Now that we’re a few months into the new normal of a post iOS 14.5 world, we wanted to take a macro look at how the Facebook Ads platform has adjusted. Inspired by a client with whom we’ve seen delivery shift dramatically away from iOS and towards Android, we wanted to see if this was part of a broad shift on the platform.

Methodology

• We reviewed 20 different ad accounts. 
• Date range: January 1, 2021 - August 31, 2021
• Total spend across all of these brands is about $37.1 million. $18.7 million of that was spent after the iOS 14.5 changes went in place on April 26th, 2021.
• All accounts have spent consistently throughout the year at significant levels, however some may have adjusted spend levels due to seasonality, overall performance, etc.
• All of these accounts are brands focused on driving web purchase events. We did not include app install campaigns as budgets shifts between iOS and Android have no doubt occurred but only at the explicit direction of various brands. In this case FB is handling all delivery for these D2C brands.
• All accounts either used automatic placements or Facebook's recommended minimum of 5 placements.
• Spend has been classified into four categories, Desktop, iOS devices, Android devices, and Other.
• We used CTR as a measure of performance by device. We did consider using CPC, but overall rising CPM costs made that data useless. 
• CPA would have been great to look at, but the ability to break that down by device type was removed with Facebook’s iOS 14.5 updates. 

The Data

Unsurprisingly, we do start to see a shift in June towards a more Android heavy spread between device types, however it’s not as dramatic as one might have expected given the reports of how many users have been opted out of tracking on iOS. Also, while it’s a very small increase overall, we do start to see iOS spend start to trend up in August. It’s possible that over time, as Facebook’s modeled attribution continues to improve, we might revert back to pre-iOS 14.5 levels.

We also have the data we used to create the above view broken down on a per brand level. In almost every case the overall trend is consistent, though there are a few exceptions.

‍

CTR By Device

In the graph below we looked at CTR by device and saw that iOS performance still looks solid relive to the other devices as it always has. While CTR doesn’t necessarily tell the entire story, it does indicate that iOS traffic will continue to play a massive role in campaign performance. 

‍

Campaign Structure Implications

At Thesis we remain clearly opposed to segmenting ad sets by device type in spite of the trends documented above. Looking at how strong CTR on iOS devices are, it clear that there's still solid performance on those devices, even if attribution might not be as accurate. Which is why it's key to keep an eye on your blended metrics.