This comes ahead of an Apple privacy change with the potential to upset the social network's core revenue machine
Facebook will begin rolling out an in-app prompt for Apple users to educate them on how the company handles their data and encourage users to let the social media giant track their activities to continue personalizing ads.
This comes ahead of an Apple privacy change with the potential to upset the social network's core revenue machine by making targeted advertising harder for the millions of businesses using Facebook.
Facebook’s advertising revenue rose 25 percent to a record $20.7 billion in Q4 of 2019, during which the company expanded its number of advertisers by 14 percent to 8 million from 7 million in October 2019.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Apple’s Tim Cook have been indirectly sharing heated words in January.
Zuckerberg noted that “we increasingly see Apple as one of our biggest competitors,” also stating that Apple was using its dominant position to drive users to their own apps by interfering with Facebook’s. He added that the company’s privacy change is only for Apple’s anti-competitive interests.
Facebook also seems to be preparing an anti-trust lawsuit against Apple for their new App Store rules.
On the other hand, Cook also had some words to share, speaking out the very next day after Zuckerberg’s comments.
“Technology does not need vast troves of personal data, stitched together across dozens of websites and apps, in order to succeed,” Cook said. “Advertising existed and thrived for decades without it. And we’re here today because the path of least resistance is rarely the path of wisdom. If a business is built on misleading users, on data exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all, then it does not deserve our praise. It deserves reform”.
The discussion circles around a unique device identifier called the IDFA, Identifier for Advertisers.
Apple’s upcoming update will ask all apps on their App Store to request users to opt-in or opt-out to allowing the app to track certain data. If users opt-out, this will affect ad targeting efficiency.
Facebook has already warned investors that these looming changes could hurt its advertising business as soon as this quarter.
Facebook’s in-app prompt will provide users with a page of information detailing why Facebook thinks a user should give the company permission to track them on iOS, arguing that the data is used to support businesses that rely on advertising by making ads more personalized.
The company has spent months explaining the potential harm that the new privacy measures will cause for small businesses, which the company says will lower revenues through less effective advertising. The social network has also taken out full-page newspaper ads in protest of the changes.
“Apple’s new prompt is designed to present a false tradeoff between personalized ads and privacy; when in fact, we can provide both. Apple is doing this to self-preference their own services and targeted advertising products,” said a Facebook spokesperson.
“To help people make a real choice, we’re also showing a screen of our own to provide more information about how we use personalized ads, which support small businesses and keep apps free. Agreeing to our screen doesn’t result in Facebook collecting new types of data; it just means that Facebook can continue to give people better experiences.”
Zuckerberg noted during a recent earnings report, "Apple has every incentive to use their dominant platform position to interfere with how our apps and other apps work, which they regularly do, to preference their own”.
"This impacts the growth of millions of businesses around the world, including with the upcoming iOS 14 changes. Many small businesses will no longer be able to reach their customers with targeted ads,” he added.
