An Ecommerce Digital Marketing Agency Partner, Google Partner, and Shopify Partner just completed a 8-month study analyzing over 125 eCommerce retailers across fashion, beauty and other industries, research clearly shows eCommerce retailers relying on Facebook advertising will risk facing financial ruin if they do not diversify their digital marketing strategy.
Tracy Munn, 15 year digital marketer at Munn Digital explains Quality Facebook Advertising is the kind that delivers a x4 ROAS (return on ad spend), the success of such ads relies heavily on well-structured funnels.
The study found that those who diversified their digital marketing strategy saw an increase in revenue and overall growth. In fact, retailers who added Google Ads to their marketing mix saw a significant boost in their ROAS, with some reporting a x8 return on ad spend. This highlights the importance of diversification and the need for eCommerce retailers to explore other avenues to reach their target audience.
This means cold audiences are targeted at top of funnel, and warm audiences (those who have engaged with the brand in some way), and retargeted to at middle and bottom of funnel. These warm audiences, and retargeting, is where we have seen the greatest impact from the iOS14.5 update.
Prior to the update, Facebook Marketers could create unlimited Facebook Pixel Events. This meant audiences could be retargeted based on numerous behaviors, from visiting a website, to time spent on a product, adding a product to cart, clicking on a button, and so many more.
Post iOS14.5, pixel events were limited to 8 events only. Some of the campaigns we reviewed had over 60 audiences and granular campaigns set up based on previous events. This stopped upon the update, in some cases reducing retargeting audiences by 70%, of which 96% of that audience had opted out of tracking.
Data highlights from the study conclusively showed that:
- A staggering 100% have been negatively affected by the Apple iOS14 update.
- Apple devices reported no less than a 30% drop in retargeting sales from Facebook Advertising over 8 months
- Depending on the industry, the highest reported drop in Facebook sales from Apple devices was 51.41%
- Stable Facebook campaigns, where audience targeting did not change after the iOS14 update, decreased on average from a x 6 ROAS to a 2.4 ROAS
- ROAS (return on ad spend) declined across all 125 retailers
As Facebook results have declined, retailers are seeing success elsewhere, at minimum, a 700% spike in YouTube traffic and sales from YouTube ads.
