Mike Sharp, Operations Director at Launch That time of year is here. The time when I confidently predict the…
What’s happening?
As you may have heard, Apple has announced changes with iOS 14 that will affect how they receive and process conversion events from tools such as the Facebook pixel. Apple is now giving users the chance to opt out of their data being tracked, impacting data collection. This will be done through issuing a prompt to users on their iOS 14 devices via the App Store and it will look like this:
Image source: MacRumors
Who is impacted?
Businesses that advertise on mobile apps, as well as those that optimise, target and report on web conversion events from any of Facebook’s business tools will be affected.
What it means
In short, Apple’s policy will prohibit certain data collection and sharing unless people opt in to tracking on iOS 14 devices via the prompt. As more people opt out of tracking on iOS 14 devices, ads personalisation and performance reporting will be limited for both app and web conversion events:
- Your pixel may only optimise for a maximum of eight conversion events for each domain. Facebook will initially configure the conversion events that they believe are the most relevant to your business based on your activity. All other events will be made inactive for campaign optimisation and reporting.
- The following limitations are expected across Ads Manager, ads reporting and the Ads Insights API:
- Delayed reporting: Real-time reporting will not be supported and data may be delayed up to three days.
- For web conversion events, statistical modelling may be used to account for conversions from iOS 14 users.
- No support for breakdowns: For both app and web conversions, delivery and action breakdowns, such as age, gender, region and placement will not be supported.
- Changes to account attribution window settings: Once Apple’s iOS 14 changes take effect, the attribution window for all new or active ad campaigns will be set at the ad set level, rather than at the account level.
- Additionally, 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. Going forward, 28-day click-through, 28-day view-through and 7-day view-through attribution windows will not be supported for active campaigns.
- As more people opt out of tracking on iOS 14 devices, the size of your app connections, app activity Custom Audiences and website Custom Audiences may decrease.
What Facebook is doing
“In response to these changes, we will also start processing pixel conversion events from iOS devices using Aggregated Event Measurement. This will support your efforts to preserve user privacy and help you run effective campaigns”.
Even with our team of experts, we’re not sure what impact this will have on our clients just yet – time will tell!
Actions you can take
- Verify your website domain now. This might have already been done but if not, we’ve made a handy video for you explaining how to do it.
- Review your current Pixel Events and decide which 8 events you’d like to track
- The new 7 day attribution setting is already in force so prepare for this in your reporting
- Find out how many people currently convert and come from iOS devices to give you an understanding of how you might be impacted.
It’s never easy to predict how changes like this will affect your data, but as privacy becomes a top priority, we imagine these sorts of changes will only become more common.
