How to Retarget on Facebook After iOS 14.5

Key Takeaways

facebook retargeting ads have taken a pretty big hit since apple released ios 14.5 and the app tracking transparency framework that came with it mainly because the size of our retargeting audiences has gone down and that's because as people are opting out of tracking then we can't add them to our custom audiences which means we can't retarget them with our facebook ads but the good news is there are a few things that you can do to adapt and to still effectively leverage the power of retargeting with facebook ads and that is exactly what we're going to talk about in this video i'm going to walk you through how to effectively use facebook retargeting ads in a post ios 14.5 world let's get into it but before we do the only thing i ask is if you enjoy this video you tap that like button it really does help the channel it helps with the youtube algorithm helps make sure more people see these videos and if you want to hear more from me make sure you hit subscribe hit that little bell and you'll get notified whenever i release a new video on facebook advertising or digital marketing so the very first thing to do is set up the facebook conversions api now this is not a blanket fix for the ios 14.5 privacy changes it's not like it's a work around to get data back to facebook even if people have opted out that's certainly not the case but what it does do is it makes sure that more of your conversion events get matched by facebook because the problem that we're facing is that more and more browsers firefox in particular are blocking tracking and blocking cookies by default meaning the facebook pixel doesn't actually work in those situations we know that later this year chrome is actually going to start blocking third-party cookies as well and in the future it looks like the facebook pixel is going to be less and less effective meaning that that's going to impact your custom audiences even more especially if you're creating custom audiences based on conversion events which a lot of us do we'll often use conversions like lead events add to cart initiate checkout or even purchase to create custom audience to use for facebook ads retargeting now that is going to be severely affected as more and more browsers start blocking cookies and blocking that facebook pixel so by using the facebook conversions api it means that right now you're actually going to increase the match rate of your conversions which means that those custom audiences that you use for retargeting that are based on conversion events are going to be strengthened and it means that in the future it's going to put you in a better position as well and keep those retargeting audiences healthy for longer the second thing that we're doing with our retargeting ads is using longer time periods so that means that maybe if we were using a website visit our retargeting audience and we'll be targeting for 14 days maybe now we've upped that to 30 days we're just extending those time periods to make sure that our audiences are large enough for facebook to be able to run ads to them okay so by extending those time periods we get larger custom audiences which means we don't get delivery problems which a lot of people are facing now talking to lots of people whose retargeting ads have either stopped running completely or their costs have gone up meaning their return on ad spend just isn't as good as it was so extending those time periods out is helpful something we often do with our retargeting ads especially right at the bottom of the funnel is we will run really short time periods let's say we've got a special offer and the offer is expiring well often what we'll do is we'll have a custom audience that only has a length or a duration of three days so we might say in that three-day period hey the offer is expiring soon make sure you click here and take advantage of it well what we're doing in those cases is we're actually expanding that out now to maybe five days or even seven days depending on the length of the offer so instead of that urgency being just for the final period we're lengthening that out the third thing you can do is combine your audiences into fewer ad sets so something we often do is if we're running let's say a webinar we'll have different ads like open cart ads meaning we're telling people about the offer we'll have ads that are for faqs or frequently asked questions where we have ads that answer those questions we'll have ads with testimonials and maybe we'll have ads for closed card or the offer expiring now previously we would have put these in different ad sets and timed them specifically so let's say in the first three days of the cart opening or the offer opening we might have had an ad that ran to tell them all about the offer and that was a three day window meaning a custom audience that lasted for three days then we might have had some faq ads that ran for a few days some testimonial ads that ran for one or two days or maybe the whole five or six days and then those cart closeouts like i mentioned in the previous example now however what we're doing is we're broadening that and let's say the offer is available for seven days we might just have one ad set with a seven day custom audience and we kind of run all of those ads at the same time maybe not the cart closing ads we might eliminate them completely but we're combining ad sets and making it a longer time window for those custom audiences wherever we can and that seems to be really helping it's making our audiences larger as i said before meaning that we continue to run those retargeting ads successfully which is a nice little segue to lead me into the next one which is changing the objective so often with our retargeting ads at the bottom of funnel we'll run let's say a conversion objective and optimize for purchase or we might even run a website click objective in some case but what happens as your website retargeting audiences or your retargeting audiences in general get smaller if you're using an objective like conversions or traffic then it will stop delivering much sooner than other objectives so something that we've found if it's a very small retargeting audience changing to the reach objective and setting the frequency to one ad per person per day or two ads per person per day depending on what you're running this is