Category: Advertising

10 Reasons to Start Planning Your 2021 Event Sponsorship

Posted on | by Peyton Riddle

2021 is on the horizon and there is no better time than now to make sponsorship plans. COVID-19 has affected the event landscape in a major way. Events are changing, and so should the way sponsorships are planned and executed.

Every business in the market wants to create an image of success and authority. But it’s not very easy when you are competing with the large, already established, companies. Through event sponsorship you can leverage the power of credibility.

If you are thinking of stretching your marketing budget, here are 10 reasons why you should sponsor an event.

Brand Visibility

Sponsoring an event brings your business in the limelight. The event you sponsor puts your business in front of a global audience and gets you a lot of mention in the social media and press. The bigger the event, the bigger the reach.

And in an era of virtual and online-hosted events, reach is actually increasing. More people are open to the idea of attending an event from the comfort of their couch. You don’t have to rely on only reaching the people who enjoy public outings. Under COVID lockdown measures, both audiences are engaging in virtual events.

Lead Generation

With event sponsorship you reach a huge population at one place. You get to meet your target audience and approach them all under one roof. The event organizers also provide a list of attendees which you can use for email marketing.

Business Relationships

Event sponsorship is an opportunity to meet non-competitive companies from your industry and in your area. Sponsorship is a way to collaborate, rather than compete. You can learn more about other businesses that share your target audience and likely hold the same values, which could help plan future partnerships.

Increase Sales of Products

With event sponsorship you get to increase your sales. You can put your products in the hands of your target audience and let them experience it. You can also pass on some free samples which will lead to increase in sales. In the virtual space, you can give product or service demonstrations. You can even have an easy way for the viewers to click through and sign up to learn more, opt in to email messaging or just make a purchase!

Show Social Responsibility

Event sponsorship is a way to show that your business supports a cause or mission about which your customers are passionate about. It helps you to build an image in the society and connect with customers on an emotional front.

Enhance Content & Social Media Marketing

Sponsoring an event gives you a lot of content for ramping up your strategies. Events can put your brand name in every possible social media platform including the event’s official website boosting your reach on social media.

Improve Your Company’s Image

When your business sponsors a big event with a wide enough base, the public perception of your business is as big as the host of the event. People see you as big professional and reputable business.

Learn More About Your Target Audience

Event sponsorships are an opportunity to meet your target audience, though not always in person. Virtual events will continue to be popular even after we start returning to in-person gatherings. But both types of events allow you to interact with your audience.

As a sponsor, you can work with the event host to hold an interactive Q&A segment as a part of a virtual event. Get the audience engaged and learn what they’re interested in, and ideally tie it back to what your business does.

Sponsorships are Affordable

Radio, television and print ads continue to work well and even work together. However, these take a great deal of your time and could potentially be out of your budget. Event sponsorships save you the time and money of having to target an audience. Let the audience choose to come to you through the event.

Get a Strong ROI

All in all, event sponsorships get you a solid return on investment. You get to approach your target audience, increase your sales and you get a list of leads to follow up with afterwards.

Event sponsorship is a deal with a lot of benefits. So start planning how this could fit into your 2021 budget now, before sponsorship slots fill up. Events often live or die based on sponsors, so showing that you have interest and can help support live and local events can help everyone involved.

Better 4 Business: Print Advertising vs Digital Advertising

Posted on | by Post and Courier Staff

Newspaper/print advertising or social media advertising? While social media is climbing the ranks, the newspaper seems to remain steady and calm. Social media advertising is pushed more with every ad, but print remains relevant.

So, what’s the deal with newspaper advertising? Is it a valid competitor to social media? 

The answer? No. But not for the reasons you may think. 

A History Lesson

The year is 1997. The year social media was invented. 

While this was just under 30 years since computers came to fruition, it is also a decade before a mogul in social media advertising would be launched (yes, Facebook). 

Social media also falls approximately 2,054 years after the world’s first newspaper was published. (The first daily newspaper was only 392 years prior.)

In 1704, the first newspaper advertisement was posted. Just 300 years later, the first web banner ad was posted. And, again, Facebook would raise its stakes (and stocks) with Facebook Advertising in 2007. Ultimately, this changes the advertising game.

