Home The Big Story The Big Story: Facebook’s Attribution Sinkhole

The Big Story: Facebook’s Attribution Sinkhole

SHARE:
The Big Story podcast

Attribution on Facebook ain’t what it used to be.

The Facebook that enabled hundreds of creative versions, targeting variations and near-instantaneous optimization – all fed by data – is changing.

Apple took a big bite out of Facebook’s attribution capabilities when its AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) required apps to collect a user opt-in to track their account for advertising.

On this week’s Big Story, we unpack how Facebook is responding to these changes.

The number of creative elements it can optimize in a campaign is going down. So is the granularity with which marketers can target audiences. Plus, it’s recommending that marketers optimize at a much slower pace, like waiting a full 72 hours for data to come in before adjusting a campaign.

Facebook is pushing geo-testing as an attribution model, since it doesn’t require user-level tracking. And it’s limiting the number of conversion events a marketer can have to eight, a move that’s surely causing a “Hunger Games” for large marketing teams with many campaigns running.

Also in this episode: We discuss the two key takeaways from LUMA’s digital market report and Advertiser Perceptions’ latest DSP report, including a slowdown on the M&A front and a rise in marketers using self-service over managed service DSPs.

 

Must Read

Comic: No One To Play With

Google Pulls The Plug On Topics, PAAPI And Other Major Privacy Sandbox APIs (As The CMA Says ‘Cheerio’)

Google’s aborted cookie crackdown ends with a quiet CMA sign-off and a sweeping phaseout of Privacy Sandbox technologies, from the Topics API to PAAPI.

The Trade Desk’s Auction Evolutions Bring High Drama To The Prebid Summit

TTD shared new details about OpenAds features that let publishers see for themselves whether it’s running a fair auction. But tension between TTD and Prebid hung over the event.

Monopoly Man looks on at the DOJ vs. Google ad tech antitrust trial (comic).

How Google Stands In The DOJ’s Ad Tech Antitrust Suit, According To Those Who Tracked The Trial

The remedies phase of the Google antitrust trial concluded last week. And after 11 days in the courtroom, there is a clearer sense of where Judge Leonie Brinkema is focused on, and how that might influence what remedies she put in place.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters

The Ad Context Protocol Aims To Make Sense Of Agentic Ad Demand

The AI advertising agents will need their own trade group eventually. For now though, a bunch of companies are forming the Ad Context Protocol, or AdCP.

OUTFRONT Is Using Agencies’ AI Enthusiasm To Spur Wider Programmatic OOH Adoption

The desire for a data-driven reinvention of OOH inspired OUTFRONT to create agentic AI tools for executing and measuring OOH campaigns and comparing OOH to other channels.

Inside PubDesk, The Trade Desk’s New Dashboard That Shows What Buyers Actually Care About

A peek inside PubDesk, The Trade Desk’s new dashboard that gives sellers detailed info on how buyers value their inventory.