OPEN Letter: The hidden TRUTH to Facebook ADS & iOS14

Apple is hoping you never find this out...

Dear: Media Buyer, Advertiser or Agency Owner

What you're about to discover is the hidden truth to recovering ad data and being control of your optimization, reporting and scaling without leaving it up to the mercy of the BIG APPLE (🍏). 

Get ready to discover:

• Are we ALL really at risk running a media buying business?
• The Real reason Your Ad Performance is tanking.
• How do you know if your ads are the problem?
• Why "Battle-tested Strategies" are crushing your ad performance.
• Ever wondered WHY no-one teaches THIS?
• Is the UTM the answer for Facebook Ads?
• Retargeting SOLVED
• The fastest way to scale months after iOS14.5, 15.0 or...

Are we ALL really at risk running a media buying business?

If you've been facing claims from clients about conversion validation as in "can you please prove the conversion are from ads and not my other platforms" then you can fully relate on feeling frustrated and completely lost...

It's OK! 

Many feel the same way. Everyone has been frantically running around, learning this and then trying it as it worked for someone else.

The Real reason Your Ad Performance is tanking.

As adoption rate has increase, 3rd-party tracking is taking a HIT. When the pixel starts to get less data, poor ad performance will become the norm. Then not only will you be affected by the algorithm but consistency will be a nightmare. With that we also see the rise of CPM, CPC and CPA.

Why "Battle-tested Strategies" are crushing your ad performance.

IF You're always bombarded with strategies to "navigate the iOS update". Then after testing them out all they do is cost time, budget and your account score!

Ever wondered WHY no-one teaches THIS?

In the advertising space we have a lot of experts with each of their own strategies, there it is "strategies" everything ON platform and not off it. That is WHY we seem to waste more time as these a short-term fixes and NOT long term solutions.

Problem = Attribution (Pixel Data)

Solution = Connect Ad Data with conversions with control

Now let me ASK.

How does, funnels, CBO vs ABO, Adset stacking, creative testing solve "Attribution (Pixel Data)"?

The only thing this does is help improve CPM, CPA, Ad Fatigue & more...

Instead we burn time ad budget and end up affecting our account score.

How do you know if your ads are the problem?

The start of the SOLUTION, to solve the problem. Apples iOS14.5 update allows users to opt-out restricting the use of 3rd party data. Here we have now defined the problem: Data, not strategies, funnels, messages or creatives but DATA. Hence why advertisers are using UTM plus Google Analytics.

UTM is an old way (only recently more popular) of tracking. It is a standard set by Google so that platforms mainly Google Analytics can automatically attribute data based on a session.

The UTM is part of a query string appended to the link of your landing or sales page. With this it is important to know about DYNAMIC vs STATIC data.

Dynamic: Changes based on the Ad Name, Campaign Name, Placement and more. We can use short-codes to define these and tell Facebook to pass the data into the URL as part of the query string.

Static: Is set and will not change. When using utm_medium and running ads we can use cpc (or "email" from out email campaigns). Static data is not automatic.

Now that we know UTM can pass data and Google Analytics can fetch that and create automatic reports it is CRITICAL to understand the biggest mistakes with UTM.

Is the UTM the answer for Facebook Ads?

Nearly everyone is using the UTM set which is amazing and it is a great step forward. The UTM provides a range of amazing data which sends data back to Google Analytics and is not part of the Facebook APP hence not having that restriction. 

Although this helps give advertisers an overview of their campaigns the #1 problem is that Google where possible claims as many conversions as possible. Making it harder to prove what ad attributed to the conversion. UTM is connected to conversions automatically by Google.

The biggest problems with UTM:

• No control with tagging ad data
• Google claiming as many conversions as possible
• Verifying proof of conversion attribution
• Concrete data models

But can we control the attribution? YES...

We need to manually tag key data models to get accurate attribution.

PLUS Retargeting SOLVED

Before iOS14 we relied on the pixel and custom audiences when it came to offsite tracking. This gave us the edge to tap into those who have a desire and taking some kind of action. Now with less pixel data returns smaller re-targeting custom audiences.

There are (2) options:

1. ON Platform
2. OFF Platform

With OFF platform we need to start utilizing omni-presence and be top of mind. Not only that but then we are NOT holding all our eggs in 1-basket.

ON Platform you guessed it is interacted with page, post, video etc.

The fastest way to scale months after iOS14.5, 15.0 or...

We talked about DATA being the #1 requirement to scale Facebook Ads. Data informs us WHAT ad is converting. This can turn around tanking campaigns by optimizing the winning (converting ads).

In order to have profitable campaigns we need proven data that is verified and we can do that by tagging each even with ad data. We manually setup some instructions for Google Analytics to attribute data to each event.

This is super easy to do in 3 easy steps without needing a developer and I give you some simple scripts to copy & paste.

You will need Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics which are FREE to use. Meaning no expensive tracking or reporting software needed.

Introducing the Ad Attribution Workshop!

The Attribution Method does NOT need expensive tracking software and will not need to be a developer...

The Attribution method uses (2) FREE Tools:

• Google Tag Manager, to tag events with ad Data
• Google Analytics, store and report the data

When we control each event, data is verified. Then we are not relying on Google claiming all conversions with false positives but instead valid data. Data we can report, optimize and scale with confidence.