Print Advertising, Social Media, and $$$

The brief history of newspapers, social media, and the internet were to give you just a slight idea of why newspaper advertising is still around today. It started it all. 

Newspaper advertising gave way to print advertising and vice versa.

Print advertising refers to any hard copy type of medium with an ad. We’re talking magazines, brochures, and, the favorite, direct mail. 

 

Digital advertising has taken the main stage of advertising with nearly $40 billion poured into the advertising medium in 2020. Print advertising rolls in at $13.4 million this year so far. 

A few factors come into play here. 

Social media advertising can cost 25 cents to reach 1,000 people, while print advertising, more specifically newspaper, would, on average, costs $32 to reach 1,000 people.

But saving money does not mean it is better for business.

Throwing Money Away? 

While, yes, the numbers don’t lie, you can spend less to reach more people with digital advertising. 

However, is that the audience you want to reach? It may reach those people, but are they the right people? Are they actually engaging in those ads? Are those 25 cents really gaining that ROI?

Yes, ad targeting is a glorious tool, if used correctly. Our team here at The Post and Courier can curate the perfect social media plan for your business to target, reach, and rake in that ideal audience. 

But if you’re just putting money behind a social ad or Google ad for the sake of putting money behind that ad, you’re not utilizing the tool to its full potential. And, that’s the case for a lot of that $40 billion that’s getting thrown around. There’s so much that goes into placing a social media ad than just credit card information.

Digital advertising actually does not have as high of a payoff as print advertising. Printed publications stay around longer than social media and/or digital advertising. Social media or search engine ads disappear when the money stops flowing.

Print ads, on the other hand, stays around. Once printed, that publication, newspaper or magazine, stay on the coffee table, a shelf, in the waiting room of the doctor’s office.

“When people see ads online, they may forget them in an instant. If they see them repeatedly while flipping through a magazine, that message is more likely to stick.”

Additionally, print advertising sees ROI in word of mouth, uses of coupon codes, and an overall increase in sales. 

Print Advertising & Trust 

Beyond the dollar signs, trust is a major factor that breathes life into print advertising. 

According to MarketProfs, “Consumers trust print advertisements 34% more than they trust search engine ads.”  

What this tells us is that if you pour money into digital advertising and not properly strategize, you could come off as untrustworthy. 

Print advertising also comes with antiquity and being a consistent part of history. With that longevity comes loyalty. 

Just like a favorite restaurant, your favorite shampoo, maybe even your favorite supermarket. If you consistently shop from a place, you have a connection to it. Maybe your mom shopped there or your grandparents. 

Print advertising holds the loyalty of being a household name, always being there. This is something that can’t be replaced.

People trust what they are connected to. 

Print Compliments Digital Ads 

While both digital ads and print ads are very important especially in the digital age, having one and not the other could potentially hurt your business.

Not having social media or even a website leaves a whole group of people unreached. 

Not advertising in print also leaves a whole group untouched. 

Again, having a well thought out digital/social media advertising is the key to succeeding in the paid digital space. 

The same could be said for print advertising. 

Print advertising does reach a niche audience, but the same shows for digital advertising. As mentioned above, who you want to target can help you rake in ideal returns. 

By figuring out a strategy that references or involves your website or social media, can help drive traffic to those platforms leading you to see an ROI in both mediums. 

So, what’s Better 4 Business is both print advertising and digital advertising. The pair are like a fine wine and a good cheese. The antiquated and the modern complement each other.

What’s even Better 4 Business is combining your advertising efforts with marketing. Talk about a match made in heaven. 

 

Better 4 Business: Facebook or Instagram

Posted on | by Post and Courier Staff

Social media has become a dominating platform with 3.2 billion users worldwide. Facebook and Instagram making up a large portion of that use, especially when it comes to business and social media marketing.

While the excitement of using social media to gain more business is intriguing more than ever, you may not need to utilize both social media platforms to see immense success.

The decision and comparison can be overwhelming. We have taken the top attributes of each and broken them down for you to decide which is Better 4 Your Business.

Facebook 4 Business

Facebook, being the matriarch of social media, has many attributes that it brings to the business table.

