How the Apple iOS Update Will Impact Your Cannabis Ads & Cross-Channel Tracking

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good morning or good afternoon if you're joining us for the east coast thank you once again for taking the time to join us and yet another one of our webinars today's webinar we're going to be covering apple's ios update and how that actually impacts your cannabis ads and cross-channel tracking how to safeguard your digital marketing strategy with our tips this specific update from apple has generated a ton of buzz we're getting questions day in day out about it so we're really really excited to share a lot of our research a lot of the first-hand experience and help you navigate these trend uh these challenging waters if you will from a digital advertising perspective so thank you very much for joining us let's get right into it so on today's agenda we're going to be covering the real impacts that the apple ios update could have on your ad performance and your bottom line what changes you can expect from ad providers in regards to canvas advertising and the ios 14 update and how you can leverage different ad types to mitigate the new challenges imposed by the ios update quick introduction on myself i have 20 years of sales and marketing experience i have been part of the foot traffic family for uh four years now and i'm really really excited to be your host for today so thank you for for that opportunity foot traffic is a digital advertising agency laser focused in the cannabis space we're really really happy for all of our partners out there who have entrusted us with their digital advertising um campaigns let's get a quick moment here just to uh discuss some of these housekeeping items to make sure we're prepared for today's webinar first up uh cell phones if you do have that apple cell phone handy we love them although not today as much because of the apple ios update but we ask you to put them face down on the desk just for the next 28 minutes or so so we can cover a lot of information with you familiarize yourself also with the zoom interface there is a q a button at the bottom of the screen um we do have panelists who are live on this webinar who can address any questions you may have in real time and do be sure to stick around we have some really exciting offers for those who are attending uh this webinar today and we'll be sharing it with you at the end of the webinar so according to a statistica 47 percent of u.s cell phone users have iphones that's approximately 113 million americans that primarily use the ios interface to download and interact with a variety of apps and websites apple designs their devices to be aesthetically appealing and in order to manage that they have a lot of restrictions on what app developers can and cannot do they also continue to push the boundaries of user friendliness making their interface more and more intuitive and trying to include things that matter the most for their users at the same time they and other tech giants are dealing with more political oversight as politicians question whether companies like facebook google and apple and more are doing enough to safeguard consumer privacy we've already seen that conversion take place in california where the ccpa has made it easier for consumers to access the data that companies have on them now rather than waiting for additional legislation to mandate access to personal information apple took it on their own hands to add a new feature to their latest ios update that makes it easier for consumers to see where they're being tracked and to opt out of cross-channel tracking while apple is the one implementing this change it doesn't just affect those with ios devices and it could impact how you advertise on mobile in general so let's talk about how this works basically starting with ios 14.5 ipad os 14.5 and tv os 14.5 apple has added a new user-friendly user-facing feature called app tracking transparency or att don't confuse it with a t the cell phone provider here this is app tracking transparency if you've updated your iphone you may have already seen this feature essentially because of att a pop-up will appear when an app is going to be used for the first time and he asks users whether they want to be tracked or not for tracking to work apps use a token on ios devices called the identifier for advertisers or idfa so apple's basically asking users for permissions on whether or not they should allow their apps to use their idfa and share that data the idfa is similar to a cookie or a pixel it is similar to what is used on web browsers to track user activity and determine things like where someone goes online and how long they span on particular pages or website the idfa is a randomized token that apple generates on each device and allows app developers and websites to track you for the purposes of advertising it's basically how you can search for some shoes on your phone and then get served an ad for those shoes at other platforms like instagram or twitter this token allows for targeting and personalization of ads across channels platforms and devices if you have joined one of our previous webinars you probably know that targeting ads is very important for getting a good return on ad spend so if people opt out of being tracked and say they don't want the idfa sharing information for particular apps then advertisers lose access to valuable data that helps us target ads this is how apple has allowed apps to advertise to users in the past they've always been pretty protective over it and continuously um and very cautious about who is allowed to use it and not now the company which likes to create the aura of being very privacy focused is putting the power in the hands of the user with the latest ios 14 update apple is letting users decide whether the apps they've installed on their phone can have access to that token at all i mentioned a pop-up before so let me tell you what iphone users are going to be again experiencing when they update their phones once the update is installed