Continued Improvements to Ad Performance and Measurement

In advance of the busy holiday shopping season and amidst all of the digital advertising industry changes, our top priority is helping you reach new and existing customers, drive your marketing objectives and measure the performance of your campaigns — all while supporting your efforts to respect people’s choices around privacy.

Easier Conversions API setup

With our recent introduction of the Conversions API Gateway, we've made the process of setting up the Conversions API quicker and easier — especially for advertisers who may lack developer resources.

The Conversions API creates a simple and reliable connection between your marketing data and the Facebook systems that help businesses optimize ad targeting, decrease cost per action and measure results. In a Facebook study, advertisers who followed best practices while sharing data via both the Facebook pixel and the Conversions API received a 8% CPA improvement on average.¹

The Conversions API Gateway greatly reduces the time it takes to set up the Conversions API. Available as an option in Events Manager, the Conversions API Gateway can help you to set up the Conversions API quickly and without developer resources or coding experience.

As we build for the next era of personalized experiences, the Conversions API and Conversions API Gateway will help simplify the usage of privacy-enhancing technologies. For example, Private Lift, our new privacy-enhancing measurement offering that will be available to all advertisers next year, can use Conversions API Gateway integrations to reduce implementation complexities and provide data controls.

Updates to Aggregated Event Measurement

We’re improving campaign reporting for iOS 14+ users through Aggregated Event Measurement (AEM), making it clearer which ads are responsible for conversions, like a purchase or app install, while continuing to honor the privacy and tracking preferences people make on Facebook. We've enabled view-through attribution by default for newly created campaigns using web events, which is beneficial for many industries including eCommerce and Retail. This will provide an understanding of the types of users who may see an ad on Facebook and later make a conversion, without clicking on the ad. If this change doesn't apply to your business, you are able to select a different option before launching your campaign within Ads Manager.

Additionally, we’ll be extending AEM to consider conversions from all advertiser-associated web pages in auto-redirect scenarios. For example, when a user clicks on an ad and lands on jasper.com, but later purchases through jasper.com.uk. Also, for businesses that do not own the top-level websites that their advertisements direct to, we are beginning to enable them to get advertiser-level reporting which they didn’t have access to previously. For example, Jasper's Market runs ads that direct users to a partner platform called marketplace.com. Jasper's Market was previously unable to get reporting, as they did not own marketplace.com. However, with this update, Jasper will be able to get reporting on their own campaigns, which were previously only available to marketplace.com.

We have also started a gradual global roll out of Aggregated Event Measurement for App (App AEM). This will strengthen your ability to measure actions that people take while using your apps, like making a purchase or achieving a new level in a game. This new measurement reporting capability will help with re-engagement campaigns that have in-app destinations for all iOS users (including iOS14.5+ users). Initially, the feature will be available if you run Catalog Sales app event campaigns.

App AEM will allow you to use campaign optimizations like Conversion or Value Optimization to redirect users in-app and drive business results. For example, with Conversion optimization, we’ll deliver ads to people that are most likely to take action when they see a product from your catalog.

To benefit the most from these updates, we recommend you follow the best practices for Aggregated Event Measurement outlined here.

New SKAdNetwork campaign capabilities

We’re expanding campaign management and attribution capabilities to help improve the performance of your app ads. We will enable view-through conversion attribution for iOS 14+ Mobile App Install campaigns that rely on data received from Apple's SKAdNetwork (SKAN) API for measurement of conversion events in our reporting surfaces. With this update, you will be able to understand a more comprehensive view of conversion paths, e.g. the steps taken by a user towards making a conversion (like a purchase), from their iOS 14+ Mobile App Install campaigns.

We are also increasing our ad account limitation for SKAN campaigns. Rather than being limited to one ad account, apps will be able to run 9 SKAN campaigns across up to 9 ad accounts per app ID. This will help advertisers who run app campaigns across multiple ad accounts they may own.

Looking Ahead: Evolving our measurement approach

In addition to new products and improvements, we're also evolving our approach to building ad measurement solutions. Our goal is to make sure useful measurement is accessible and tailored for businesses of all sizes, and enables you to make better marketing decisions. We are orienting our approach around three priorities:

• Measuring Total Value: Our tools will provide you with a clear understanding of the value of all Facebook marketing — whether ads or other experiences like organic posts or Shops — and use these insights to make smarter decisions on where to invest and optimize. For example, earlier this October, we began to roll out an AB testing tool for Organic posts, allowing you to test up to four combinations of photos, text, and links for organic posts on Facebook. This can help inform future activities, and will roll out for all customers before the end of the year.
• Actionable Insights: We aremaking effective measurement less time-consuming and more actionable. We’re adding Contextual Recommendations in Commerce Insights and Ads Reporting, which may benefit marketers across both paid and organic content and increase the total value businesses create across Facebook's Family of Apps. Marketers will see tailored recommendations where it’s easiest to take action in Facebook Business Suite Insights, Ads Manager, and Commerce Manager. For example, a pop-up may alert you to a newly available lookalike audience, alongside insights on how it might improve your performance.
• Privacy at the Core: Privacy considerations will be at the core of any measurement products we build, including privacy-enhancing technologies that will power future versions of our tools, like Private Lift.

We are committed to helping your business succeed and grow, and will continue to share these types of updates to help you navigate through changes in the advertising ecosystem.