Industries like alcohol, Food & Beverage, sports teams, hotels, and non-profits being the breadwinner of engagement. So, businesses do well.

For starters, a wider audience. Facebook has 1.6 Billion users, while Instagram has about 112.5 million. This audience is heavily diverse but has an older audience. What those numbers tell us is that Facebook has more opportunity for more people to see your content, paid or organic.

What those numbers also tell us is that while there is a high potential for more people to see your content, they most likely will not see or engage with it. Facebook has a significantly low engagement rate of only 0.09%.

This is why targeting ads is so important. And Facebook does this factor in a great way.

The implementation of an interactive carousel ad. This ad format has shown great success for a B2B audience. This leads to retargeting.

Retargeting tracks when prospects visit your site and then display a relevant ad to that user when they are on the platform.

Using a look-a-like audience to target the ideal audience is also a feature that Facebook does well. You can specifically target individuals with a specific demographic, interest, etc. This helps to strategically pinpoint an audience rather than hoping your ad reaches who you want it to reach.

In addition, retargeting via Facebook not only gains a more specified audience but plays well in SEO tactics.

“Facebook retargeting, in cohesion with SEO tactics, places an undisputed level of efficiency. Rather than targeting a new demographic of customers, using the pixel you are targeting users who have shown the initial interest based on SEO.” Seo Marketer

Another point worth mentioning is that Facebook’s online shopping presence is top-notch. Facebook Marketplace is a mogul in social media shopping.

Outside of shopping, Facebook’s business pages are highly reputable. In fact, having a Facebook Business Page unlocks several benefits for your business in the long run.

Insert Instagram.

Instagram 4 Business

Instagram has captured social media like its iconic logo. So much so, that other social media platforms actually use its design as a model, Facebook included.

Instagram is the trendier of the comparative duo. The demographics reflect this. Instagram tends to attract the younger audience, millennials more specifically.

What is most intriguing about the fact that a young audience drives Instagram stats, is that users report that they follow at least one business religiously.

Another thing to note? One-third of Instagram users have made an online purchase within the Instagram app. Sixty-percent of users uses Instagram to seek out new products, or have discovered new products using the app. This is why the influencer industry is booming!

Perhaps the best part of advertising with Instagram is that about 72% of marketers are currently making use of it.
Instagram also shines in social media for the median 1.22 percent engagement rate it carries. The lowest engagement industry is retail which is .67 percent.

That’s nearly 7 times higher than Facebook’s median engagement rate. In fact, this is 5 times higher than the highest engaged industry on Facebook.

Now, to be fair, again – Instagram does have a significantly lower amount of users than Facebook.

One thing Instagram undoubtedly does well at is the Instagram shop capability. Similar to Facebook’s carousel feature of showcasing products or a list of services in a way that does not feel like you are being sold to, this does exactly that.

Instagram also uses the same targeting, retargeting, and look-a-like audience models as Facebook. Actually, Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012. So, while they are two different companies, the puls side is that they both use Facebook Business Manager to post ads.

Then, the most obvious difference between Facebook and Instagram is that Instagram is more visibly pleasing. For most ads that you are served within the app, you do not even realize that you are viewing an ad. The flawless advertising makes Instagram a successful platform in this sense.

Best 4 Business

So, who reigns champ? Let’s review.

Facebook has 1.6 billion users compared to Instagram’s 11.2 million users. However, Instagram’s median engagement rate is nearly 7 times higher than Facebook’s. While this may attribute to more users causing the engagement rate to water down, breaking down the engagement rate per industry returns the same results.

Instagram is also geared towards a younger audience, but an audience that yearns to shop. Facebook also has a great Facebook shopping capability, the site shows great plays in carousel advertisements.

Additionally, having a Facebook Business page may hold a greater weight than not having one. Facebook Business is a noteworthy complement to your website and business.

Also mentioned above the fact that Facebook owns Instagram. So, regardless of which you prefer, both have the same advertising tools out of Facebook Business Manager. You won’t be jipped of that aspect if you choose exclusively Instagram.

Honestly, the two things the decision boils down to are what you want your content to be and who your audience is. Are you looking for more pictures or videos? Younger or older audience? Broad or specific audience? Breaking those down will help you to decide which is better 4 your business.

