THE IOS UPDATE AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR AD TRACKING

Alex Becker CEO/Founder of HYROS

THE IOS UPDATE AND WHAT IT MEANS FOR AD TRACKING

Alex Becker CEO/Founder of HYROS

Guys, I’m straight outta the shower because for the first time ever, the thumbnail actually matches the severity of this blog. The iOS update went live, and it hit Facebook tracking way harder than I thought it would. I frankly didn’t think it would have that much of an impact … but it did.

Right now, I’m actually smiling. If you’re wondering why I’m smiling, it’s because it didn’t hit Hyros at all. We were already better at tracking before this, and with our Facebook API integration, we actually work with Facebook to make your tracking really, really good. So it’s really excellent for me.

But we already had preparations in place in case we got hit, so it wasn’t something I was concerned about. I also haven’t been really concerned because the way we track is very ethical. We track people from the websites that the business has put us on.

We’re not tracking people moving around the internet and watching what they’re doing. We’re simply recording people hitting the websites of the businesses that purposely have us on there. So it’s not invasive, it’s not digging into where people are going, it’s just where they are.

I’m not here to talk about that! I want to give you the updates on this … I resisted writing about this for a long time because I wanted to wait and see what happened instead of just throwing something together like everybody else and talking about what they think might happen. No one works at Apple, so they can’t really tell you.

Now that it’s gone live, I’d like to share things with you. On top of that, I’m not going to pitch Hyros in this blog. If you’re interested in fixing your tracking, there’s a link to it on literally every other video on my channel. What’s more, I want to show you how to fix this, or at least understand, how to fix it.

It’s actually pretty simple.

If you understand the premise of everything that’s happening, just do me a favor and keep reading. I’m going to keep this super short. You don’t need to be tempted to click away from the blog because there won’t be a fast action pitch or anything like that.

So let’s get to it.

Understanding Ad Tracking is Crucial for Growth

Okay, guys, so first and foremost, I am a tracking expert. I’ve worked in tracking for my own ads and deeply inside of tracking at Hyros for years. I want to stress one thing to you, I don’t work at Apple. And while I know how tracking works, I do not work at Apple. So I can’t tell you everything technology-wise is an update, I can just tell you what I’m seeing. And I can tell you what I believe that we’re seeing.

So first off, what do you need to understand that just happened? I believe the foremost thing that Apple focused on is blocking Facebook’s apps. In light of that, what you need to understand is two things about how Facebook tracks and then also how their apps track.

And one thing I want to point out is that this blog is not meant to hate on Facebook. Their tracking for the past few years is incredible because it’s a one-size-fits-all-slap-on solution that doesn’t require any customer support. That’s pretty cool.

I want to also stress that what we do at Hyros is work with Facebook, we’re not here to bash Facebook or say, “Facebook is dead, use us instead.” Frankly, what I’m going to show you at the end of this blog is to tell you how we actually work with Facebook to make Facebook ads better than ever.

Facebook IS Tracking Your Actions Through the IOS Update

That being said, what Apple really went after first is the app. And you need to understand when you’re on the app scrolling around on your phone, what’s happening is you’re being tracked the entire time because you’re essentially in Facebook’s network. (Let’s just use for lack of better words, I’m gonna dumb this all down.)

Alright, so everything you’re doing on there is being tracked—all your actions are being tracked as you use the app. That’s not good because it can see that you’re on the app, it can see who you are, and it can see everything you’re looking at.

And then when you click out of the app, what also happens is that you’re still viewing websites inside the app, so it can see everywhere you’re going and everywhere you’re moving around too. I’m not going to talk about whether this is good or bad. I don’t think anyone’s a fan of this. But more importantly, this is what Apple went in and targeted, okay?

You have to understand this … Let’s say this is the website and everything that’s going on at the website server level, and then the website is contained in the app:

Alright, so this is the container of the app. The app is watching everything you’re doing from here. Well, what it did is it just blinded the app. The website can still see what you’re doing.

This is why for example, server-side tracking (which is what Hyros is, or maybe you’ve set up your own custom solution in the past) is working just fine because the iOS system isn’t blocking websites from loading up. And even when you’re looking at the website, you’re in the Facebook browser.

So that also being said, what you also have to understand about Facebook tracking is that it’s semi-blind. You have to look at where the tracking is applied. So when you click an ad, what’s going to happen is there will be an FB click ID on the link, (which isn’t necessarily tracking, it’s just used for identification purposes) and this is where your tracking begins.

Now, there is a problem whenever you jump from page to page. And this problem has been going on forever, by the way, this isn’t anything new. Specifically, if you’re on Safari or Firefox, it wipes the Facebook tracking. Of course, you have the Facebook pixel up here, but the reason why this is bad is that when these browsers are closed down, the tracking is lost to some extent.

What Is Happening to Facebook Tracking After the IOS Update?

Again, I don’t work at Facebook. All I can tell you is what we’ve seen going on in the tracking, okay? And what we’ve seen in our tracking and their tracking. This could be fundamentally wrong. I want to stress that, okay? I don’t want to make any statements where I’m just pulling stuff out of my butt. I’m just telling you what I think.

