Why iOS 14 is actually good news for dedicated ad managers. I know you may not feel like it is at the moment, but that’s what we’re diving into today.

At the time of recording this, iOS 14 has been rolling out, and ad managers are dealing with the impact of it. We’ve been learning about it for months and getting things ready, but then as always, when it comes to the crunch, there’s things that we just haven’t known about. Facebook hasn’t even known about some of those things, so adjustments are getting made daily. We’re often feeling like we’re scrambling and having to catch up. There’s a new bug. There’s a new thing that makes ads not run or new error code. You may be feeling a bit of pressure about all of that, and you might even be thinking about another career path that  doesn’t require so many changes.

But hold up because iOS 14 and the implications of it all with Apple’s ATT (App Tracking Transparency) and getting people to opt in or out on their iOS devices is actually good news for Facebook ad managers.

I’ll explain why. You see, it used to be that anyone could just launch an ad by creating an ad account, and they didn’t even need to do that. In Business Manager, they can just create a personal ad account and launch some ads. Chances are, they used their own campaign. They didn’t even have the pixel installed, and they had all this other stuff going on.

Now they won’t even be able to launch an ad unless they have their domain verified, unless they are using Business Manager and a whole myriad of other conditions. So ad managers are more in demand now than ever before because things have dramatically changed on Facebook. It is harder to run ads now.

There were a lot of cowboy ad managers who would just run some ads and not even really care or do tracking and all that kind of rubbish. Then you have dedicated ad managers come in and look at these accounts and go, “Oh, look, I’m sorry. They didn’t even have the pixel installed.” Plus all this other information that we have to be the bearer of bad news for our clients. Hopefully all those gung-ho ad managers are heading off to the hills and are doing other things.

So us dedicated ad managers that are on the forefront of all these iOS changes that are rolling out as they come to us each day, learning, tapping into our brain trusts and being able to troubleshoot, are more valuable than ever. Clients are going to need you to set up their domains.

They will go to launch an ad and they’ll say:
“We can’t launch any ads.”
“We want to do these commercials.”
“We’ve got a launch coming up next week and we can’t launch any ads.”

These things need to be prepared and ready. If they’ve just been running ads through a personal account, they need to get into Business Manager.

What I’ve taught people in my Elite Ad Manager certification is to partner your Business Manager with your client’s Business Manager, so that when they’re partnered with you and your team (which can just be one VA), you can access the ad account and make any changes that are needed.

Now, how iOS 14 has made that a bit different and the Facebook changes is by surrounding the domain verification and aggregated events. Those events are like our standard events or customer events that we’re wanting to optimize; they need to be set up in our client’s Business Manager over in their ad account. So that’s where you will actually need to be added as an admin into their Business Manager and given access to their business settings so that you can make the domain verification. You can create aggregated events and all that sort of stuff. So you’ll need to be added to their Business Manager for a short time. Then you can remove yourself and carry on as normal in your Business Manager.

So that’s one of the big changes that on the day-to-day basis of getting new clients onboard or helping people set this up is different. You can just jump on a Zoom call and walk them through it after that’s all sorted.

For domain verification and aggregated events, you’ve gone through your selected events and now they actually need to be prioritized. And if they’re not set up in the right prioritization and they want to get changed, then ads will pause for three days. So those things need to be set up again. If you have a client (or a potential client), that’s doing a launch in a week and these aren’t set up, and then they go to launch and you haven’t gotten the aggregated events for what they’re needing to optimize for, then they’re going to be in a bit of a pickle. They may not be able to run those ads for a few days.

So again, this is where an ad manager who knows their stuff that is on top of these iOS changes is super, super valuable for businesses because Facebook still has two billion people that are accessing Facebook on a daily basis. So Facebook advertising, while it’s changed, is still an essential part for businesses and their marketing strategy. Even if you’re feeling frustrated with Facebook and Apple and all of these changes that are going on, know your value. And especially when we’re talking about coaching and digital courses, we also have the complexity of all these third-party platforms, like ThriveCart, Easy Webinar, WebinarJam, and EverWebinar.

All these different platforms that are typically used in this niche, and how they have responded to these changes and whether you can use their third party domains or their sub domains, or whether your clients need to set up their own custom domain on those platforms. Again, that’s where you will shine as you connect with people and you tell them what these changes mean and how they can work around it. They are going to say:

“Oh my gosh! Take my money.”
“Can you set this up for me? I do not have time to do this.”

These business owners do not have time to learn all these things or to go and try and look all this stuff up on YouTube and figure it all out, and then get into ads manager, and then be ripping their hair out. So this is a time for you to shine. Do content, create videos, tell people what they need to know about these iOS changes. And instead of them probably going off and doing it, many will, but many of them will also say:

“Can you just do this for me?”
“I saw your video about X, Y, Z. I need that done.”
“How much is it for you to do that for me?”

There’s a lot of golden opportunities here for you. Be encouraged even though things have changed and probably aren’t going to go back to the way they were. It’s kind of like a step back. We had it so good with all the tracking and everything that we can see. Yes, things have changed, so we just need to adapt. But being at the forefront of it, you are super valuable in all these changes. Don’t lose heart; make sure that you’re in a community where you can tap in and get that kind of support where there are other ad managers that are in the trenches with you that are going through all these changes as well.

And this is where my Inner Circle is so valuable because we have an amazing community of very encouraging ad managers, and we also have a Facebook certified tech partner who is in there bringing us the latest iOS updates. Seriously, the guys in my community have been prepared for this for the last three months. They knew it was coming and they were making changes.

One of the other big changes that are coming out with the iOS developments is CAPI (Conversions Application Programming Interface). While that hasn’t been a priority at the moment, it certainly is something that you’re going to want to be looking at and incorporating to get your tracking going from the browser side to the server side so it’ll be more reliable. And another thing that we’re telling our ad managers is to get into UTM parameters while Facebook tracking is not going to be what it used to be.

Looking in the ads manager, there’s going to be a lot of information lost. And we only had our seven-day attribution windows setting up UTM parameters for the ads. Combining that with Google Analytics and Google Data Studio is going to be a lifesaver for you so that you can still track those campaigns and how they’re performing to bring in leads and sales.

That’s something that we have training about in our ads managers Inner Circle. We had a special guest, Jennifer Gray, a UTM expert, come into our group to share. We actually had some training about UTM parameters there in case you haven’t gotten started with them because I know many ad managers get a bit freaked out with Google because it looks so different.

It’s like you’re on another planet. But get into those communities; be around other ad managers who are up to speed and know what’s going on. It’s going to save you so much time and help you position yourself as an authority figure with your clients and therefore you can charge premium prices.

I hope you have found this useful and encouraging that being an ad manager in this climate is super valuable and you’re worth your weight in gold. If you’re looking for a community, head over to https://jodymilward.com/innercircle and check out my Inner Circle group because we’ve got an amazing group of ad managers there. We look forward to supporting you as you run Facebook ads for clients.