A Financial Times investigation found that Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube lost an estimated $ 9.85 billion in revenue as a result of changes made by Apple to its privacy practices. Apple last year announced the Application Tracking Transparency Policy (ATT) which requires apps to request permission to track user data. The policy went into effect in April, prohibiting apps from tracking users if they opt out.
Facebook notably criticized the move with a full-page newspaper ad, and thanks to the FT report, we now know why business leaders were so frustrated. According to the report, Facebook lost the most money “in absolute terms” compared to other social platforms due to its massive size. Meanwhile, Snap is “doing the worst as a percentage of its business,” as its advertising is mostly smartphone-related, which makes sense for a product that doesn’t have a desktop version.
“Some of the most impacted platforms – but especially Facebook – have to rebuild their machines from scratch as a result of ATT,” adtech consultant Eric Seufert told FT. “My belief is that it takes at least a year to build a new infrastructure. New tools and frameworks need to be developed from scratch and tested extensively before being deployed to large numbers of users.
Apple’s new policy will force social platforms and other apps to be more creative in their advertising. Whether that means focusing on Android devices or investing in the advertising business of Apple – which almost broke its own rules by quietly collecting user data the same way third-party apps have – they’ll have to. find another source of income that doesn’t involve tracking people on their iPhones.
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