Another truth?

Having one over another will not hurt your business. Having both definitely will not hurt your business. What will hurt your business is not accurately strategizing your content and advertising on these platforms.

What could be Better 4 Business is partnering with The Post and Courier.

4 Unique Hacks for Facebook Advertising

Posted on | by Peyton Riddle

If you have any experience running multiple ads on Facebook or Instagram through business manager, you probably think the process is standard and straightforward. 

The truth is, it can be. You can duplicate your old ads and change up the creative or targeting slightly, and get a whole new audience for your advertisements. You can save tons of custom audiences in your ad account and reuse them for various ad campaigns. The process is quite easy to get a hang of.

But the tools that business manager provides you with can allow for some creative ways to market your business and find a valuable audience online.

I’ll run through some of the more unique and useful hacks for Facebook Advertising through business manager.

Unicorn Ad Targeting

This hack goes against conventional advertising wisdom, at first glance. But depending on your business, it could lead to stronger customer acquisition and retention. 

The idea of unicorn ad targeting is that you can combine unrelated interests to get such unique targeting that the customer can’t help but pay attention. Audiences have become very used to seeing advertisements that target one of their interests. But they aren’t used to seeing ads that target multiple of their unique interests.

For example, you can target someone who has an interest in boating and sunflowers. Your ad can sell them a boat flag that features a sunflower. The people who fall into this audience and see this ad will be very surprised to see this overlap and will think something like, “wow, this ad really was made for me.”

The goal here isn’t to shy away from the public’s aversion to data tracking. The goal is to lean into it so that the viewer stops in their tracks and strongly remembers your ad. You’re not hiding anything here, when it comes to customer targeting.

The reason why I said this goes against conventional wisdom, is because this might feel like a weaker use of your money. Why spend $50 to target such a small group of people? Surely your estimated reach numbers will be higher if you were to align related interests in your targeting. This is true, but through unicorn targeting, your ad will catch attention much better and customers will naturally remember you more.

Create a Web Traffic Bomb

Facebook ads can be used to send a rush of users to your product or web page. This is especially useful if your business benefits from being listed on any page that shows trending products, pages, or articles.

The idea here is that you can use business manager to serve ads to the widest and cheapest audience possible. This tends to be by using audience network as your placement, since this tends to be very cheap and reaches a large number of users. 

You can also expand your location targeting wider than you typically would want to. It doesn’t matter so much if the users end up purchasing your product or service. You just want the clicks.

Once this traffic bomb starts occurring on your page, aggregate or other “trending now” type of services or websites will lift you to the top and people will find you that way. This creates a stronger impression with the user than your original paid ad would have. They are being told by a trusted service that your business is valuable among their peers.

Utilize Messenger Ads

One of the more underutilized placements in business manager is Facebook Messenger ads. These ads appear like traditional ads in the users feed, but the clickthrough takes them into facebook direct messaging, rather than a landing page you provided.

These ads can create a conversational relationship between your business and your potential customers. And the approach you should take to make the best of these ads is to use them for customer segmentation.

You have the unique advantage through messenger of finding out more about your customer lead. You can make note of what the users actually says their interests or traits are. And you can ultimately send them into applicable funnels for further marketing.

But how should you converse with the user once you have permission to message them? One good way is to apply active listening. You can set up a default initial message, when they click through, that asks them if they are a novice or expert at your industry service or product. And then you can make note of their experience level in your reply.

You don’t actually have to come up with a new product to sell them based on their experience level, if you don’t already have one. But you can acknowledge their answer and present them the product in a way that addresses their experience level. 

As an example, lets figure you’re selling a standing desk product. When the customer clicks on your messenger ad, they get a message from you asking if they are a first-time standing desk user, or an experience user looking for a better desk. 

If they respond saying they are a new user, you can reply saying “our desk is great for new users and is easy to swap between standing and sitting, as you get used to standing at work!”

If the user is an experienced user, you can craft a response saying “our desk outperforms the competition by using advanced hydraulics to achieve a smooth and fast lift into standing mode!”