every time that they run an app that requests access to apple's idfa token they're going to get a pop-up that says in quote allow app name to track your activity across other companies apps and websites your data will be used to deliver personalized ads to you users will have two options the first is to not track and the second is to allow tracking if you have an iphone you've seen similar pop-ups before when apps attempt to access your microphone or camera this pop-up will look exactly like that apps aren't able to change the look of the pop-up just some of the wording around it when users allow tracking access to that idfa token they will actually be providing to the app and everyone will be actually able to see it in terms of data and their consumer information but if a user chooses not to track which happens to be the first option people will see then apple won't allow that app to access idfa and the app will not be able to provide targeted ads instead users will receive more generalized ads which may be hit or miss depending on their interests apple isn't the only company that is implementing changes if you have an iphone you probably notice that after the ios update you also have an update on a bunch of your apps often this is so those apps can provide a better user experience based on the latest ios features that's kind of what's happening with google and its many apps as well once they got the word of the update they started to make changes to its apps in order to protect itself and its ad revenue google has plenty of apps including chrome gmail photos drive maps docs calendar translate home a system and many many more plus there's the biggest one of them all when it comes to advertising youtube so imagine your google and apple tells you one of the biggest advertising platforms in the world hey we're going to ask users whether they want you to track their activity and if they say no we're going to tell you while google is a huge tech company apple controls the app store and can remove all of their apps if they don't comply with the new privacy measures so they're being forced to work within that new update because apple informed developers about the privacy changes google has had months to come up with their work around so they can try to protect their ad revenue and analytics capabilities as much as possible after all so much of google is built around tracking user behavior and here their competitors trying to limit their ability to capture that valuable data so what are they going to do essentially to ensure they can still provide the personalized experience that many of their users and advertisers enjoy well first up search should not be impacted so if you're running google ads your campaign should be fine and if you aren't running google ads well it's probably time you start considering doing so other google campaigns will be affected however so if you're running dispensary ads via the google display network discovery campaigns or youtube then you will likely see a drop in performance for those apps especially if you are using interest based targeting google however doesn't just rely on apple's idfa for tracking they have their own proprietary google id or gaid so they will still be able to track users within their apps and in fact they won't be requesting access to idfa at all in their apps as they will just rely on their own tracking the ads shown through their network on their apps however may see some data loss when users opt out of idfa tracking and of course google being google they're already working on additional measures to lessen the impact of att after all a lot of their money comes from ad revenue and they are all about the data the att threatens their ability to collect the very data they rely on to create personalized ad experiences they already model conversion events to accounts for some cross device and view through conversions and they will be focusing on that more to safeguard their advertising networks this update is also going to affect the other big advertising giant facebook they have three million excuse me three billion mobile users with a b not an m and good portion of which are on ios devices as the latest and most popular social media platform in the world facebook commends a lot of attention and press their ad sales are their largest revenue driver and if they can't provide effective advertising for businesses well they may see their fortune decline with that threatened looming over their heads you can bet they've made some changes to protect themselves and the companies that advertise on their platform now there's a good chance that you are not directly using facebook or one of its apps to advertise since facebook has made it pretty hard for dispensaries to do so however however even if you aren't advertising on facebook itself you may rely on data from facebook for your digital advertising whether you know it or not to track users facebook uses pixel they addressed concerns regarding how their tracking pixel would be affected by the att saying that it will affect end quote businesses that advertise on mobile apps as well as those that optimize target and report on web conversion events from any of our business tools and in their help center they give specific steps that businesses can take to mitigate the effects of the att update including verifying their domain name with facebook following their developer guidelines creating separate campaigns the types of campaigns that can be created and how many campaigns can be created have been limited because of the new update facebook also notes that as people opt out the size of retargeting audiences will be reduced if you are a marketer and want more detail info on all of this check out facebook says business help center i mentioned that facebook has a pixel that pixel is often installed on a website in order to track on-site behavior and re-target customers it can also be used to aggregate behavior data and create look-alike audiences to help businesses reach new customers with similar attributes to