It’s almost impossible to talk about Meta ads without referencing iOS14 at this point. 

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The reason why? 

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Because it changed everything for the industry and the platform. 

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In many ways it was the first domino to fall in a chain reaction and the first real push towards the importance of people’s privacy and its place in digital marketing.

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iOS14 gave people the option to opt-out of being tracked across the web.

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People’s online privacy and more control over their data is something that we completely support.

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However, it has meant that we, and Meta have had to change the way we approach accounts and advertising.

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On our end, consolidation has been absolutely key. As opposed to separation, we try to keep as much together as we can post-iOS14.

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For Meta and the algorithm, the result has been a huge signal loss. This means that less data is being passed to Meta and the machine learning is not as effective as it once was. 

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Meta has released numerous best-practices to keep in mind to help mitigate the effects of this signal loss but invariably, everyone is seeing an impact.

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Meta’s most recent move to combat the amount of signal loss is to remove certain interest targeting options, in favour of broader audiences that cover more people. A common example that is being used is that a lot of the interests related to different shoes have been removed and stacked into the “shoes” interest.

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So what can you take from this?

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Some advertisers are taking this to mean that Meta will, at some point, remove detailed targeting altogether.

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Others are taking it as a hint to transition to finding successful audiences that belong in this broader category and are unlikely to be removed.

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One of the biggest takeaways that you should keep in mind is that Meta//FB ads are becoming less and less about finding ways to hack the algorithm and more about using broader targeting, then working on generating great ad content that the audience wants to see.

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Hope this helps!

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