How To Retarget Using Facebook Ads Post Apple iOS 14
Sep 23, 2021HOW TO RUN RETARGETING ADS ON FACEBOOK POST APPLE IOS 14 UPDATE
When it comes to the Apple iOS 14 update, one of the biggest challenges we are facing as advertisers is that our ability to track what other people are doing on our website has decreased. This means that some of our retargeting capabilities are minimised particularly when it comes to retargeting website visitors and the various options within this area. It’s not all doom and gloom. We can still retarget post iOS 14 and it will work BUT there needs to be some adjustment to see results. Let’s jump in and learn how to run retargeting ads on Facebook.
It’s not all doom and gloom. We can still retarget post iOS 14 and it will work BUT there needs to be some adjustment to see results. Let’s jump in and learn how to run retargeting ads on Facebook.
CORE CUSTOM AUDIENCES TO RETARGET
Historically when running targeting campaigns, we would focus on three core retargeting audiences within the Ads Manager: website visitors, customer list and email list. These lists were our warmest leads and highest converting audiences.
THE IMPACT OF THE APPLE IOS 14 UPDATE
We can still retarget those lists. The iOS 14 update isn’t going to affect our ability to target our customer or email list, particularly in terms of the audience size. We can upload these lists directly into the Facebook Ads Manager (hence the importance of building those lists but that’s a whole other post). The iOS update will impact the size of our website visitors list though as we now don’t have full visibility over the people that have visited our website. This is a result of Apple users who have turned their device tracking off for privacy reasons.
All in all, it means our retargeting audience size has shrunk. This is not ideal but it’s something we have no control over nor does Facebook. But the question is how we can overcome this roadblock. How can we effectively retarget using Facebook Ads?
THE ANSWER TO YOUR FACEBOOK ADS RETARGETING ISSUE
The answer is to add some other retargeting options to this audience pool. This will increase the size of your retargeting audience list and the converting potential.
My recommendation here is to consider what kind of data you have available? Do you have Facebook engagement, Instagram engagement, video views or completed lead forms? We’ll take a tour through the Ads Manager shortly so you can get a good grasp of all audience retargeting options available to you. It will be worth adding some of these audiences in to bring your overall audience size back up to what it was.
In the past, of our three warm retargeting options that we’d use: website visitors, email lists and customer lists, the majority of the volume for retargeting audiences would come from website visitors. Unfortunately, this has now been minimised. We want our retargeting audience pool size to be large. Why? Because we know Facebook works better with larger audiences.
SET-UP RETARGETING ADS ON FACEBOOK
Let’s head over to the Facebook Ads Manager to see what other audience retargeting options are available. In your Ads Manager, head to ‘Audiences’ and then click ‘Create Audience and select ‘Custom Audience’. That is where you create retargeting audiences within the Facebook Ads Manager.
WHAT ARE CUSTOM AUDIENCES?
Custom audiences identify your existing audience on Facebook. It captures users that know you and have already interacted with you. For this reason, custom audiences are used for targeting your warm and hot audience ads.
HOW TO RETARGET USING FACEBOOK ADS
As you saw in the video, there are lots of different retargeting options. From Facebook and Instagram engagement audiences, to leads forms and view views, the sky is the limit. These are all good options to add to your Facebook Ads audience mix and increase your pool size to target.
Historically, we didn’t use these retargeting audiences because truthfully the quality was and isn’t as good as those previously mentioned: website visitors, email and customer lists.
BUT, now that our pool of people to retarget has shrunk because of the Apple iOS update, we have to find new ways of doing things. The quality of these audience options may not be as good but the added volume they bring makes up for the reduction in quality. AND don’t worry…we know Facebook is REALLY good at working out who within your target audience is most likely to take the desired action eg. purchase, become lead, click a link etc. Remember: at this point in time, this method is the best way forward.
CONSIDER YOUR CURRENT RETARGETING AUDIENCES AVAILABLE
Look through all the custom audience options within Facebook and consider where your audience is most likely to be. It will also depend on what type of content or ads you have run in the past. Have you run lead ads and have people you could target in that group or have you run video ads and could focus on people that have watched a certain percentage of a particular video.
OUR RECOMMENDATION AS FACEBOOK ADS SPECIALISTS
To provide an extra level of comfort, I just want to let you know that we only recommend what works best for our clients. As I always say though, you must TEST. In this case you must different audience combinations. We know the same methods don’t work for everyone as we each have different audiences and these audiences consume content very differently. You may find that your Instagram audience gets results, but your Facebook Audience doesn’t. We know first-hand that what works for some clients doesn’t work for others and that’s why we stress this step. So, test different options and see what gets the best results.
If you’ve personally seen a decline in your retargeting campaigns and ad sets post Apple iOS, this method is a great way to combat this issue. We’ve personally seen the drop-off with our clients’ accounts and adjusting our custom audience pool sizes has definitely help counteract this issue.
WARM AUDIENCES VS. COLD AUDIENCES
Don’t forget, these audiences are still warm audiences, meaning they are users that have interacted with your brand before so regardless, they are still better than first targeting a cold audience. We know they aren’t as warm as someone on your customer or email list or website but the added volume on your retargeting campaign will certainly help.
And guess what? With a bigger audience size, it will mean you won’t have to refresh your ad creative as much as when you’re running smaller customer audiences as the ad frequency will be reduced. This will save you time, wahoo!
Be sure to apply these tips when you set-up your retargeting ads on Facebook. You won’t be disappointed.
Not sure how to create custom audiences? For step-by-step instructions, see blog: How to create a custom audience in the Facebook Ads Manager (post Apple iOS).
