Your ads are losing data.
Here's why — and how to get it back.
If you're spending money on Google or Meta ads to your Shopify, Salla, or Zid store and your dashboard now shows fewer sales than your bank account does — you're not imagining it. The rules of online tracking quietly changed over the last few years. Apple, Google, and the new Saudi privacy law all moved in the same direction.
This guide explains what happened, what it means for your store, and how to fix it. In plain English.
What actually changed
Three rules. All of them affect your store right now.
Each of the three big tech companies and your government quietly added new requirements between 2021 and 2024. Most store owners haven't noticed yet. Here they are, in order.
2021 · Apple
Apple started asking iPhone users: "Should this app track you?"
Around three out of four people tap "Ask App Not to Track." That means Meta, TikTok, Snap, and Google can no longer follow most iPhone users from one app to another. If you're advertising to iOS users, the platform is mostly working blind.
What Apple calls this internally: App Tracking Transparency (ATT). Most people just see the popup.
2024 · Google
Google now needs your visitor's permission before it counts a sale.
Google Ads used to count a conversion every time someone clicked an ad and bought from your store. As of 2024, Google requires your store to first ask the visitor for permission — and pass the answer along with the sale. If you don't, Google still shows your ad in the dashboard but stops counting many of the sales it caused.
What Google calls this internally: Consent Mode v2. Most stores either don't have it, or it's installed wrong.
2024 · Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, Oman
Five Arab countries now require explicit consent — with real fines.
Saudi Arabia's data protection law (PDPL) became actively enforced in September 2024. Fines start at 5 million SAR. The UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, and Oman all have similar laws. Every one of them requires the same thing: your visitors must give permission before you collect their data.
In short: ignoring this isn't just a marketing problem. It's a legal one too.
All three rules point in the same direction: ask permission before tracking. The good news — once you do, your ads work better, not worse. Here's how.
What Arqam360 does
Here's the whole thing in one sentence.
We help your store ask visitors for permission, build a customer list from the people who say yes, and send that list to Google, Meta, and TikTok — so your ads work better and your store is legal.
This is what your visitor sees the first time they land on your site:
A small bar pops up. It asks: "Are you OK with us collecting analytics and showing you better ads?" If they say yes, we track them — and that data is gold for your ad campaigns. If they say no, we respect that. Either way, you're legal.
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How it works
Five steps. You don't do any of them yourself.
Once your developer (or our team) drops in one line of code, all five steps run automatically every time a visitor lands on your store.
Don't have a developer? We do the install for you in about 5 minutes.
A small banner asks for permission.
The first time someone visits your store, they see a friendly bar with three checkboxes: necessary, analytics, marketing. They tap accept (or change what they want) and the bar disappears. We've translated it to Arabic; we handle the right-to-left layout. You don't write any text yourself.
We track only the people who said yes.
If they accepted analytics, we count their visit. If they accepted marketing, we tell Google and Meta about them. If they said no, we don't track them at all — not even a little. This is what the new laws require, and it's what makes your remaining audience cleaner and more valuable.
We figure out who's the same person across visits.
Someone visits on their phone today, then opens your site on their laptop tomorrow. We connect those two visits when they log in or check out — same customer, same person — so your reports actually count them as one buyer, not two.
You build customer lists in plain language.
From your dashboard, you create lists like "people who bought from me twice in the last 90 days" or "people who added to cart but didn't check out." No SQL, no code. Just clicking checkboxes. These lists are the customer audiences you'll target with ads.
We send those lists to Google, Meta, and ten other platforms.
Your audience lists flow automatically to Google Ads, Meta (Facebook + Instagram), TikTok, Snapchat, LinkedIn, GA4, and more. Each one gets the consent permission attached, so they only show ads to the right people — and they count more of your sales correctly.
What changes when you ship this
Three things you'll actually notice.
We don't make up percentages. These are the real, named improvements that come straight from Google's, Meta's, and the regulators' own documentation.
Your ads count more sales.
Google Ads currently misses sales from visitors who haven't clicked "accept" on a consent banner. Once we install the right permission signals, Google starts counting those sales again — using its own modeling. Your dashboard goes back to matching your bank statement.
Your audiences are cleaner.
Your old audience lists include bots, accidental visitors, and people who never wanted to hear from you. Consent-based lists only include people who said yes. Smaller list, but every person in it actually wants to buy from you. Same ad budget, more sales.
Your store is legal.
Saudi Arabia's PDPL is actively enforced. UAE, Egypt, Bahrain, and Oman have similar laws. We hand you a complete record of every visitor's consent (when, what they agreed to, from which device). If a regulator asks, you have the receipts.
Website? App? Both?
We work everywhere your customers shop.
Same product, same dashboard, same prices — whether you run a website, a mobile app, or both.
If you sell on a website
We're a one-click install on the major MENA store platforms. No developer needed.
- Salla (one-click install from the App Store)
- Zid (one-click install from the App Store)
- Shopify (one-click install)
- WordPress + WooCommerce (free plugin)
- Custom site? One line of HTML in your header.
If you have a mobile app
Your developer adds two lines of code (one for iPhone, one for Android). After that, the same dashboard you use for your website also runs your app's privacy.
- iPhone (iOS) — works in any Swift / SwiftUI app
- Android — works in any Kotlin / Jetpack Compose app
- Apple's Privacy Manifest is generated automatically
- Google Play's Data Safety form is generated automatically
- $50/month per app — same price for iOS or Android
Here's what an iPhone consent banner looks like, generated by our SDK with no design work from you. (The Android version uses the same content with Material 3 styling.)
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How to start
Three ways. All of them are reversible.
The free scan takes about a minute. The trial is 14 days, no credit card. The founder reads his email himself and replies within a day.
Scan my site free (about a minute)
Paste your URL. We'll show you exactly what's tracking your visitors right now and whether you're at risk under the new laws. No signup required.
Start scanningTry free for 14 days
Make an account, install the consent banner, and watch the visitor data flow into your dashboard. No credit card. Cancel anytime.
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Got a question I haven't answered? Send it to admin@arqam360.com. I read every email myself, no support team in between, reply within a day.
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