Facebook has pulled its second out round of full-page ads in two days aiming for Apple … not to roll out a privacy update or anything.
This is an iOS update that requires users to give explicit, opt-in permission to allow apps to track them with Apple’s Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), a unique ‘anonymous identifier’ on any iOS device that companies such as Facebook, but also advertisers, to track user activity in apps. Currently IDFA tracking is opt-out, which means that companies get that data standard. Facebook’s concern is that – obviously and for good reason – users, when given the choice, don’t want advertisers to shop around by half of the mess they do on them phones, because they aren’t actually interested in seeing personalized ads and tracking the entire behavior she crawls out.
This could severely limit Facebook’s ability to do things like post-installation tracking, targeted ads, and modeling user behavior on iOS apps. Apple has also moved before to implement new ones anti-tracking functions on Safari, the stock browser on iOS devices, which limits advertisers’ ability to track users across the web.
Facebook offered two lines of defense: that Apple is abusing its position as the sole arbiter of what’s happening on iOS devices, and that the move will be devastating for the poor mom-and-pop companies that depend on it. Apple might be a panache, anti-competitive bully, but since Facebook is too, it’s not clear why anyone would take the company seriously as an advocate for antitrust or small businesses. Either way, Facebook has gone completely aggro by attacking Apple over the forthcoming requirements via expensive, full page advertisements in the country’s largest newspapers. Here’s the ad that appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post on Wednesday:
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And here’s Thursday’s edition of the ad, which is nearly identical:
The full-page ads are clearly intended to spark some sort of backlash against Apple from small businesses, which can be a bit of a challenge.
Facebook wrote in the ads that the “forced software update” (as if Apple is forcing users to install iOS 14 at gunpoint) will ensure that “your favorite cooking sites or sports blogs” will have serious limitations on “their ability to display personalized ads” (here’s the point.) Facebook argued that this means that many free sites or apps will use users instead. charge money for subscriptions or in-app purchases.
Facebook also claimed that 44% of small businesses increased their use of personalized ads during the new coronavirus pandemic, citing a study by consultancy Deloitte. It also highlighted, in bold type, a statistic that without personalized ads, an “average small business advertiser sees a discount of over 60% in sales for every dollar he spends.”
In a blog postFacebook explained that the 60% figure is actually more of a “longer term” thing:
Our studies show that without personalized ads based on their own data, small businesses can achieve a reduction of more than 60% in website sales through ads. We don’t expect the proposed iOS 14 changes to cause a complete loss of personalization, but rather a move in that direction over the longer term.
Facebook cited that statistic down to the smallest details as arising from its own internal research. Facebook offered just two sentences of explanation, saying it compared data from advertisers using the kind of data Apple says it wants to cut with those who didn’t:
To understand the impact on small to medium-sized businesses, we compared the aggregated results of ad campaigns in Facebook’s family of apps that used the advertisers ‘own data to optimize for purchases on the advertisers’ websites, compared to the results of only the use of the data of the advertising platform. . The research analysis includes more than 25,000 global ad campaigns in which advertisers optimized for purchases made in 2019.
When asked for more information about the statistic, a Facebook spokesperson forwarded Gizmodo to the blog post. Facebook didn’t immediately respond to a follow-up question about which apps the tests were about or why they chose the specific subset of ads.
Apple has fired back at Facebook by essentially accusing the company of being a piece of shit.
Earlier this year, it delayed the rollout of the anti-tracking feature to 2021 to give developers more time to adapt. When it was criticized by privacy groups, it sent the organizations a letter reporting that Facebook was one of the developers who took longer to transition and accuses its executives of “ collecting as much data as possible about both proprietary and third-party products in order to develop and monetize detailed profiles of their users and this disregard for user privacy continues to expand to include more of their products. “