Since the spring of 2021, Apple’s new targeted advertising policy, which relies on user consent, has made it harder for Facebook to generate ad revenue. The shortfall is colossal…
In January 2021, Mark Zuckerberg pointed out that his group, Facebook, increasingly saw Apple as one of its main rivals. In question, Apple’s new policy on targeted advertising born with iOS 14.5.
Since the spring of 2021, the new version of the iPhone operating system has asked the user whether or not to accept targeted advertising when using the various applications available on the App Store. This change is also accompanied by the appearance of new data on the apps, which must thus inform the user of the way in which his personal data can be exploited.
Faced with this change, the staff of Facebook, which has since become Meta to record its shift in the metaverse and restore its image, saw red. Indeed, the economic model of the American group is based almost exclusively on advertising revenue ($115 billion in 2021). In this context, the Menlo Park firm estimated the shortfall at $10 billion for the year 2022 due to App Tracking Transparency (ATT), Apple’s new advertising identifier system.
Facebook concentrates 81% of the shortfall for the technological giants
The financial impact would however be stronger than expected for Facebook. Indeed, the new Apple brand device should ultimately cause Facebook to lose a windfall of around $ 12.8 billion in 2022, according to calculations by the firm Lotame. The latter estimates that Apple’s anti-tracking system will cause the technology giants to lose a total of nearly 16 billion in advertising revenue, or 81% for Facebook alone. For its part, YouTube should suffer a shortfall of 2.2 billion dollars, against 546 million dollars for Snapchat and 323 million dollars for Twitter, the latter two companies having evolved their tools to limit the impact. financial support for the activation of the ATT.
This darker than expected perspective does not help the business of Facebook, which is stuck in an endless downward spiral. The icing on the cake, the American company lost users for the first time in its history in the fourth quarter of 2021. As bad news never comes alone, the group also recorded lower profits over the period, with 10 $.3 billion in net profit, down 8% compared to the same period in 2020, for a turnover of $33.7 billion. The sanction of the market was not long in coming with a loss of 200 billion dollars in market capitalization on Wall Street following the announcement of the results of Mark Zuckerberg’s firm.