very bottom of funnel remember not just general website retargeting ads for you know all of your website visitors or something this is for those specific cases like i mentioned before let's say it's people who've gone through a webinar and the cart is closing and it's a very small specific audience changing to the reach objective can really help especially if you're experiencing delivery problems with your facebook retargeting ads try switching to an objective like reach setting that frequency to one per person per day and see if that gets your ads running again okay so the next thing you can do apart from tapping that like button if you haven't done it already is using a tool that syncs contacts from your email service provider over to your facebook custom audiences so what these tools do is they will take people who go into your email service provider like active campaign infusionsoft whatever you're using and it can actually automatically sync them across as a customer list custom audience into facebook and obviously you can then use that custom audience for retargeting so what i recommend doing is if you're in a situation at the moment where let's say you use a particular conversion event let's say the lead event to create website custom audiences that you use for retargeting so somebody might for example sign up for a webinar and when they hit that thank you page you might create a website custom audience on that thank you page that says if anyone's signed up for the webinar by hitting this thank you page add them to our website custom audience and we can retarget them well what you can do then is also when that person signs up for the webinar they go into your email service provider from there you can use a tool like leedsbridge for example that's one that i like to use link in the description to that that tool will then automatically take that email address and name and sync it over to a different custom audience a customer list custom audience in facebook now again if that person has opted out of tracking it is still not going to match that person but it is another way to again get a higher match rate on your custom audiences for those situations where the pixel is losing its efficacy and so what i would do in this situation is i would then in my ad set target both of those custom audiences i would target the website custom audience that contains everybody that signed up for my webinar and i would also target the customer list custom audience that's been synced across by leedsbridge or another similar tool as well and by targeting both of those in my ad set i'm going to get a higher match rate which means more of the people that sign up for my webinar will actually be in those custom audiences and therefore having those bigger audiences mean that my facebook retargeting ads are likely to be more effective okay so next up this is something that i think is actually one of the bigger ones and something that is going to get more and more important over time and that is starting to create your retargeting audiences based on on platform actions now what does that mean well an on platform action is an action that is performed inside of the facebook app or on the facebook website or inside the instagram app or even on whatsapp versus actions that occur let's say on third-party websites meaning your own website or somebody else's or even email list so the goal is to start using more of these on platform retargeting audiences so that means things like video views and creating audiences and retargeting based on people who've watched particular videos on your facebook page it's also things like engaging with your facebook page engaging with your instagram account and then i think something that is really worth exploring and something that i'm digging into are instant experiences so you can retarget based on interactions that people have had with instant experience ads on the platform and i think that is something that we really need to start looking into but for now if you're not using video view custom audiences and if you're not starting to leverage that and add it into your strategy then i highly recommend that you start thinking about it for your facebook retargeting ads because one thing we know is that facebook can still track all of the actions that a user performs on their platforms meaning on facebook directly or on instagram directly even if they've opted out of tracking on an ios device and then finally this one isn't exactly facebook only retargeting but it's still retargeting and it's something that we're doing more and more of as a result of these changes and that is retargeting on other platforms so often what you will see and what people are doing is they'll retarget with facebook only they'll be running facebook ads top middle and bottom of funnel but now those retargeting ads towards the middle and bottom of the funnel are taking a hit so what we're doing is we're actually starting to shift some of that retargeting that is no longer as effective on facebook over to other platforms meaning google youtube twitter pinterest even tick tock you can retarget on all of these platforms and so just because you can't reach someone via your retargeting ads on facebook anymore doesn't mean you can't reach them on these other platforms somebody may have opted out of facebook on ios but they may not have opted out of youtube for example and so you can still reach them there and same with all those other platforms i just mentioned so think about how can you use retargeting with things like google display ads and all of those other ones i mentioned instead of just relying on facebook which may be getting more and more difficult now okay so that is something that i think really important to leverage it works really really well the return on ad spend that we see there is fantastic so if you haven't tried it already definitely give that a go as well all right that is it for this video if you've enjoyed it remember all i ask is that you tap that like button it makes a massive difference to the channel despite it only taking half a second for you to do and if you want to hear more from me make sure you hit subscribe hit that little bell and you'll get notified whenever i release a new video on facebook advertising or digital marketing as always thanks for watching hopefully i'll see you soon [Music] you