Both responses fluff up the value of your product, but don’t’ distinctly state that your product is either only for beginners or experts. You sell these audiences the same product, but you make them feel listened to and acknowledged. The path to conversion then becomes much easier for you.

Skip Straight to Remarketing Ads

This hack says that remarketing is so much more valuable than regular marketing that you should skip the first step entirely.

Traditionally, you would set up an ad to run on facebook networks and then capture the info of the people who interact with your ad and then remarket to them. You create a second impression on the user after they already have brand recognition with you. They are now much more likely to make a final purchase.

The truth is that remarketed ads are 10 times more effective than regular display ads. The click through rate for retargeted ads averages at 0.7% compared to the average of 0.07% for traditional ads.

If your business spends $100 of your marketing budget on targeted ads, but only $10 on remarketed ads after running your initial campaign, you’re doing it backwards. Even if you don’t skip out on the initial ad campaign, as I suggested in the header of this segment, you should at least spend the heavier portion of your budget on retargeting.

The cost per click for remarketed audiences is significantly lower and you’ll end up with more conversions, under the same ad budget.

social media advertising: facebook vs instagram

Social Media Advertising: Facebook vs Instagram

Posted on | by Peyton Riddle

Social Media Advertising: Facebook vs Instagram

The year 2020 has shown us that social media advertising is here to stay, and that allocating your budget to successful campaigns with a high ROI is more important than before. Many times businesses feel the return on print advertising can’t be accurately measured. The beauty of marketing via social media channels is the variety of insights provided that can be analyzed to continually improve your campaigns to achieve successful results.  

Gone are the days where social media was solely for social interaction. In fact, research shows that 52% of all online brand discovery still happens in public social feeds (organic & paid). This suggests that the majority of consumers use Instagram and Facebook to investigate a new company before even visiting their website! 

Build brand awareness and loyalty by engaging with your followers and curating a feed that gives consumers a feeling of trust and relatability. Of course this means understanding the algorithms and the importance of curating captivating content. Let’s break down common questions surrounding social media advertising. 

 

What are the benefits of social media marketing?

Social media is proven to increase brand awareness, inbound traffic, conversion rates, customer satisfaction, brand loyalty, and most importantly is measurable and cost effective.

 

Audience Growth: Facebook v Instagram

Of all social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram are proven to be the most interactive and can produce the best ROI. However, the benefits of each are very subjective and depend on which features are being used, your industry, audience, and other factors.

  • Facebook
    • Facebook launched in February 2004, and introduced Facebook Ads in November of 2007. The platform was originally created to help people stay in-touch with family and friends and became an advertising powerhouse with the launch of Facebook Ads and Business pages in 2007.According to Statista, Facebook reported almost 1.79 billion daily active users and overall, daily active users accounted for 66% of monthly active users.  This number continues to grow by 9% compared to the year before, despite the speculation that Facebook is “dying”. 
  • Instagram
    • Instagram launched in October 2010 and is a younger platform focused on storytelling through images and now instagram reels and stories. Instagram ran its first ad in November 2013. By 2017, Instagram was averaging more than 2 million businesses with purchased ads, compared to Facebook’s 5 million. 
    • However, according to Statista, Instagram has over 500 million daily active users out of 1 billion monthly active users, making Instagram a powerhouse when it comes to audience engagement.

 

Audience: Facebook v Instagram

Facebook may not have the highest engagement, but because it is the oldest platform the audience is huge, with more than 2.45 billion monthly active users. Facebook differs from other social media platforms that show strong trends in users by age. The average age for a Facebook user ranges from 18-49, with little variance in between. However, Facebook is the most popular social network among seniors and the majority of the users are in the United States.

Of this 1.79 billion daily users, the ad audience reach for the U.S. is only 183 million people. This audience size has also seen a decrease in the past year from 3% to .4% - a fairly significant dip.

Instagram’s growth continues to be studied and monitored by marketers. In the United States, the network reaches over 37% of the population. The global audience is diversified, with only 11% of Instagram users represented by the U.S. eMarketer estimates 2020 will reveal a growth of over 5% in the U.S. compared  and anticipates this number to continue growing at this growth rate. 

