Facebook is paying dearly for Apple’s privacy protections. Menlo Park has already lost $10 billion.
Platforms like Facebook rely heavily on user data to sell targeted ads. This data includes, for example, what you do online, the sites you visit, the products you search for, etc. This is why we can imagine that Facebook was not very happy when the Cupertino company rolled out its latest privacy protection features, features that essentially block this kind of user tracking.
Facebook pays dearly for Apple-initiated privacy protections
At the time, the American giant said he expected this to hurt ad revenue, and it turned out he was right. Indeed, according to Facebook’s latest results, the Palo Alto firm posted $33.67 billion in revenue. This is higher than expected, but the company has warned that it is expected to fall to around $27 or $29 billion in the first quarter of 2022.
Menlo Park has already lost $10 billion
According to Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg, this situation has a lot to do with Apple. “First, advertising. Like others in our industry, we’ve had hurdles following Apple’s iOS changes. As we explained last quarter, Apple implemented two objectives for advertisers. First, the targeting accuracy of our ads has decreased, which has increased the cost of our spending. Secondly, the evaluation of these results has become more difficult.”
In the end, this is not surprising. Indeed, most users today definitely choose not to track apps. In fact, if Meta doesn’t find a workaround, it could be a huge problem for the American giant.