Facebook fears collapse in advertising revenue with iOS 14

August 26th, 2020, 7:49 pm
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According to Facebook, Apple’s iOS 14 could cause its audience network advertising business to collapse by over 50 percent. The reason is stricter data protection.

For a long time, advertisers and platforms such as Facebook have been storming the innovations that are coming with iOS 14. The new version of the Apple operating system brings with it a decisive change: With the update, Apple users can prevent their data from being passed on to advertisers in the future. On Wednesday, Facebook said the iOS update could slump its Audience Network advertising business by over 50 percent, like CNBC reports.

Facebook audience network: slump in revenue

The so-called Audience Network from Facebook enables app developers to place advertisements in the applications, which are then displayed in a targeted manner about its users using the rich data from Facebook. To date, advertisers have used the IDFA provided by Apple, a unique ID for users of Apple devices. Facebook and Co. can then use this to determine whether a certain advertising campaign has resulted in the installation of an app.

With iOS 14, Apple has made it even more important to protect the privacy of its users. Anyone who wants to access the iOS user ID (IDFA) still offered by Apple in the future is dependent on those users actively agreeing to the subsequent advertising tracking (opt-in). For advertisers, the ID is almost worthless, like heise.de reports.

Facebook wants to do without IDFA collection in iOS 14

Corresponding announced Facebookthat the company’s applications in iOS 14 would initially do without the IDFA information. The Facebook SDK will be updated to support iOS 14 and Apple’s SKAd Network API. This means that advertisers would have less data available for the implementation and analysis of advertising campaigns.

The above-mentioned audience network drop of over 50 percent could, according to Facebook, turn out to be even greater in reality than in the tests. They are working on short- and long-term strategies to support the app providers in the face of these changes. The group left open which possibilities Facebook specifically means. It is also unclear how much revenue the audience network advertising business is currently generating. Facebook itself sees its advertising business less affected. The new features of iOS 14 have no effect on Android users either.

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