More adults use Instagram than you would think, with 37% in 2019. The network is also significantly more popular amongst the younger generations. 67% of users are between the ages of 18-29. Here’s a breakdown from Hootsuite:

    • 18-27: 67%
    • 30-49: 47%
    • 50-64: 23%
    • 65+: 8%

Another important and interesting insight to Instagram’s audience is that the gender demographics are pretty even - 48% female and 52% male. 

All of these statistics are important to research when considering your buyer personas. You should always analyze your business’s audience and design your strategy based on this information rather than the overall network statistics.

 

 

Brand engagement: Facebook v Instagram

It’s no surprise that consumers rarely engage with branded social content compared to all content on a social platform. A study by Forrester revealed that on six of the seven social networks, the brands studied had an engagement rate of less than 0.1%. So, between Instagram and Facebook, which platform has the highest engagement? Depending on the blog you read, you’ll render different results. According to the Forrester study, one platform stood out the most: Instagram.

Facebook launched Facebook Business Pages to support the Facebook Ads launch in 2007, and now has over 60 million business pages. 39% of Facebook users that follow Facebook Business Pages do so because they want to receive special offers. Interestingly enough, the average organic reach of a Facebook post is only 6.4% of the Page’s total likes. Statista reports that  in 2019 the social network’s marketing spending reached almost 9.9 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of over 2 billion U.S. dollars from 2018. However, despite this level of spending, the engagement on Facebook with paid branded content is still under .1%. 

A study by Merkle reveals that ad spending on Instagram is 23% higher than facebook. What is driving this shift in ad spending to Instagram’s platform? Story ads and higher engagement.  

 

 

Types of Ads: Facebook v Instagram

Facebook offers Facebook Ads Guide for types of ads. These ad types include: Image Ads, Video Ads, Carousel Ads, and Collection Ads. Facebook provides thorough research where their teams explored the effectiveness of ads based on engagement, exploring text, timing, and format considerations. You can find some of this research here. Facebook’s targeting tools are considerable, and allow you to narrow down by purchase behavior, interests, location, demographics, Facebook communities, and more. You can create Core, Custom, and Lookalike Audiences for your ad delivery to increase relevance, thus leading to higher ad engagement.

Instagram ad types consist of feed posts and story ads. Both types look just like regular posts and stories, but are labeled with a “Sponsored” label and include a call to action button with options to send to your messages, website, Instagram profile, etc. According to AdEspresso, the average engagement rate for Instagram branded posts is 4.3%, compared to Facebook’s 1.5%. 

The user experience for Instagram story ads shows most users don’t realize they’re seeing an ad play back to back, revealing a smooth experience that isn’t too interruptive. Additionally, because an Instagram story takes up the entire screen there is no competition with other content and when targeted correctly, the experience feels organic. Therefore, consumers are more likely to engage.

Both are measured by reach & impressions. Reach is the number of unique views on a post. Impressions are the total number of times a post was seen. Both metrics provide helpful insights to your ad performance and allow you to make adjustments to improve your ad engagement overall.

 

 

Cost: Facebook v Instagram

A study in 2019 found that the average CPM for Instagram is $5.14 per 1000 visits. While the average CPC for Instagram ads is between $.20 and $2.00. Compared to Facebook’s CPM of $5.12 and CPC of $.80, Instagram wins again in this category. This study is a broad estimation, and certain factors like your target audience will affect these costs. Let’s discuss a few factors that affect the ad costs.

  • Ad Relevance - Facebook takes into account the relevancy of your ad amongst your selected target audience and factors this into the cost of the ad. Facebook and Instagram provide a relevancy score that changes while your ad runs. If you receive high engagement, your score will increase. If consumers are hiding your ad, your score will go down. A/B testing is a great way to determine what is relevant to your audience. Remember to only change one factor so that you receive concise data. Similar to a Google algorithm, the more relevant your content is to your target buyers and ad audience, the less expensive your ads will be.
  • Target audience - If you are targeting a popular audience that is high-demand, the cost will fluctuate. 
  • Time of year - like any retail or sales strategy, the time of year will determine the cost of the ad. Popular times of the year, like holidays, will affect the ad cost.
  • Ad Run Dates - Obviously, the longer you run an ad the more your cost will increase. The average ad doesn’t necessarily need to run for a long period of time. Assessing your impression and reach goals will help guide you to determine a reasonable ad length and price.

 

 

 

 

 

Balancing targeted advertising in the age of digital privacy

Posted on | by Peyton Riddle

When Apple announced it’s latest iPhone software operating system, iOS14, it went all in on privacy features. This is nothing new for the leading phone manufacturer, but Apple wants their customers to have greater control than ever over their information.

This is an admirable effort on Apple’s part, as businesses like Facebook and Google come under scrutiny for mismanaging user data. But how do the new features, which are already adopted by 25% of users, affect your ability to effectively market your business?

What has changed?
The new notification makes users more aware than ever of how their data is used across the internet, mostly for targeted advertising.

Normally, new features of a phone operating system wouldn’t mean much to businesses that aren’t involved in that ecosystem. But with Apple’s iOS14, which released on September 16, businesses that rely on targeted advertising and marketing are more affected than ever.

The new system will require apps to ask users to allow data to be tracked and saved to their unique online profile, most commonly used for targeted advertising.

Facebook went so far as to warn app developers that the new privacy changes will severely weaken its ability to track users and serve targeted ads. 

“Our ability to deliver targeted ads on iOS 14 will be limited…” Facebook said in a release. “As a result, some iOS 14 users may not see any ads from Audience Network, while others may still see ads from us, but they’ll be less relevant.”

Audience Network is Facebook’s system for utilizing the unique identifiers that phones create for their owners. They read that info and create a profile for ad targeting that can follow the user into other apps and services. This also helps Facebook build its audience data for paid ads in business manager, which has been a powerful tool for businesses to reach potential customers.

How immediate is the change?

The tracking features do still exist, as the operating system did not outright kill them. That unique identifier, called the IDFA (ID for advertisers) is still on a user’s iPhone. But the big change comes from iOS14 forcing apps to ask the user for permission to track. This weakens the potential effectiveness of the IDFA.

When given the choice, we can assume many users will refuse to allow apps to track their data. In 2020, the digital landscape is shaped by the ongoing struggle between privacy concerns of users, and the need for businesses to reach new audiences through targeted advertising.

So as more users come to adopt the OS and learn about the privacy features, the more people will inevitably opt out of data tracking within apps. Once an app is opened for the first time after the user updates their phone, they will see a pop-up that asks if they want to allow the app to save their data.

How should you adapt?

After Facebook put out its warning to developers, Apple decided to hold back some of the features until next year. The goal is to give app developers more time to adjust to the changes.

Users even have the ability to opt out of receiving targeted ads based on the profile stored on their phone.

It won’t be until 2021 that Apple forces all apps to warn users about the data tracking.

“We are committed to ensuring users can choose whether or not they allow an app to track them. To give developers time to make necessary changes, apps will be required to obtain permission to track users starting early next year,” reads Apple’s developer note.

So if your business provides an app to customers on Apple’s App Store, you do have additional time to comply with the changes and develop your app around the idea that users can opt out of providing data.

But even if you don’t have an app, this change still heavily affects your business’ ability to reach new customers that are potentially prime to spend money with you. Should Facebook abandon its utilization of the IDFA, one of the largest sources of user data will be dampened.

Since this is a war of sorts between user’s concerns and advertisers’ need for data, it is important to remain sympathetic to the users. 

In the end, you likely have a level of concern for your digital privacy as well. Try to think about the things that you wouldn’t want data trackers to know. You can then build your targeted marketing campaigns to not be blatantly directed at the user.

You can still utilize the audience databases that exist, but avoid looking like you’re specifically targeting a single action or interest. This will all help maintain good will among privacy-minded customers.

It might also be beneficial to broaden the audiences that you target. If your business sells to mountain bikers, for example, you can keep your audience size large by including all kinds of bikers in your targeting. If the mountain bikers start opting out of data tracking, that audience will shrink within the ad networks. And the more people feel like ads are being forced upon them via hyper-specific targeting, the less they will trust you.

If your business values a balanced approach to targeted advertising and marketing, contact The Post and Courier Advertising today.