Apple Privacy Rules to Blame for Facebook's Lower Than Expected Quarterly Growth
In response to: how did Apple do this?<p>Mobile app advertising on iOS has long relied on Apple&#x27;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 &quot;IDFA 123456 just installed the app&quot; or &quot;IDFA 654321 just made a $5 in-app purchase.&quot; 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&#x27;s marketing campaign.<p>Apple&#x27;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&#x27;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&#x2F;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&#x27; opt-in). Even then, Apple frames their data collection option as &quot;Personalize your experience&quot; while forcing other apps to use the phrase &quot;Allow this app to track you.&quot; Apple&#x27;s own ads product has tripled its market share since this launched. [0]<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ft.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;074b881f-a931-4986-888e-2ac53e286b9d" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ft.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;074b881f-a931-4986-888e-2ac53e286...</a>