It may only be mid-February, but the “year of efficiency” for Meta and Mark Zuckerberg is in full swing. After laying off thousands of employees and facing back-to-back quarters of underwhelming financial results, he and senior management at Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp must seriously consider their next steps in a business where the online giant is at the mercy of other players like Apple , writes in his article Business Insider.
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Facebook and company make billions from advertising. Businesses invest in the platforms because of the extremely precise audience targeting capabilities – Meta’s integrated ecosystem allows every user interaction to be recorded, measured and profiled – even outside of the social network. Or at least it was until recently.
Since 2021, Apple has significantly changed the policies embedded in the iOS operating system regarding the monitoring of user behavior. Despite Meta’s protests, it has become much more difficult for the company to target the right ads to its key audience – iPhone and iPad users are in the millions, and they are also high-income people.
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To date, the changes have cost Meta alone billions of dollars – even before their implementation, the company’s forecast was for 10 billion in damage.
Not only that, but Apple CEO Tim Cook has repeatedly criticized Facebook for its business model and defined privacy as a human right.
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As analysts note, while Meta depends on iOS, at any moment Apple may make another change and thus put the company in an even more complicated situation.
What will not help soon
While Meta’s ad business appears to be challenged to say the least, Mark Zuckerberg continues to look to the virtual worlds of the metaverse.
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This is not without logic – a completely new platform would open a kind of “escape route” for Meta from the current situation of the online market. “In the context of the search for the next big computing platform, they want to be more upstream: they want to be involved at the ‘Software’ level, they want the operating system, but also to own the hardware the way it is at Apple,” commented BI analyst Mark Shmulik.
The issue here is whether Meta and Zuckerberg’s ambitions will become reality. To date, the metaverse has yet to take shape as a consumer product, with both software and devices leaving much to be desired. It cannot be said categorically that it is the company’s vision of the future of user experiences that will prevail in the coming years – and billions have been invested in it.
What will help now
Meta needs a new digital advertising strategy if it wants to survive, the online publication is adamant.
Over the past year, without much fanfare, the company has been working on new and better tools for advertisers that don’t depend on user tracking. Artificial intelligence is also being applied to help plan campaigns. However, it is important to see a comprehensive approach in the new situation, and not just an attempt to circumvent specific problems.
“This strategy must continue. This year will be important for Meta in terms of creating better tools that reduce the risks associated with Apple. This is a big year for them because they are working hard, but they have not yet achieved the result,” noted analyst Gene Munster of Loup Ventures.
