Facebook and advertisers are in a panic over the App Tracking Transparency feature on iPhones, as more and more users avoid being tracked for advertising purposes.
With iOS 14.5, iPhone and iPad users can now easily opt out of cross-site and cross-app tracking, thanks to the App Tracking Transparency feature. New data from analytics firm Branch shows that just 25% of users allow tracking (for ads), which is causing panic in the advertising industry and large companies like Facebook.
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A Bloomberg report says the impact is being felt particularly on Facebook advertisers. According to reports, Facebook is no longer able to provide specific metrics to advertisers to help them know if their ads are working:
“Facebook advertisers, in particular, have been noticing the impact over the past month. People who run Facebook ad campaigns on behalf of clients said Facebook is no longer able to reliably see how many sales its customers are making, making it harder to understand which Facebook ads are working. The loss of this data also affects Facebook’s ability to show a business’s products to potential new customers. It also makes it harder to “retarget” people with ads, which show users items they’ve looked at online but may not have purchased.“.
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Facebook has not commented on the Bloomberg report, but data from Branch shows that about 75% of iPhone users are now running iOS 14.5 or later with App Tracking Transparency. Of those users, just 25% allow tracking and targeting.
Facebook says it’s working on new features to compensate for the data lost due to App Tracking Transparency. These include, among other things, “new advertising features that require less data to measure the success of an ad.” The company is also reportedly exploring ways to serve ads based on data stored on a user’s device (since it can’t track activity on other sites and apps).
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“Apple’s policy hurts businesses’ ability to effectively use their advertising budgets, and the limitations it creates are due to Apple’s restrictions on its own behalf,” a spokesperson said, noting that Facebook has tried to prepare advertisers with notices, blogs and webinars. “We believe that personalized ads and user privacy can coexist.”
The full report on Bloomberg provides more details.
Source: 9to5Mac
