Facebook To Incur Huge Advertising Loss Amid iOS 14 Anti-tracking Policy

With the new Apple operating system iOS 14, users have the option of severely restricting the transfer of their data. This could especially affect Facebook’s advertising business. The social media group fears sales losses of up to 50 percent.

Apple had already announced at the WWDC developer conference that the company believed that privacy was a fundamental human right. For this reason, users of iOS 14 must be asked by each app before they can be shown personalized advertising. This means that significantly fewer data from Apple users should be available to advertisers in the coming years.

Sales could fall by 50 percent

As Facebook writes in a blog entry, the group fears that the update to iOS 14 could ensure that the advertising business of the so-called audience network could generate 50 percent fewer sales in the future. With the Audience Network, app developers have the option of adding advertising to their applications. In order to be able to place the advertising more efficiently, the user data collected by Facebook is used. A user is identified on the iPhones with the help of a unique IDFA provided by Apple. Since users will soon have to actively consent to the use of IDFA for advertising purposes, Facebook would like to forego this information for the time being.

To support app developers and publishers, Facebook is currently working on short-term and long-term strategies that could compensate for the loss in sales due to the update to iOS 14. The group plans to revise its own SDK and implement alternative advertising options. However, what exactly is meant by this remains open.