FAQs from our recent Facebook Webinar

In partnership with FIA, Marlin recently held a webinar on the upcoming change to Facebook advertising due to the changes Apple is making to their privacy policies.

Below are questions that were asked throughout the webinar with answers from the Marlin team.

Watch the FIA Webinar where Samara Gentle & Tim Brack presented on the upcoming changes. You can also read our blog article on theses changes.

What is the Facebook pixel?

The Facebook pixel is an analytics tool that allows you to measure the effectiveness of your advertising by understanding the actions people take on your website. It is a few lines of code that you embed on your website or via a tool such a Google Tag Manager. If you are unsure if your website has a Pixel installed you can use the Facebook Pixel Helper extension for the Google Chrome web browser. 

Can you change the 8 prioritised events for your domain at any time? For example remove one once it’s not relevant anymore and slot in a new one?

Yes you will be able to change them, however if you do this you will have campaigns active, they will be paused for three days before restarting. So it’s important to make sure your priority order is right before sending campaigns live.

Facebook seems to be doing a decent job of automatically prioritising conversion events (based on how recently and frequently each event is being triggered). Is the automatic prioritisation trustworthy?

This really depends on the campaigns you’re running at the time. If you’re switching between appeals, peer to peer, lead generation it’s important to always check the prioritisation is aligned with what you have in market.

Do these changes also apply to Instagram ads?

Yes this will affect Facebook and Instagram ads. This change also impacts advertising across other platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat etc. 

Can we still target based on age/gender/placement, we just can’t report on them?

That’s correct, you can still target based on these you just won’t see the data breakdown in your reports.

Is there a limit to how many organisations can use the same pixel E.g. Our federated model has 8 organisations often using separate pixels on the same domain. Can we all share one pixel?

We haven’t seen any information from Facebook that there is a limit to how many organisations can share one pixel. We would definitely recommend you use one pixel to manage the prioritising of your conversion events for your domain, then sharing that pixel with your organisations.

Is the 3 days delay data related to just iOS users or both Android and iOS? I’m a bit concerned about the impact on remarketing. Are there any tips on how to work around this?

At this stage it is just related to users on iOS, however, it will impact the data across all your ads as at this stage you cannot target users by device type for conversions campaigns.

Unfortunately, the impact on remarketing audiences based on website activity is likely to be big and there are no workarounds at this stage. You should expect to see a decrease in these remarketing sizes and recorded conversions by those audiences.

Should verifying your domain be done as a matter of urgency, or could this be done within a few weeks or a month (due to staff shortages/absences)?

Facebook is strongly pushing this be done as soon as possible to reduce the risk of any active campaigns you have running being paused. 

Will there be any impact on organic content?

No, as organic content sits within the Facebook platform this is not impacted.

What is the best way to stay up-to-date with and follow the changes?

Reach out to your account manager at Facebook and ask them to keep you up to date with all the changes. 

For the events prioritisation, can you please clarify if activity will be paused now while we make changes, or may only be paused if we make edits to the priority order in the future (after the privacy changes are implemented)?

When you make changes to the priority order this will only pause campaigns once the privacy changes are implemented by Apple.

For organic posts where you are directing someone to a link on your website, will that be impacted?

No this won’t be impacted. Facebook generally prefers content to keep users within the Facebook platform so posts with outbound links aren’t generally prioritised in their algorithm.

Will this change affect the Facebook tracking information that flows into Google Analytics?

If you’re using UTMs no, but Google Analytics will also be making changes to how they store user data within the platform, so expect there will be changes to this platform coming.

Is it true we won’t be able to turn the campaigns off and then back on when the changes hit?

If your campaigns don’t meet the requirements of the changes then they won’t be approved to go live. It is likely you may have to submit campaigns for review and they’ll go through Facebook’s review process.

Considering the changes, if you have multiple domains, should you have one Ad Account and one Pixel per domain? 

We only recommend one pixel per domain. Facebook has not said that having multiple ad accounts would cause any issues.

Do the changes affect duplicating past ad sets, campaigns or ads that ran before the changes? E.g. duplicating a 2020 campaign

This will impact duplication in terms of the pixel and event you are optimising for, but before you publish you will have to make changes so that your campaigns / ad sets / account is compliant with Facebook’s changes.

Do you recommend moving towards the Facebook API tracking, rather than Pixel. Would that completely bypass this potential privacy restriction in terms of tracking and optimisation?

Yes we do. While there are technical issues relating to the Conversions API, Facebook is recommending advertisers to use it and improve the data that is sent back into their ad system.

FIA Webinar: Presented by Marlin Communications

Disclaimer

The information provided in this article is a guide to assist. Facebook is still making continuous changes to the platform to manage the iOS 14 change and have communicated that things will continue to change and evolve.

We strongly recommend that charities use Facebook’s Support portal or assigned account manager to get the latest updates and information on these changes.