MBA1694 Is Apple’s New Ad Tracking Block The End of Paid Ads?

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Hey oh. Welcome to the 100 Arm. No fluff, just the good stuff. Every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online over at 100mba.net and in today's lesson you will learn is Apple's ad tracking Blocking the end of paid ads. Recently in Apple's iOS 14 update, anytime a visitor of a website an app as ad tracking has a tracking pixel, it will prompt the user and ask them do you want to be tracked around the Internet? It's pretty blunt, it's pretty in your face. And there's two options, block tracking or allow tracking. What does this exactly mean for you and your business, especially when it comes to paid advertising? Why is Apple doing this and does this mean the end of Facebook and Google Ads? Is it just not worth your resources, your money, your time, your effort in dumping into paid ads on Facebook and Google? Now that so many people are going to be discouraged from seeing your ads, we're going to get into the details. We're going to explain exactly what this all means for you and your business and what you can do moving forward. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

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I want to start by explaining what exactly is happening technically and what the user experience will be. Now this new iOS 14 update. First of all, this affects anybody on iOS. That means anybody using any kind of mobile or tablet device from Apple, that's iPhone, that's iPad, any mobile device that has iOS. Now you might be saying, well, is that a lot of people in most western countries, Apple has half or more of the market share when it comes to mobile devices. So that means anybody who's visiting a website or a Facebook ad that's using an Apple device, they're going to get this prompt. Now this prompt is actually asking your users, people that visit your website, visit, let's say Facebook for example, because they're running ads or using the Facebook app. Hey, do you want to be tracked around the Internet? Because these websites, these entities, these apps, have tracking pixels that allow them to track your whereabouts, retarget you, throw ads at you. That's why if you go to a website and then go to Facebook later on, you'll see ads for that website. So many people are starting to see these pop ups that says, hey, do you want to be tracked or not? And most people are going to be like, no, I don't want to be tracked. Most people hate ads, or at least they hate the idea of ads. On top of that, Apple is allowing in iOS for you to set it up in your preferences that you block all tracking on all apps and websites so you don't have to answer that prompt every single time. That means that person will never see an ad from you. So why is Apple doing this? Well, Apple is really doubling and tripling down on privacy and security. This has been their main game for a very long time. A lot of people choose to use an iPhone because of its security. I do that. I mean, there are a lot of advantages to iPhone, but that's the number one advantage is that it's very hard to hack because of the privacy and all the security that they put into the hardware and the software. Now many people from TechCrunch to Forbes have said this is going to greatly affect Facebook's actual business, Google's actual business, because their whole business is serving ads. That's how they make money. So if you, a customer of a product, won't be served ads or can't be tracked, then the business that's trying to attract you or try to serve ads is not going to see the benefit of running ads. They're going to be like, hey, I can't track conversions. I can't serve these ads to the right people. What's the whole point of digital marketing if I can't do that for Everybody who's on iOS? It's such a big deal that I saw a prompt inside my Facebook ads account recently that explains, hey, by the way, your ads are just not going to perform as well. You're not going to see conversions for all the people you're serving. And in fact, you can't even target the right people because of this new Apple update. And they go head to head and say, we are not happy with Apple. Now, in true Apple fashion, they're going to double down, all right? In fact, there are even whispers that they might block apps that actually track users and serve them ads because of it. Like, actually block the app from the App Store. Meaning you won't be able to use the Facebook app unless Facebook changes the app so it doesn't track you anymore. Obviously, Facebook is not going to be like, hey, forget it. We're not going to change it. Deal with the Apple. No, they will not deal with that consequence. They can't afford not being in the Apple App Store and have all the iOS users not have Facebook on their phones. That's never gonna happen. They're gonna have to change their business model in some way. So what does this all mean for you as a business? Now, for many businesses, they grow with a marketing strategy called paid ads, right? You pay Facebook. Hey, Facebook, show these ads to people that look like this, that visit my website, that are lookalike audiences. And I want you to track if they actually convert, if they actually sign up for my news, if they buy my product. That's how a Facebook ad works. And essentially, that's how Google Ads work as well. Like, you have to be able to track a conversion, which means you're putting a tracking pixel in your website, in the code of your website. Now, guess what? If you have these tracking pixels on your website, Apple will know. And when people visit that site, they'll get that prompt more. So if people are blocking tracking when they go to Facebook to see your ad, you're paying for ads. So people can see it on Facebook, right? They won't see it because they block tracking and therefore you will not be able to see conversions. Target the right people. And essentially for iOS users, paid advertising is going to be