In June, at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple announced product and policy changes that will affect data sharing across iOS. The limits it places on advertising will harm the growth of small businesses and the free Internet.
Free, ad-supported businesses have been essential to the growth and vitality of the Internet, and that personalized ads and user privacy can coexist. We support proactive privacy measures and data transparency, but we don’t agree with Apple’s policy changes.
facebook.com
Impact on personalised ads
Apple’s proposed changes will limit your ability to effectively reach, understand and engage people on mobile devices and across the web. They will affect your ability to understand performance, control who sees your ads and make informed decisions about your advertising budgets. As these changes take effect, over time, you may see an overall decrease in ad performance and personalisation and an increase in cost per action.
Specifically, these changes will limit your ability to:
- Effectively deliver ads to people based on their engagement with your business
- Measure and report on conversions from certain customers
- Ensure that your ads are delivered to the most relevant audiences at the right frequency
- Accurately attribute app installs to people using iOS 14 and later
- Predict and optimise cost per action over time and efficiently allocate budgets
Apple’s policy will make it much harder for small businesses to reach their target audience, which will limit their growth and their ability to compete with big companies. Case in point, our studies show that when running ads on the Facebook family of apps to drive sales on their websites, small businesses saw a cut of over 60% of their sales, on average, for every dollar they spent when they weren’t able to use their own data to find customers on Facebook1. For example, currently, a local book shop could spend USD 50 on a relevant and personalised ad and may win five sales. Without the use of their own data to personalise an ad, that business would spend USD 50 and may only win two sales. We don’t anticipate the proposed iOS 14 changes to cause a full loss of personalisation, but rather are a move in that direction.
Without the predictable costs and personalized ads you’re accustomed to creating and running, many new products and services would never get off the ground. We believe in the opportunity for new ad-supported businesses to start and grow, but we do not agree with Apple’s attempt to disrupt the online ad ecosystem and the small business opportunities it makes possible and sustains.
facebook response
Facebook disagrees with Apple’s approach and solution, yet they have no choice but to show Apple’s prompt. If they don’t, Apple may block Facebook from the App Store, which would only further harm the businesses and users that rely on facebook services. Facebook cannot take this risk on behalf of the millions of businesses who use our platform to grow.
