The digital advertising landscape
If you’re a Shopify store owner, then you know how difficult it can be to track your Facebook and Instagram ads in the current landscape. When the Apple iOS 14.5 update was released, iOS users had the ability to opt out of ad tracking. This means that if a Facebook or Instagram user purchases one of your items from your ad, the purchase will not display in the Facebook ads manager. This has caused advertisers frustration as they no longer have accurate data make profound optimization decisions on their ads.
Flurry Analytics published analytics data in May 2021 that found that 96% of US users opted out of app tracking in iOS 14.5
When Apple released iOS 14.5 in late April 2021 it began enforcing a new policy called App Tracking Transparency. The new policy stats that all iPhone, Apple TV, and iPad applications are required to request user permission to track the users' activity across multiple apps for ad targeting and data collection.
You can no longer rely on accurate data in Facebook ads manager
As an advertiser you can no longer rely on the Facebook ads manager to make data-driven decisions on your ads given that a large percentage of purchases will not be attributing to the correct campaign, ad set, or ad. If you don't have accurate data for which ad sets have sales that have different targeting, then how can you gain valuable insights into which targeting is outperforming or underperforming, consciously keep spending ad dollars not knowing if they are truly 'working', or even increase the budget on outperforming ad sets.
Many advertisers are currently finding themselves 'guessing' in their ad optimization process and are letting the ads run in the dark without accurate insights or data because they know that Facebook and Instagram ads are the key drivers for reaching new customers. That causes many advertisers to fear the sustainability of their ad campaigns but also their business overall.
What are the most valuable metrics for smarter ad optimization?
Many advertisers likely find themselves in a state of wanting to spend time equally analyzing every single metric provided in hopes that they will find a trend or pattern that will enable them to scale their ad campaigns to new heights. At the end of the day the most valuable metric is net profit on any campaign, ad set, or ad. If the ad has substantial net profit you can easily justify allocating more budget and resources to scaling up the ad.
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