So at this point, the tracking is lost whenever you close down the browser, switch devices, or whatnot. This isn’t great for tracking in the first place. This is one of the reasons why Facebook tracking had a lot of inaccuracies with webinar funnels, call funnels, etc. because tracking is really applied right here:

So it can watch when you’re logged in to Facebook and watch basically when your browser is connected to Facebook. But as soon as this is closed down, these browsers are switched, you hop to another device, and tracking is lost in the first place. So this isn’t necessarily important to the update, this is how it tracked before.

The main thing you need to understand is that one of the key ways where it had a huge way to track with and apply tracking from the app just got knocked out. And so most people are using the Facebook app, or they’re using Safari on the iOS system, which is again, kind of doing similar things.

I’m not sure every place that Apple wiped out their tracking … But it looks like if you’re on an app that’s in the iOS system, it’s going to be slapping the stuff. And the reason why this is also bad again is that Facebook tracking needs to have that connection to Facebook. It’s not reapplied every single click. It’s not actually stored on the server when the click comes in.

How Does Server-side Tracking Work for Facebook Ads?

So let me explain pretty much how Hyros works or any server-side tracking works. So if a person clicks a Facebook ad on Facebook, what’s happening is that Facebook is going to send in a Facebook click ID. And then there’s also going to be a parameter talking to Hyros that tells you what Facebook ad it came from.

I’m going to use Hyros as an example in this blog, but you can also interchange this with server-side tracking. I’m not trying to pressure you into buying Hyros. You should just be setting up some type of server-side tracking. I think Hyros is the best for it, but if you want to set up something custom, by all means, you just need to understand this.

The parameter that’s in the Facebook link—which is going to be a little line of text after the link and the Facebook ID—is going to be collected on the page. So right off the bat, Hyros is going to know that this ad was the thing that generated this click and this is exactly where this person came from.

Then, what happens is that every other link they click on the website. Let’s imagine they go back to their cell phone and click an email to get to this page. Let’s imagine they close the browser down and then reopen the browser. It doesn’t really matter because we have enough levels of tracking to recognize, so the tracking is reapplied at every step.

On top of that, let’s imagine the person goes to a website and this is an opt-in page. Then they land on the thank you page for the opt-in, they come back to checkout later on, and then they process it in a stripe. What’s going on right here is the data is reapplied and rechecked and recorded at each of these steps.

As long as we can connect one piece of data to the overall big chunk of data that’s being collected, it really doesn’t matter. We know exactly who clicked the ad and where they came from. More importantly, as soon as we see the data come in, we can easily go and say, “Okay, this is the data that came in, the original place that this person came from was this ad, and this was the original Facebook click ID.”

Here’s where it gets really cool.

Now, we can go and basically see that this is the Facebook click ID. And Facebook knows this, they have this information. Then we can easily say, “Hey, Facebook, this is the Facebook click ID, this is who clicked.” And Facebook responds, “Oh, okay. I know who this person is, and I know what this ad is.”

Then, they place the conversion inside their system, which then trains their AI pixels the same way you were training them before, except much better because we’re dealing with 100% accurate data, or at least as close to 100% as we can possibly get here.

I could be wrong here, but I’m extremely sure that I’m not … Hyros is the only system that does this. We’re the only one that connects to Facebook click Id like this. And we also do this for Google ads as well.

Key Takeaways

So the main takeaway is that the original tracking Facebook was using in the past just took a major hit.

A) That wasn’t the best form of tracking in the first place.

B) It wasn’t the best way to train your AI.

C) The same solutions before server-side tracking that was already the better way to train your pixels and AI and the better way to track your ads—it’s still there, you can still train your AI much better, and you can still assign sales directly in your Facebook ad manager.

You don’t even need to be using the Hyros Chrome extension. If you were to look in my browser, it shows me way more calls collected yesterday than Facebook collected. But I can push this data back and literally, my ads don’t change. I’m still pushing the same exact data right in the ad manager and still training my pixel.

So that’s what’s going on. That’s what we’re seeing, and those are the solutions to it. You should definitely be looking into server-side solutions. I think Hyros is the best, and I think our competitors are terrible. That’s one of the reasons why Hyros has done so well for the past year.

That being said, you should be looking into having someone set up a server-side solution for you. As I said, if you’re interested in checking out Hyros, every other video on my channel has a link to it below.

So this has been Becker. Take it easy.

HYROS TRACKING

If you are interested in obtaining the same stats I showed in this video and even having us help you set this up, GO HERE to get more information on HYROS.

Ad Training and Tactics

While I do not sell courses, I do offer a private coaching program where I train people on the ad strategies I have used to build multiple 8 figure and 7 figures businesses. You can get more details on that HERE.

HYROS Facebook Group

It’s really simple. This group is the best media buyer Facebook group online because we make sure that every member is spending significant ad spend before joining. It’s for veteran ad buyers only and because of that the networking/information being shared is on another level. You can apply to join HERE