On April 27th, 2021 Apple enforced their much anticipated new iOS 14 privacy changes. At Venture, we’ve been working to keep up with the impact of these changes in real-time and we wanted to share everything we’ve learned along the way.

Below we’ve included a free step-by-step guide music marketers can use to create Facebook conversion ads that comply with Facebook & Apple’s new rules.

What exactly has changed with iOS 14?

The change that’s shaken up the digital advertising world is a simple new requirement for all apps in the Apple Store, which allows users to either opt in or opt out of “tracking” within an app.

“Tracking” is what allows apps like Facebook to collect your data across the web and then reuse it for ad targeting.

For a simple real life example. Think about when you’re browsing a website about to buy something. You get distracted and then you see the exact same product or service later in an Instagram ad. With the help of a Facebook pixel - companies and advertisers are able to tap into this treasure trove of tracking data and then retarget users with ads across the web.

Aggregated Events Measurement

In response to Apple’s new privacy changes, Facebook has implemented some changes of their own. Mainly in the form of a new feature called, “Aggregated Events Measurement”, which you can read about in more detail from Facebook.

Aggregated Events Measurement now lives on your Events Manager page in Facebook Business Manager, and was added specifically to allow advertisers to continue processing data and running campaigns effectively despite these iOS changes.

So, what does this mean for music marketers?

Now, with an expected 98% of users choosing opt out of tracking, digital advertisers have a whole new challenge ahead if we want to actually target and connect with the right people.

These changes also have an immediate impact on fanlinks. Most of us use fanlinks and action pages to help our artists promote their music effectively online. These landing pages are provided by third-party sites like Feature.fm, ToneDen, and ArtistHub. They offer a nice seamless way to prompt for actions like follows, subscribes, or streams.

Prior to the iOS 14 updates, we could create a conversion ad by sending people directly to a fanlink as long as we had a Facebook pixel installed. We would then created a fanlink that looks something like this: www.fanlink.com/artist.

The problem now? Facebook will only allow conversion ads to run to domains that you own and have verified. We’ll get to more on this later, but thankfully the new domain verification requirement is actually pretty straightforward.

This is a huge deal though, considering conversion campaigns are the most effective way for artists to spend their money, and they own or have access to the domain of a service like Feature.fm.

Domain Verification

There are two major hurdles advertisers now have to overcome to actually run conversion ads. First is the domain verification and second is the limit of 8 conversion events per domain.

Domain verification is the first step. If you’re running an ad to your own website (like your merch store) this is a much easier process. However, when using these other landing pages, it takes a few extra steps.

Second, they set a limit of 8 conversion events per domain… well... what is a conversion event?

A conversion event is any event you want to take place once a user arrives on a landing page. This might be an “add to cart” or a “follow.” It’s the event you choose based on your goal for the campaign. So now you can only have 8 at a time per domain. Which mostly comes up as an issue if you are running ads for several artists. But we have the solution!

TL;DR: Apple’s iOS 14 update now allows people to opt out of tracking. Facebook introduces a new process for conversion ads including domain verification & a limit of 8 conversion events per domain.

Download our free step-by-step guide to creating Facebook conversion ads that comply with Apple’s iOS 14 changes

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After many hours of our own research, trial and error with landing page services, and discussions with Facebook’s team, we’ve figured out what we consider the best solution. We detailed everything you need to do in a free step-by-step guide you can download below and use to create Facebook conversion ads that comply with iOS 14.

CLICK HERE to download our free step-by-step guide to setting up Facebook conversions ads in iOS 14.

We hope you’ll find this guide helpful. There have been a lot of headaches with this transition, and there will likely to be more changes to come. We’ll continue to add blog updates as we go - where there’s a problem, there’s a solution!