Mikey Campbell
A group of former Facebook employees describe the massive impact Apple's App Tracking Transparency feature will have on the social network, explaining why the company has been so vocal in protesting the change.
Speaking to CNBC, former Facebook staffers who worked on ad products and businesses detailed the importance of IDFA tracking, which will be explicitly opt-in on iOS starting this spring.
Expected to launch with iOS 14.5, Apple's App Tracking Transparency initiative requires developers to gain permission before tracking a user's device advertising identifier, or Identifier for Advertiser (IDFA) tag. The feature automatically opts users out of tracking by default, though users can allow tracking manually in settings or by interacting with a special dialogue box that appears when opening an app for the first time.
Facebook and others have pushed back against the change, guessing users will likely opt out of ad tracking when presented with the choice. That would deal a major blow to the bottom lines of ad tech companies.
According to former Facebook employees, the anti-tracking feature will block insight into a key metric called view-through conversions. The technology enables ad firms to measure the number of users who purchase goods after viewing, but not interacting with, an ad.
For example, a user might see an ad for a TV while scrolling through their feed, but doesn't tap on the accompanying link. They later purchase that TV or related item from a retailer that shares the consumer's IDFA with Facebook. Pairing IDFAs can therefore help quantify an ad's influence even if a user fails to directly interact with the original post.
Similarly, Facebook's Audience Network, which furnishes targeted ads on non-Facebook platforms, will be negatively impacted by Apple's IDFA screening decision. Also on the chopping block is access to analytics data outside of Facebook's suite of apps.
In protesting Apple's upcoming change, Facebook in December began to run newspaper ads warning of the havoc App Tracking Transparency will wreak on small businesses. It issued similar notices on its own platform. According to at least one former employee, however, those calls for action are slightly disingenuous.
Henry Love, a former employee on Facebook's small business team, told CNBC that many SMBs are unlikely to see a change in ad performance because they don't necessarily need the hyper accurate targeting data provided by IDFA. A coffee shop was cited as an example. Such an establishment typically limits targeting to broad categories like age and physical proximity to a brick-and-mortar store, information that is already available from Facebook's own apps.
"If you talked to any restaurant owner anywhere and asked them what IDFA is, I don't think any of them would know what that is," Love said. "It's affecting Facebook at scale. Not the small business owners."
That said, well-funded start-ups could be vulnerable once the feature goes live.
"The only people targeting across mobile, web and Facebook Audience Network, they're not really small businesses," Love said. "They're sophisticated, VC-backed startups. They're not your typical SMB."
Apple's App Tracking Transparency feature is currently in beta testing as part of iOS 14.5 and should launch in the coming weeks.
Charles Martin
Malcolm Owen
Andrew O'Hara
William Gallagher
20 Comments
It's hard to have sympathy for any of the participants in the surveillance industry, but this article makes me wonder if I'm being a little too harsh on advertisers. Ever since the inception of advertising there's been a huge element of uncertainty, and the only measurement possible was the net change in sales revenue which then has to be adjusted to reflect seasonal, societal and other variations that are themselves hard to measure.
I've got no issue with anyone using a process of measurement to make decisions based on real world information, and seeking more accurate measurement isn't intrinsically a bad thing. If I'm trying to measure the influence a piece of advertising has, then sure I'd like to know if someone saw it but didn't act on it straight away. That's something that can be inferred from traditional methods, but actual measurement is better.
I question, though, both how accurate this IDFA process is (we can assume very, given the efforts to block it) and how valuable that information ends up being. As the article says, it's only the most sophisticated advertisers who care about it - which I take to mean that the vast majority of advertisers don't see anything particularly valuable in it. So this problem is being caused, as usual, by a small proportion of the population who are nowadays able to leverage technology to a shocking degree to affect everyone on the planet with an online presence. And most of them don't care about the customer experience, as evidenced by the number of proposals one receives for prices on a product one has already purchased. Creepy and lame, as Gruber said.
I wonder if those people are feeling very insecure about the intrinsic value of the products and services they're bringing into the world. It's one thing to push hard for the best possible performance from a successful business that satisfies customer needs; it's another to squeeze blood from a stone trying to make an unviable proposition profitable.
Oh well — sorry, Mark … hugs and kisses
I’m all for Apple’s efforts as some of this stuff is eye opening if not disturbing. However, necessity is the mother of invention. If trackers replaced cookies, some innovative people will imagine and build a new from of tracking to replace this. Let the games re-begin.
It’s rubbish of Facebook argument.
As a consumer, I performs my own research on products I intend to buy, be it physical visits to retailers, word of mouth from extended family or friends, search engines, etc. If it happens that Facebook dished me ads relating to these products that I end up buying from an online store, and they get credited as success influence for their ads???
I am totally behind Apple on this one. As consumer, we should have choice and control over how our digital footprint is being managed, not being invaded silently without choice to opt out. Same thing telcos are doing - ads to your mobile number and we becoming their product to sell to businesses who choose to put ads via telco. Unacceptable!!!
As a small business owner, the last thing our business needs is false-positive claims of success for ads we choose to buy/put out. IMO, if it isn’t direct ad link purchase, it isn’t counted towards to ad platform. Period!
Poor Facebook, just trying to help the small businesses owner. I bet they give millions to help out small businesses every year. /s