Meta’s August 2024 updates: the most important change in attribution since iOS14.

This week, Meta announced a raft of updates to its campaign optimisation tools, all with the aim of enhancing advertiser performance and delivering increased value from ad spend - including perhaps the most important change in attribution since iOS14.

Here’s my breakdown of the key developments and what they mean for advertisers like us:

Customising conversion value

One of the most anticipated updates is the ability to better define and customise conversion values. This feature allows advertisers to specify which conversions are most valuable to their business – for example, businesses can now prioritise customer segments with higher margins or better lifetime value (LTV).

Before, advertisers had to segment campaigns or rely on less reliable methods based on on-site behaviour, which often led to less learning and less effective algorithm performance. With this new feature, advertisers can let Meta know which audiences or conversions they value more, all within a single campaign – simplifying campaign management and improving the accuracy of any performance insights.

New attribution models

Meta is also introducing a new opt-in attribution and optimisation setting focused on incremental conversions. Incremental conversions are those sales or actions that likely wouldn’t have occurred without the ad - the easiest example being someone seeing a Meta ad, then Googling the brand and converting that way.

This update is particularly beneficial for smaller businesses aiming for rapid growth, as it helps demonstrate the impact of Meta ads more effectively. Early tests are said to have shown a 20% average lift in incremental conversions, indicating a promising potential for increased ad performance.

Enhanced analytics integrations

Another major update is the integration of external analytics tools - including Google Analytics - directly with Meta’s ad system.

This integration enables third party data to flow back into the Pixel, providing it with richer customer behaviour intel, enabling more accurate performance data in Meta, helping to bridge the trust-gap between in-platform reporting and third-party analytics.

Implications for advertisers

The ability to customise conversion values and focus on incremental conversions allows for more precise targeting and optimisation, while the enhanced analytics integrations offer a much more comprehensive view of campaign performance, fostering greater trust in the data.

So, what next?

These latest updates should enable Meta to see much more about what happens after the sale, i.e. tracking LTV and crucially, enable advertisers to optimise towards these goals - optimising for LTV vs. one-off sales.

If you’d like to chat about what these developments mean for your Meta advertising strategy, get in touch to book a free, zero obligation call.

Image credit: @tamsinjohnson