Facebook announced a series of improvements this week that are designed to help advertisers with performance and measurement.

“In advance of the busy holiday shopping season and amidst all of the digital advertising industry changes, our top priority is helping you reach new and existing customers, drive your marketing objectives and measure the performance of your campaigns,” Graham Mudd, Facebook’s VP of Product Marketing, said in a written statement.

So what’s new?

Conversions API Gateway

This self-service configuration option in Events Manager “greatly reduces” the time required to set up the Conversions API, the announcement read. It enables advertisers to take advantage of the Conversions API without having to code or involve a developer.

Facebook recommends its Conversions API Gateway for advertisers who are:

• Already using the Facebook pixel.
• Not yet using the Conversions API to send the web events.
• Working with a minimum monthly budget of $2,000 USD specifically earmarked to optimizing for web events.

Mudd also noted that:

“If you’re already working with an e-commerce partner to manage your Facebook pixel, it is recommended to leverage your existing partner if they support the Conversions API for the simplest integration option.”

Use the Facebook Conversions API Setup Guide to work through the implementation step by step.

Aggregated Event Measurement (AEM) for iOS14 Users: Updates

Facebook has been one of the most vocal critics of Apple’s retirement of the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) with the iOS14 update.

Apple’s Search Ads revenue and market share have improved dramatically while personalized advertising has been stymied on other platforms – including Facebook.

With this update to campaign reporting for iOS14 users, Facebook has:

• Enabled view-through attribution as the default for newly created campaigns using web events.
• Extended AEM to consider conversions from all advertiser-associated web pages in auto-redirect scenarios.
• Enabled advertiser-level reporting for advertisers who do not own the domain their ads point to (previously unavailable).

Facebook has also begun its rollout of Aggregated Event Measurement for App (App AEM), a new measurement reporting capability for re-engagement campaigns with in-app destinations for all iOS users (including iOS14.5+ users).

This will be available to advertisers running Catalog Sales app event campaigns.

Facebook recommends that advertisers interested in the above features refer to its best practices guide on web event configuration for Aggregated Event Measurement.

Facebook also released an update to improve advertiser line-of-sight into conversion paths for iOS 14+ Mobile App Install campaigns by enabling view-through conversion attribution for those that rely on data from Apple’s SKAdNetwork API.

Industry-wide Challenges In Attribution and Measurement Continue

Mike Rhodes, founder of AI-powered Apple Search Ads (ASA) bidding engine Smart Bidder, expects that advertisers’ attribution woes will continue.

“App transparency tracking will increasingly affect proper attribution of campaign results across ad channels on Apple devices, specifically limiting accurate attribution for known ASA channels,” Rhodes said. “Advertisers who need to showcase ROI and support the growth of their company’s sales objectives will find themselves increasingly at odds with this trend.”

The influx of marketing spend into ASA has made things increasingly difficult for the marketer as it is a high-touch channel requiring significant resources to manage, Rhodes explained to Search Engine Journal.

“If we then consider a channel that requires always-on attention across multiple time zones we can easily see how this is creating a resource challenge for many large businesses,” he added.

In September, Facebook estimated that in aggregate, it was underreporting iOS web conversions by approximately 15%. It committed then to “accelerate our own investments” to address known reporting gaps ahead of the 2021 holiday season.

These updates make good on that promise, and we should expect to see more in the pipeline as advertisers continue to grapple with attribution and reporting issues in the tracking prompt fallout.

Featured image:Rzt_Moster/Shutterstock

Sources: