How Facebook's recent updates affect your Feature.fm data in Facebook Ads

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If you are using your Facebook Pixels on Feature.fm Landing Pages with the "ffm.to" domain, you have certainly noticed some changes or interruptions in your Facebook Ads account. We have been working tirelessly to adapt to the recent updates made by Facebook in response to Apple's most recent privacy changes in the iOS 14 update.

Our mission in response to these updates is to share up to date information about how these changes affect you and what you can do to continue utilizing your custom conversion events in your Facebook ads.

We have been following the guidance put out by Facebook through their account management teams, their Help Center and extensive testing in Facebook Business Manager.

Background:

Apple’s announced iOS 14 changes require that all apps in the App Store show a prompt to iOS 14 users in accordance with their AppTrackingTransparency framework. These changes will impact how Facebook receives and processes conversion events from tools like the Facebook pixel. Once Apple requires the prompt and it is shown on Facebook, advertisers running campaigns to iOS 14 users will be impacted by limitations on data sharing.

Facebook resources:

How Apple’s iOS 14 Release May Affect Your Ads
Facebook Pixel Updates for Apple's iOS 14 Requirements

Here's what we know so far:

Below is a summary of the information that we believe to be true based on the information that has been provided so far. The information we receive our understanding is evolving. We will continue to provide updates as we receive new information.

  • In order to continue optimizing ads for custom conversion events, Facebook is requiring Business Manager accounts to 1) Verify ownership of their domains and 2) Associate a maximum of 8 conversion events per domain.
  • Facebook has launched a new tool called Aggregated Event Measurement which is used to associate your 8 custom conversion events with your verified domain.
  • Facebook is pausing any ads or ad sets that currently optimize for your custom conversions coming from your Facebook Pixels on domains that you have not verified ownership of. This includes custom conversions that are set up on your Feature.fm landing pages that use ffm.to.
  • Each verified domain can be associated with only 1 Facebook Business Manager account and custom conversion events can only be assigned by the domain owner and associated with a pixel owned by the Facebook Business Manager account, which blocks you from being able to associate your custom conversions to the ffm.to domain.
  • While some customers have reported they are able to continue running ads that optimize for conversions from their ffm.to landing pages, others have reported that Facebook has paused or stopped their ad sets already.
  • Our expectation is that any ads that are optimized for custom conversion events coming from your ffm.to landing pages will be paused and blocked from using custom conversions.
  • You will be able to continue running ads to the ffm.to domain that are optimized for Facebook considerations that don't rely on your Faceboook pixel such as "link clicks" and "engagement".
  • * Additionally, we expect that you are still able to target ads against your retargeting audiences from the data coming from your pixels that are on ffm.to landing pages. This change appears to currently only block conversion events from being used.

Here's what you can do

First, switch any ads that are optimized for a custom conversion to a general consideration like "link clicks" or "engagement" so they don't get paused.

Use a Custom Domain to continue using conversion events

We have opened access to more Feature.fm Marketing Plans to use Custom Domains. Learn more about how to access Custom Domains here.

  • To our knowledge, the only way you can continue to use custom conversions from your Feature.fm Landing Pages is to use a Custom Domain, meaning you would replace the "ffm.to" URL with a completely new domain that you own, such as "mycustomdomain.to".
  • If you are using a custom domain in Feature.fm, you can simply follow Facebook's instructions to verify ownership of your domain and continue to use custom conversion events.
  • Custom Domains are currently supported only on Feature.fm's Pro Marketer Plan. If you need help getting this set up, please reach out to clientservices@feature.fm.

Please note that we are continuing to investigate and understand the impact of these changes on our customers as well as determine if there is a more scalable solution to allow you to associate custom conversions with ffm.to landing pages.