Last fall, it seemed like the sky was falling on Facebook. Even though it survived an onslaught of investigative stories about the harms its products can allegedly cause after a leak of internal documents (not to mention an awkward rebrand to Meta), an iOS update is now expected to cost the company nearly $10 billion in lost revenue this year.

Rewind: In April, Apple made changes to its phone operating system that effectively stopped apps from tracking users across the web—unless they opted in. Surprise, surprise, most didn’t—only 18% of US users have opted in, according to Flurry, an app analytics company.

• The change made it much more difficult for advertisers to see who bought what and why, clouding the efficacy of critical advertising tools that have been important to the company’s bottom line. Marketers told Marketing Brew they were flying blind, unable to see conversions and optimize ad spend.
• Apple’s update has made it harder for Meta to provide accurate conversion data. In September, Facebook’s VP of product marketing, Graham Mudd, wrote that the platform was underreporting iOS conversions by about 15%. As of last month, that figure was closer to 8%, according to the company.

+1: Recently, Google said that it would also limit tracking on Android devices, albeit over a two-year window.

Shifting strategies

Almost a year after Apple’s change went into effect, advertisers told Marketing Brew how they’ve adjusted.

“There’s obviously some signal loss happening and things are different from a year ago…in terms of attribution, however, the demand and spend are still there,” said Avi Ben-Zvi, VP of paid social at the performance marketing agency Tinuiti. “With our advertisers, we say [that] it’s not a matter of if these conversions are still happening…it’s a matter of getting that attribution back to the platform, right? It’s not like consumer behavior has changed.”

Test it: To determine whether clients’ ads are working, Ben-Zvi said he runs tests to measure geo-targeted audiences that have seen Facebook ads from a given brand against those that haven’t, seeing whether there’s an incremental lift that can be applied to broader targeting.

“If we’re live in markets with significant Facebook spend, is there a direct correlation with more direct organic conversions on site, or even conversions coming from paid search, potentially?” he told Marketing Brew. It’s not an exact science, but it can help advertisers figure out what works, he explained.

Read more here, including how some brands are shifting ad dollars to other channels because of Apple’s changes.—RB

Gopuff, the Philadelphia-based instant-delivery service founded in 2013, considered buying a Super Bowl ad this year, its SVP of business, Dan Folkman, told Marketing Brew. But the company ended up going a different route, instead producing a “Quartertime Show” starring rapper, actor, and comedian Dave Burd, aka Lil Dicky, that was livestreamed on YouTube and Twitter between the first and second quarters of the Super Bowl.

“Fiscal responsibility and scrappiness are in our blood where we started the company, in Philadelphia, and so we wanted to do it a little bit differently, both creatively and philosophically,” Folkman told us. “What we did know was we needed to do something that would break through, because it’s the most crowded day of the year.”

We spoke with Folkman, and the agency executives that put together the campaign to find out more about how it came to be and its results.

The brief: The Gopuff team wanted to work with Lil Dicky, a Philly-area native, and create “a show or an event that lives within the platform of this day of the Super Bowl without being attached to the Super Bowl,” Folkman said.

That was the challenge it presented to creative agency Mirimar, co-founded by brothers John and Luke McKelvey, who serve as chief creative officer and managing director, respectively. Mirimar came up with the idea of a Quartertime Show in which Lil Dicky performed online as opposed to linear TV.

Click here to read more about how the ad came together.—AM

There will be no jokes whatsoever in this roundup, because somebody on our team isn’t into the word “sportsball.” Anyhoo, during February, we doubled down on our sports-marketing coverage. You know, like, the Super Bowl, the Olympics, and allllll of those sports-betting ads.

ICYMI, check out a brief recap of our coverage below, or view the stories on our site.

Super Bowl ads may increasingly lean on influencers : Sure, this year’s game-day commercials were celeb-heavy. But marketers see a future where brands could opt for creators over traditional celebs more often in their Super Bowl spots.

Sports franchises are turning to sonic branding to make their mark: Some leagues and teams are turning to agencies like MassiveMusic and Audiobrain for custom audio themes to stand out. “You’re going to see a real proliferation of sports teams start developing their own sonic identities, because they know how important branding is,” Joe Belliotti, CEO of MassiveMusic North America, told us.

How advertisers are handling the sports-betting boom’s legalization: Brands like FanDuel and DraftKings spent millions on marketing this year. “New York’s addition to the growing list of US states with legalized sports betting has only added more fuel to a growing market,” said Tyler Bobin, a senior brand analyst at iSpot. The catch? Restrictions on gambing advertising.

The sounds of Super Bowl ads, analyzed: We asked sonic branding agency amp to analyze the music and sounds in ads during this year’s game. Here’s what musical genres advertisers leaned on and more.

Can TikTok Save the Olympics? NBCUniversal posted a lot on TikTok during the Winter Olympics last month. It was all part of a larger strategy to get younger people interested in the games, especially as ratings continue to fall.

​​College football players are dominating NIL brand deals: Football has made up nearly half of Name, Image, and Likeness compensation in the eight months it has been allowed by the NCAA, per Opendorse. That’s creating an uneven playing field for athletes across other sports, but some are gaining traction on these deals, too.—PB

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Small gains: The case for why marketers should track incremental return on ad spend on Facebook.

BS: Brand safety and the metaverse are two of the industry’s most discussed topics. A look at why brands should consider safety in the metaverse.

Stats: Start the month with more than 150 social media statistics that “matter to marketers,” according to Hootsuite.

Insight is always in style. When the knapsack kingpins at JanSport wanted to improve their digital customer experience, they turned to Contentsquare. By leveraging unique user data, JanSport increased conversion rates by 85%. Could your website benefit from data-backed CX insights? Read the case study.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

Quote: “It’s time to strengthen privacy protections, ban targeted advertising to children, demand tech companies stop collecting personal data on our children.”—President Joe Biden during his State of the Union address last night.

Stats: Target’s advertising business drove $1 billion “in value” last year, while Walmart and Amazon brought in $2.1 billion and $31 billion in advertising revenue, respectively, tweeted Business Insider’s Lauren Johnson.

Read: “War TikTok is a mess,” writes Vox’s Rebecca Jennings.

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Streamers eye free, ad-supported TV to boost growth
• The 10-minute TikTok is upon us
• In advertising, the pandemic is (mostly) over