It is not really a stretch to say that social media ads are not currently working as well in March 2022 as they were in March 2021.

Facebook ads were dramatically downgraded by Apple’s iOS changes in April 2021, impacting how data is used across the platform. As Apple opted out tens of millions of iOS users from individual app tracking, reporting was significantly hindered.

Now the platform has offered new ad guidance for struggling businesses. While most advanced advertisers and intermediate performance marketers have these tactics locked away, many businesses still don’t.

The measures listed below aren’t going to solve underperformance overnight, but taken together they offer a starting point and help eke out some extra gains from ad campaigns.

A sea change for advertisers

Right off the bat, Apple’s App tracking transparency (ATT) update ruined the accuracy of Meta’s (Facebook and Instagram’s parent company) ad targeting system.

Due to people opting out of app tracking, data becomes less accessible, making it harder to identify audience interest and more expensive to run successful ads.

The change also made it more challenging to measure campaign outcomes from the users that opted out of app tracking. According to some research, that number could be as high as 62% of iPhone users.

Apple took a bite out of Facebook

Apple’s tightening of user privacy has hurt. Facebook has said it will miss out on $10 billion in ad revenue this year alone. Google is exploring similar ad privacy initiatives, too, so there is a real commercial incentive for Facebook and advertisers to get ahead of the problem.

Difficulties in measuring campaigns have led to a 15% underreporting in web conversions (now reduced to 8%). Gains are being made in the right direction, but this is still a significant discrepancy.

For brand marketers, focused on reach goals only, the pain is less severe. However, with ad targeting accuracy on a slippery slope, the impact and effectiveness of awareness campaigns also leave much to be desired.

To help users see more accurate results in web conversion campaigns, Facebook has published some new recommendations for advertisers to follow.

Best Practices for Web Conversion Campaigns

The first thing Meta has advised is that advertisers integrate with Conversions API.

Sending events through Conversions API will help Facebook better measure performance and attribution across a full customer journey, from discovery to conversion, while offering the same privacy protection that is in place across other Business Tools. A Conversion API can be set up on the Conversions API Gateway.

Setting up CAPI can be a bit fiddly, unlike the Meta Pixel, although there is now a Google Tag Manager integration which makes life slightly easier.

Secondly, make sure you verify all your domains.

Goksu Nebol-Perlman, Director of Product Marketing, Ads, Meta

“Verification is especially important if you value conversions across multiple domains (e.g., if your website uses redirectors or geo-redirects). This should ensure the proper account has the authority to prioritise events and enables event measurement for opted-out iOS users from associated web pages.”

Additionally, you need to ensure that conversion events align with your business and campaign priorities. Check the order of your events in Events Manager and make sure the most valuable ones are ranked first.

Finally, leave a little breathing space before you analyse your campaign performance. Facebook recommends that you wait at least 72 hours before evaluating to ensure that all the data is adequately collected and modelled reporting is complete.

Increase ad performance with these strategies

Facebook has also provided a few hints on how to increase ad performance.

Facebook offers tools that automatically find the most relevant audiences for you, such as Detailed targeting Expansion. Detailed Targeting Expansion uses an advertiser’s targeting preferences, such as interests, to find new audiences. In a way, it’s probably not too different from how lookalike audiences work. Ish.

Goksu Nebol-Perlman, Director of Product Marketing, Ads, Meta

“Additionally, consider showing your ads across six or more Placements, like on Facebook Marketplace or in Instagram Stories, giving our system more flexibility to control costs and get you better results. This can also be achieved by using the Automatic Placements option when setting up campaigns.”

With social ads across Meta (and elsewhere) feeling the pinch on both targeting and reporting, smart businesses in 2022 will need to inject fresh thinking into their campaigns across ad strategy, tactics and creative.