It seems like most of the news in the digital advertising space is obsessed with Apple and the newest IOS 14 update, and for good reason. This update is fundamentally changing the way digital advertisers think about targeting, and the platform that has been most effected and vocal about these shifts is Facebook.
We recently sat down with Level Media Manager Abby Young to talk more about this. Listen to the full conversation here:
In response to the now limited ways to track users, Facebook spent a great deal of time and money developing a strategy in which ad accounts must pick just 8 conversion events to optimize towards. Not only were ad accounts now limited to only 8 types of conversions, but marketers also had to rank these events in order of importance. Now, this is simple in theory — you pick your events, you rank them, and then boom you’re done, and Facebook is happy (in theory). But what if business priorities shift and you must change your order of importance or add a new conversion to the top of the line?
Well, all your ads will probably get paused for 72 hours.
That’s right, all of your ads in that ad account will be paused for 72 hours if the ranking of your conversion events is changed or you add a new event and it isn’t placed at the bottom of the event list.
Facebook was incredibly vocal about making sure domains were verified and events were picked, but there were limited warnings about what would happen when you must adjust these events. Nor is there a warning in platform when the changes are being made. In fact, the only notice we could find was this help center article describing event priority- https://www.facebook.com/business/help/193250612476055
If you already have 8 events and need to add a new one, it seems like you’ll have to bite the bullet and let the ads be paused for 72 hours. However, if you have less than 8 events you can add a new one with no impact on your other ads, but it must be placed at the bottom of the rankings.
Who knows how long this policy will be in place, but for now advertisers have to remember these three tips:
- Try to use conversions that are already ranked
- If you need a new conversion event, make sure it’s ranked last. If you already have 8 events and need to get rid of one, you are out of luck.
- If your ads must be paused, do your best to make sure that pause happens on your least busy days.