their current customers overall if you rely on facebook expect data loss slower reporting smaller audience sizes and performance fluctuations more people have android devices than ios devices so you may be thinking so what i can still reach all of my android users but this will actually end up impacting most of your customers because the platforms and apps like google and facebook will roll out their security features to their android apps if they haven't already people want to feel like they have some measure of privacy online so expanding those features is a no-brainer for google facebook and other apps it makes them look like they're protecting user data even though they are the ones who are profiting the most from it while more people do have android devices the numbers are almost in par so you cannot discount apps update just because a larger segment of your audience is still reachable you are still going to feel the impact of the reduced tracking capabilities on ios 14.5 unless you take action now let's talk about how you can mitigate the updates negative effects and the different apps that will be affected first up you have to make sure that you are properly measuring and tracking all of those important kpis for your ads you won't know the impact of the new update if you aren't measuring how well your ads are performing if you haven't been measuring your ad performance start tracking it now or find a team that will track it for you otherwise you risk blowing your marketing budget on ads that just simply don't work so because this update has to do with cross channel tracking you will want to measure how many people are seeing your ads that's called your impressions you also want to know how many people are clicking on your ads if you divide your clicks by your impressions then multiply that number by 100 you will get your click-through rate which is a percentage of ads that are getting clicked on if you're targeting if your targeting has been affected you will see fewer impressions or click-throughs depending on your types of ads you are running and what platforms you are using you may also have delays with your reporting now because your ads will lead to your website or a landing page you will be able to track users once they get on your page using google analytics or your own tracking pixel those this will also allow you to retarget to those individuals later and allow you to measure how many conversions you get and how much revenue you're generating from certain campaigns you should also monitor your return on ad spend to ensure that you are focusing your efforts on the highest returned campaigns okay so you have the measurement down now so what and what is the next step well as any good advertiser would tell you it's time to test and then you test again and then a third time and you keep testing with your metrics in hand you can spot opportunities for example maybe you have a low click through rate you can use a b testing to create and run alternative campaigns featuring different graphics and different call to actions you can test for discount sensitivity for specific audience groups like age and gender and by isolating just one factor to change you can measure its its impact and continue to make adjustments to improve your results unfortunately not every dispensary has the marketing budget or team to do this but thankfully when you work with foot traffic you get the benefit of our expertise and because we have run thousands of campaigns across north america we are able to optimize ads for our clients and get them a larger market share faster and the best part of that is you get the reporting there are no empty promises as you will receive real-time reporting that shows just how effective your campaigns are if we spy an opportunity for you but we'll let you know and if we identify problems we'll also be troubleshooting them and keep you in the loop our goal is to maximize your marketing budget so that you see greater return on your overall money being spent once you've run your a b test then of course it's time to measure it again and the cycle repeats itself i think the largest impact this update will have will be showing that you cannot put all of your advertising eggs in one basket a strategy that only focuses on one platform whether it's google or facebook or another site it's not a robust strategy one change like this update can negatively impact your revenue and cost you many many sales rather than focusing on a single platform it's important that you take a multi-pronged approach to ensure that you have and are reaching as many deep different people as possible so in addition to running display ads on your target audience's favorite apps and websites you should also be running google ads or over the top video ads which means not on broadcast channel which is federally illegal right so over the top goes directly to those apps on a smart tv plus you can focus on your organic search reach with search engine optimization so by diversifying your advertising you can better protect your bottom line and pivot as necessary to deal with fluctuations over time such as this update i want you to do a quick rundown of some of the ad types we run for our clients and just mention how they will be affected by apple's privacy measures i said before that google search ads won't be affected by the att update these are the ads that show up at the top of the search results when you when a user runs a query they are already and really great for getting your dispensary on top of the search results and we have made these ads even better with our own machine learning software i recommend these ads to everyone because many dispensaries aren't doing them they're not as much competition on google search and the threshold to get started is super super low google's display network ads google maps ads youtube ads will be affected as they will lose some insight into user behavior when people opt out of tracking so you will be harder to target particular audience segments this will also affect their reporting