Personal Data = Profits: Facebook Says Apple's Privacy Measures Will Cost It $10 Billion

Facebook stated as part of its earnings release on Wednesday that the consumer privacy measures recently taken by Apple have made it harder for Mark Zuckerberg’s empire to track every detail of its users’ lives, which will cost the social media giant $10 billion in 2022 due to a decrease in the ability to target advertisements.

MacRumors reports that Facebook admitted during its earnings call that Apple’s recent iOS privacy updates are having a negative effect on the social media giant’s business. Facebook expects to lose around $10 billion in 2022 as a result of Apple’s privacy updates that make it harder for sites like Facebook to track users across other apps and websites.

(SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

Facebook reported revenue of $33.67 billion this week, a figure higher than expected. But the firm also reported a decrease in global daily users for the first time in the company’s history, causing stock prices to plummet by 23 percent, wiping out approximately $200 billion in market value.

Facebook also offered lower guidance for the first quarter of 2022, saying that it expects to see around $27 to $29 billion in revenue, falling short of $30 billion expectations, Facebook put most of the blame for this on Apple’s recently introduced App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework which requires users to give apps permission to track them across other apps and websites.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said during an earnings call on Wednesday:

First, ads. Like others in our industry, we’ve faced headwinds as a result of Apple’s iOS changes. As we described last quarter, Apple created two challenges for advertisers. One is that the accuracy of our ads targeting decreased, which increased the cost of driving outcomes. The other is that measuring those outcomes became more difficult.

CFO David Wehner said that it expects Apple’s privacy measures to have a more significant effect in the coming year. “And we believe the impact of iOS overall as a headwind on our business in 2022 is on the order of $10 billion, so it’s a pretty significant headwind for our business,” said Wehner.

Wehner also alleged that Apple favored Google’s Ad Search as “Apple continues to take billions of dollars a year from Google Search ads, [so] incentive clearly exists for this policy discrepancy to continue.” Wehner stated:

And if you look at it, we believe those restrictions from Apple are designed in a way that carves out browsers from the tracking prompts Apple requires for apps. And so what that means is that search ads could have access to far more third-party data for measurement and optimization purposes than app-based ad platforms like ours.

So when it comes to using data, you can think of it — that it’s not really apples-to apples for us. And as a result, we believe Google’s search ads business could have benefited relative to services like ours that face a different set of restrictions from Apple. And given that Apple continues to take billions of dollars a year from Google Search ads, the incentive clearly exists for this policy discrepancy to continue.

Personal Data = Profits: Facebook Says Apple’s Privacy Measures Will Cost It $10 Billion

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