In case you haven’t heard, there’s a major development underway in the PPC market: the removal of 3rd Party Pixel Tracking.
What’s Going On? Why The Issue?
Basically, Apple and Facebook are having a major beef.
The two-second explanation is that Apple is now giving users the choice to users to select whether or not they want their (private) data to be shared with 3rd Party Apps.
Given a choice, the majority of people will clearly say….no!
With all the ongoing issues with privacy ever since the Cambridge Analytica case and the Edward Snowden revelations, it felt like this was in the post for a long time – and it has finally caught up with us.
This is a a MAJOR issue for Facebook and for those that are relying on the PPC model.
The Re-Marketing Game Just Become Very Difficult Impossible
Re-Marketing was the 101 PPC tactic used by all Facebook marketers.
Paying for ads was – and remains to be – very affordable for advertisers.
Removing the ability for advertises to track what is converting and who to target is very worrying for marketers.
I believe that this is a bad day for Internet Marketers for these reasons:
- Get used to being shown random ads from Q3 onwards
- Get used to spending more on PPC with fewer results
The fact is that soon we experience crappier ROI when it comes to PPC.
Will It Affect Android?
Yup, but not as fast as Apple and iOS.
It will become a “standard” from 2021 onwards to explicitly get the users’ permission for any of their privacy – and that means browsing habits – being shared amongst advertisers.
A Victory For Some, A Disaster For Others
Of course, for privacy advocates this is a great thing and I fully understand that.
Indeed, we are seeing the usage of DuckDuckGo continue to grow as more browsers are launched with baked-in privacy like Brave, Sphere, and Vivaldi.
However, for many businesses this could seriously dent their bottom line.
You don’t need me to tell you that Covid caused colossal damage to our economies, and now to have this on our case is a further blow.
However! As SEO Guys We Should Be Thankful!
I’ve never really liked the PPC game.
I’ve always done SEO my whole career, and I rank pretty well for some keywords that are pretty competitive.
Anyways, the fact is that budgets will have to go elsewhere and SEO suddenly looks more interesting now! Sure, SEO is a slow-cook compared to simply paying for PPC, or PPL or Native, etc., but with worsening ROI it is likely that marketing directors will look to a longer-game and deploy more budget and resources to getting their content and propositions indexed.
I’m just glad that I am an SEO guy with a passion for the subject-matter and not reliant on the evidently fickle world of PPC.
What’s critical is that we continue to educate ourselves with learning the latest and great SEO Hacking Tools (if that’s your game) or if you’re a Cyber Pro then diving into Hacker Software – my point being that these are skills that will be in greater demand throughout [year].
Is Facebook screwed? Well…it’s not great. It might very well be the beginning of a gradual decline of the media giant.
However! Let’s not forget one important thing…Instagram and Facebook are joined at the hip so at least PPC folk have those two entities to play with, but that’s assuming that those are channels that they are going after.
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