Apple’s iOS 14 Changes and your Digital Marketing Strategy

In an effort to increase customer privacy, in June 2020, Apple announced product and policy changes that will affect data sharing across iOS. The change will see a privacy option that was previously located in your iPhone’s settings brought to the forefront of your attention when you open an app. With the increased focus on users having the ability to block advertisers from accessing their data, there will be a fundamental change in the personalization of digital marketing strategy. We will discuss these changes and how you can pivot your strategy to ensure your marketing efforts are effective.

Apple’s iOS 14 Product and Policy Change

Apple will be implementing popups with iOS 14 for every app in the app store. The popup will give the user the option to opt into advertising personalization and tracking for that app. With this impending change, companies will need to determine how to communicate the benefits and value of opting into tracking to retain current advertising capabilities. It is seen to be unlikely that consumers will agree to opt-in when presented with the opportunity for more control over their internet usage.

How this change will affect advertisers

While Facebook supports proactive measures and data transparency, the company also understands that the change will have a major impact on the success of advertising campaigns and therefore their own revenue. According to Facebook for Business’ article How Apple’s changes may significantly limit your marketing efforts [link: https://bit.ly/2LPk75t], the changes will “limit your ability to effectively reach, understand and engage people on mobile devices and across the web.” The changes will limit advertiser’s ability to “effectively deliver ads to people based on their engagement”, “measure and report on conversions”, and “predict and optimise cost per action over time and efficiently allocate budgets”. This will effectively make it more difficult for small businesses with smaller budgets to compete with their larger competitors. Facebook will continue to provide updates and guidance on how advertisers can adjust to the new changes, but for now, we have provided our recommendations in the next section.

Digital Marketing Strategy moving forward

If your digital marketing strategy has relied heavily on data-driven approaches including retargeting campaigns, display ads and delivering ads for conversion events, it’s time to diversify your marketing efforts. In the automotive industry, it can take anywhere from 5–12 weeks for a customer to complete their purchasing journey and therefore it is important to continue to build on your relationship to ensure you are top of mind when it comes time to purchase.

A great way to do this is to shift to owned media marketing strategies such as email campaigns. By building an email list and sending newsletters with news, blog posts, events and your latest product or service offerings, you won’t be affected by any further Facebook policy changes as you own the data.

Another great avenue for reaching a targeted audience on social media is to collaborate with automotive and other related influencers. Depending on the size of your business and budget, you can choose between influencers with large followings or micro-influencers (who have proved to have greater levels of trust and engagement rates due to their friend-like nature). It’s important to note that while the results from data-driven campaigns will decrease, there is still an opportunity for them to be profitable.