Mike Peterson
Business models that rely on personalized advertising are "under assault" by iOS 14 privacy changes, Facebook's chief revenue officer said Tuesday.
The changes include a new feature that requires users to opt-in to tracking via Identifier for Advertiser, or IDFA, tags on a per-app basis. Although initially planned for the general iOS 14 release, Apple delayed the rollout of the feature until 2021 following public outcry from a number of companies that gain a bulk of their revenue from ad serving, including Facebook.
Speaking digitally at Advertising Week on Tuesday, Facebook CFO David Fischer said that "the very tools that entrepreneurs, that businesses are relying on right now are being threatened," CNBC reported.
"To me, the changes that Apple has proposed, pretty sweeping changes, are going to hurt developers and businesses the most," Fischer added, singling out the IDFA change in iOS.
The Facebook executive also said that the company plans to "defend" its business model, which it sees as valuable and different from Apple's. Fischer referred to Apple's business as "one that sells luxury hardware or subscription services, mainly to consumers like us who are fortunate enough to have a lot of discretionary income in some of the world's wealthiest countries."
Although Apple positions the changes as a pro-privacy measure, Facebook isn't the only company that is concerned about it. Media companies and publishers are "bracing" for the IDFA change, and in September, a group representing the ad industry urged a "dialogue" about the proposed feature.
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41 Comments
Personalize advertising = digital stalking.
The CFO (Chief Financial Officer) and the CRO (Chief Revenue Officer) are NOT the same person.
They are completely different roles. The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is in charge of the company's finances and is a fiduciary responsible for accurate representation of the company's financials. This includes SEC filings.
The Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) in a company like Facebook is in charge of sales, essentially the sales director. Since most of Facebook's revenue is selling ads, this guy is basically the head ad salesman.
Per Facebook's investor relations site:
David Wehner is the CFO. His department is mostly accountants, financial analysts, etc.
David Fischer is the CRO. His department is mostly ad sales people, ad sales directors, account executives, etc.
Two completely different people in two completely different roles.
CFOs of Fortune 10 companies don't swagger and make bombastic and sweeping accusatory statements. They generally talk about numbers in the past tense, usually the same numbers published in an SEC filing. They aren't trash talkers. That should have been the glaring hint that this Fischer guy is NOT the CFO.
AppleInsider needs to rewrite large parts of this article and the headline to correctly represent who these two senior Facebook managers are.
Sorry, but not sorry. Boo boo.
Oh the humanity! Not the personalized ads!
Not really sure why he thinks clandestine tracking is fine, especially for countries that are low-income. He seems to be implying without tracking people would have to actually pay to use Facebook, and those in low-income countries wouldn't be able to afford it. I have news for him, very few in any country would pay. Pitching lack of tracking as detrimental to the users of Facebook, when in reality it only makes a difference to the bottom line of a multi-billion company doesn't fool anyone. And apart from him, Zuckerberg and FB's shareholders, no one cares about FB's bottom line. Especially not those in low-income countries.