Pulsar · Field guide · No. 18 · What iOS 14.5 broke, what Aggregated Event Measurement is, and the domain-verification setup that keeps your money events counting.
Don’t Let iOS Eat Your Conversions
Since iOS 14.5, opted-out users go dark. Domain verification + Aggregated Event Measurement are how you keep your Purchase events counting on Apple devices.
What iOS 14.5 actually broke
iOS 14.5 introduced App Tracking Transparency — the “Ask App Not to Track” prompt. Most people tap it. For every opted-out user, the browser signal collapses and Meta’s attribution windows shrink.
A big slice of your Apple traffic now buys invisibly — the sale happens, the event just can’t be tied back the old way.
You can’t opt those users back in. But you can configure the workaround Meta built — and it starts with proving you own your domain.
Aggregated Event Measurement (AEM)
AEM is Meta’s privacy-safe workaround for opted-out iOS users. The catch: a maximum of 8 events per domain, ranked in priority order — and for an opted-out user, only the highest-priority event they trigger is counted.
Verify your domain first
Before you can rank events, Meta needs to know the domain is yours. You verify it in Business Settings → Brand Safety → Domains by one of three proofs.
| Method | How |
|---|---|
| DNS TXT record | add a TXT record at your registrar (most durable) |
| Meta-tag | paste a <meta> tag into your homepage <head> |
| HTML file | upload a verification file to your web root |
Only the verifying business can configure that domain’s events and control who edits link content. Verify the root domain so subdomains are covered.
Rank your 8 events — Purchase on top
In Events Manager, pick and order up to 8 events for the domain. Rank by money impact, highest first.
Optimizing a campaign for an event that isn’t configured (or is ranked low) quietly caps what it can learn from iOS users.
The attribution window shrank too
Post-iOS, the default attribution setting narrowed to 7-day click / 1-day view (the longer 28-day windows largely went away). Your reported conversions look lower not because sales dropped — but because the counting window shrank.
Plan reporting around it: compare like-for-like windows month to month, and don’t read a drop the day a window changes as a real decline.
Setup steps, gotchas — and pairing with CAPI
- ×Unverified domain. You simply can’t configure AEM — iOS conversions stay broken.
- ×Purchase ranked low. Opted-out buyers get miscounted on a lesser event.