equivalent to a billboard on a street where you know it's out there. You know, people can see it, but you really can know who's seeing it or see if people actually saw it or converted later on. So the appeal of paid ads has really dropped since this news has dropped now, I believe that there will be a shift in paid ads. There will be a different way to do it. It's not going away. Marketing will never go away. And for the most part, large companies will still dump money into Facebook and Google Ads because, hey, it's exposure, it's awareness, it's cheaper than TV or radio or billboards. But Facebook and Google will see a significant hit because people will pull their money out because small businesses, that's their bread and butter. And it's just not going to make sense for small businesses. Now you might be saying, hey, Omar, this is just iOS devices. What about everybody else? Well, the problem is that Apple tends to go first, they tend to lead people first, they do something and then the market follows. Remember when the iPhone removed the headphone jack from all their mobile phones? Well, guess what, all the other manufacturers followed suit. A year or two later, just now, in the latest iPhone 12 release, Apple started shipping their phones without a charger. People thought this was ridiculous. A few months later, Samsung, lg, Huawei, all these other manufacturers have announced that their new phones will not come with chargers. They own so much of the market share that they influence so much of the market. So if they make a major move, most likely others will follow. So should you pull all your money off paid ads? Well, I'm not going to tell you to do this because everybody's paid advertising strategy is different. How well you're converting, you should monitor ads for sure, super, super closely to see if you're converting as high, if you're spending more money, if it's going to be harder for you to target the right people, that's rule number one. Number two, you should definitely think of a long term strategy to spend more resources on content marketing, where you own the traffic versus where you borrow the traffic. With paid ads, this means, you know, starting a YouTube channel, starting a podcast, really growing your blog, investing in SEO. So people are coming to your website, coming to your resources. You make investments with time and energy and talent, but then you reap the benefits in the long run. And then you really own that whole ecosystem. Now, of course, you're building upon some platforms like YouTube. You know, you don't own YouTube, but they have such a good distribution channel, it's worth that risk. Same thing with podcasts. In fact, podcasts are a little safer because you own the actual feed, you own the files. You just distribute your actual episodes on feeds like Apple or Spotify. With YouTube, you actually upload the video straight to YouTube. So that's why a lot of people are actually building their own channels on their website using something like Wistia's channels. So there's a lot of things you can do, but you should start now because things will start rapidly changing in the paid advertising space. Now, if you're asking, hey, Omar, what are you going to do? Well, we're definitely going to be taking a little bit of a break from paid advertising. We're going to ease up a little bit because for us, we really need to see the conversions in order for us to be able to optimize these ads and be able to make them effective. And if we can't do that for people on iOS, it's going to be really hard to make sure we're spending our money wisely. Now, having said that, you definitely still can use paid ads. We'll still use paid ads for awareness, for driving traffic to our website for launches. This still is gonna be powerful. I don't need to track anybody. I don't need to put tracking pixels for this. I can just create an ad and drive traffic to my site. I'm not really worried about conversions. This is more for, you know, I want to just get awareness about my product, my services, my new thing, my new feature, or a new blog post where you can use ads to drive traffic to your content, your content marketing guys.

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To wrap up today's lesson, Paid ads will be making a major shift in 2021. This has really shaken Facebook and Google to the point where they're notifying their users, people that are running ads. Hey, you know, we don't really like this. You should really talk to Apple and help us out. This is where we stand. This is what we believe in. I was pretty shocked when I saw that message. This is gonna be a major change in paid advertising in 2021. So really monitor your ads closely. Make sure that it's still worth your while. And remember, you can always run ads to drive traffic to your website. If you're not worried about conversions, you don't have to put a tracking pixel. You can still drive traffic to Aware make people aware of your content and your products and your services. That wraps up today's lesson. If you loved today's episode, you thought today's episode was insightful. You want to give somebody a heads up? Share this episode on your social media platform of choice. Thank you in advance for doing that. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. The only thing that's guaranteed in this world is change. Things will change and this is a significant change. Our job is to make sure we're ready for this change, that we are not just ignoring things. We adapt and we see these as opportunities. I'm telling you now, content marketing, email marketing will be a gold rush right now because people are going to look for different ways to run their marketing campaigns, their efforts. So really invest in those right now while people are still kind of unaware what's going on. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Tomorrow's episode. Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care.

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