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Here’s something sort of mysterious: Facebook only missed Q3 revenue projections by about 2%. 

Even though in the prior quarter, it lost its ability to target ads and track conversions for most iPhone users.

One way FB stabilized itself? By showing fewer ads to black-box iOS devices. 

Less Facebook Ads spend went to iOS users

Thesis Testing pulled data from 20 different Facebook accounts. In total, they spent $37.1M on automated Facebook Ads  placements from January to August 2021. 

Once iOS 14 launched in April, about 10% of these accounts’ spend shifted from iOS to Android users. 

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Spend seems to be shifting back towards pre-iOS levels now — in August, iOS devices won 1%+ of total ad spend back from Android.

Our takeaway?

iOS users are too valuable to ignore — but iOS updates made them too confusing to throw 70% of Q3 ad dollars at.

Whether humans or algorithms decided this, it probably helped Facebook minimize ad performance problems and focus on analytics issues. 

Of course, the majority of Facebook ad dollars still went towards iOS users — but a smaller majority!