In response to: how did Apple do this?<p>Mobile app advertising on iOS has long relied on Apple's IDFA - Identifier for Advertisers - a random, device-unique, resettable identifier that was available to all apps.<p>An app like Candy Crush would tell ad networks like FB that "IDFA 123456 just installed the app" or "IDFA 654321 just made a $5 in-app purchase." FB could then recognize that IDFA as a user who installed the FB app, and they could use that data to target, optimize via ML, and measure the audience and results of Candy Crush's marketing campaign.<p>Apple's recent iOS update made IDFA an app-level opt-in, so in order for this existing advertising mechanism to work, you needed to opt-in to tracking on FB (so they could associate your IDFA to a FB user) AND to opt-in to tracking on the other apps (so they could send ad networks data with your IDFA). This double opt-in obviously has a super low rate.<p>FB wasn't impacted nearly as much as other advertising businesses because they already have identifiers for their users (email, phone number, etc), have a ton of first-party interest/behavioral data, and they mostly run ads on their own properties. Apps who used third-party ad networks to sell and place ads in their apps had their business completely destroyed.<p>I think this is all fair in terms of user choice and to give Apple control of their own platform, but it opens Apple up for a lot of regulatory scrutiny given that they were able to flip a switch that annihilated a $50b mobile advertising industry, while making their own equivalent data collection opt-out (vs their competitors' opt-in). Even then, Apple frames their data collection option as "Personalize your experience" while forcing other apps to use the phrase "Allow this app to track you." Apple's own ads product has tripled its market share since this launched. [0]<p>[0] <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/074b881f-a931-4986-888e-2ac53e286b9d" rel="nofollow">https://www.ft.com/content/074b881f-a931-4986-888e-2ac53e286...</a>
Oh no, advertisement revenue for the worlds second biggest advertising company is only up <i>33%</i> year on year(!).<p>These are still insane revenue growth figures, although it does appear that 70% of facebook posts just seem to be ads now, so I suspect a lot of this growth is just based on feeding more ads as a % of content which will clearly lower the user experience in the long run.
Facebooks decisions and current issues makes their shareholders look a bit stupid. The shareholders should ask Facebook management how they allowed their growth to be tied to the decisions of a completely unrelated third party company, or how the company failed to secure research which will harm their reputation (such as it is), if it got out.<p>Whether you like or hate Facebook, it's hard to see Zuckerberg as anything but a failing CEO at this point. He continues to create problems which harms the Facebook brand. He has allowed the companys core product to be partly dependent on the actions of an unrelated company (Apple) who have a completely different business case and agenda. Either through action or inaction he is now forcing countries to start legislation to control companies like Facebook, well Facebook and Facebook companies. Despite all of that, I hear no critic of Zuckerberg as a CEO.
FWIW I run a D2C brand and the iOS 14 change hurt badly.<p>We are able to attribute something like half of the sales we used to. The main consequence of this is the FB models can't learn who our customers are as well, resulting in an increase in our cost of customer acquisition.<p>It makes selling niche products much harder.
The Facebook Ad buyer Facebook groups (meta, I know) have been in panic for the past few weeks as a lot of people report their previous targeting settings are no longer producing results. Some or unaffected or doing better, but there is definitely a quality fallout for advertisers and that can lower sales of facebook ads quickly.