because they will just have less data to provide display ads are the visual ads you will see at the bottom of an app or a mobile website these ads may be affected depending on the platform on which apps they are actually displayed on so since google has taken steps to mitigate the effects of att on its apps display ads on google maps may not be as effective as display ads on words with friends as an example the big issue for display ads on apps will be reaching particular audience segments based on demographics and behaviors in less quality data reporting only time will tell how many people choose to opt out of tracking but because apple has made the opt out option more prominent it's a safe bet that a substantial number of people will be rejecting tracking for display ads on mobile websites the effect of att will primarily be felt on safari which is the most popular mobile browser with 56 percent of america's using it if users have the google chrome app however they will still be trackable through though there will be still some data loss of cross channel data if they opt out from the app all together i already mentioned youtube but i wanted to note that there is an alternative to advertising on youtube while it's a popular platform it's not the only place that people watch videos if you want to take advantage of video ads you can use ott ads on smart tvs to reach your audience these ads don't rely on apple's ios unless your target audience has a apple tv their tvs aren't as popular as the company's others devices so targeting smart tvs in general is still a good way to diversify your advertising and surprise your target audience with different ad types ott ads are purchased through a programmatic advertising network and we can hook you up with cannabis friendly network to help you ensure compliance as well as targeting the right audience the ios update will also affect ads showing up using the gmail app on an iphone or an ipad however if you want to take some control back and own your customer data then we always advise keeping an email list with digital ad advertising platforms like google and facebook we have to rely on the quality of their data and when something like this update happens and their data gathering capabilities are negatively impacted then the businesses that use those platforms to advertise end up paying the cost by keeping an email list you can easily market to your audience over and over without someone controlling the data you own the data and you can integrate it with your pos or your loyalty program as long as the platform you choose has the capability to do so email advertising won't help you find new customers other advertising methods are better for that but it will help you stay top of mind with your current customers and share deals and incentives for dispensaries it can often seem like just as you find your footing the regulatory landscape changes once again now with big tech also implementing changes that affect how you can advertise it's crucial that you stay up to date with everything going on so you can create and distribute compliant ads to potential customers but unless you have a large marketing team or on staff it can be hard keeping track of what's actually currently allowed what's working best for your dispensary and what steps you should take to get more from your marketing that's where foot traffic comes in we work as an extension of your marketing team or as your sole marketing team to help you generate more revenue via digital advertising we bring our proprietary tech to the table in order to advance your goals and help you grow your dispensary whether you have one location three or a dozen we aim to provide our clients with as many advertising opportunities as possible and then help them determine where they should invest based on the data we've collected then as we run ads we keep them in the loop with real-time reporting so they can make decisions based on actionable data we've already monitored the effects of ios 14.5 on our ads and will continue to optimize them for our clients to ensure they are as effective as possible so as promised to help you navigate the digital advertising landscape we have two special promo promotions for today's attendees both of which will help you diversify your ads to reduce the impacts of apple's ios update first up get a free website with a six month advertising plan that includes google ads display ads and search engine optimization this plan will provide you the support you need to launch your business give your website a refresh refresh or just supercharge your advertising let's get this underway and mitigate the effects of apple's update so schedule a call with us today at foot traffic dot me forward slash chat and we'll put that link on the chat here for you that link again is foot traffic dot me forward slash chat and we will walk you through everything or alternatively you can choose to get 50 off your new dispensary website with a three month digital advertising plan that includes google ads display ads and search engine optimization and once again please feel free to schedule a consultation with our very own client success manager jason griffith and learn how these services will support your goals choose a time with him at foot traffic dot me forward slash chat i love building these services together because they really do work best in unison it doesn't pay to put all of your eggs in one basket you need to be able to diversify your advertising investment in order to have the largest reach so don't wait until you start feeling the impacts of the change in mobile landscape schedule a consultation today and invest in your advertising dollars very very wisely i want to thank everybody for taking the time once again to join us today i want to stay true to your time as your time is very valuable once again take a moment to schedule a call with us and if you have any other other questions we're more than happy to address those uh offline on a 101 and help you get started today have a wonderful day thanks again ]