Apple’s New Privacy Policy: How to Maximise ROAS for Your Fashion Brand

Advertising has long been one of the primary sources of revenue for many businesses worldwide. The advertising market has grown more than 100 times in the last 20 years, and it is predicted to grow and reach $517 billion in 2023 according to eMarketer. The growth of internet advertising specifically can be explained by its affordability for small and medium sized businesses as well as its unique ability to bring the products to the audience. As traditional advertising formats such as TV-ads or billboards are unattainable for the majority of SMEs, online advertising has opened up new opportunities for these companies to search for their niche clients through social networks, search engines and mobile apps. However, is there anything that can potentially halt this unstoppable growth of the advertising market?

Increasing Internet Privacy Policies

Although the growth of the advertising market is unlikely to stop any time soon, it can already be seen that it starts to slow down. This is mostly due to slowing economic growth of the world’s largest economies that have been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic. There is however another issue that can affect the industry even more severely, and this is the trend for online privacy.

In fact, statistics show that nearly half of all internet users are concerned about their internet privacy and the security of their data. These concerns resonate with the actions that governments take worldwide to ensure internet safety of their nations. New laws such as GDPR in Europe are being introduced worldwide to address these concerns. Moreover, Apple has become one of the first corporations to introduce new privacy policy updates that limit advertisers’ abilities to target consumers based on their mobile searches.

What Apple is Changing and How It Affects Online Advertising

Earlier this year Apple announced that its iOS14 update will include a feature allowing users to opt out of any in-app data collection in apps such as Facebook or Instagram. The update gives users an option to block the Identifier for Advertising, meaning that iOS will protect their personal data whilst still providing in-app data. This means that brands that use Facebook advertising, other social media and retargeting campaigns are likely to face the following challenges with their future campaigns:

Given the current challenges, and an increase in CPA in particular, brands should now look for alternative ways to maximize their Return On Ad Spend (ROAS).

Size advice and virtual try-on widget helps fashion brands to increase ROAS

One of the best ways to increase ROAS for fashion brands is to ensure that clients purchase well-fitting products and therefore reduce the volumes of product returns. In order to achieve this, brands can utilise Texel size recommendation tool that helps to eliminate the guesswork when choosing the correct product size. This piece of tech gives an accurate size recommendation and product fit guidance to the clients - based on several simple questions regarding their height, weight, age and body shape. With the availability of this solution on the product details page, customers are able to make more informed purchasing decisions that result in 40% less product returns.

Additionally, the size recommendation tool can be combined with a unique virtual try-on feature by Texel that helps to increase the adoption rate as well as to increase the conversion rate by up to 50%. This tool is easy to use, simply requiring customers to upload a front-facing full-body photo of themselves to receive a visualisation of their chosen item on the uploaded photo in less than a minute.

The combination of size recommendation and the virtual try-on feature is the ultimate tool that can help fashion brands to overcome marketing challenges posed by the tightening privacy policy updates. However improved ROAS is not the only benefit of the technology. Improved user experiences, increased engagement levels, seamless integration processes, reduced product returns and ultimately more environmentally friendly business operations are just some of the benefits that are enjoyed by the early adopters of this technology.