Facebook reports record ad revenue after grousing about iOS privacy features

Facebook is making money hand over fist despite warnings of impending doom due to new iOS privacy features Apple introduced in April.

The social network raked in $28.6 billion in advertising revenue for the second quarter of 2021, up 56% from the same period last year. Advertising accounts for nearly all of the company's income, with total revenue coming in at $29.1 billion.

Facebook more than doubled its profits from the previous year with a $10.4 billion performance, up from $5.2 billion in 2020.

Still, the company is bracing investors for rough waters in the coming months. CFO David Wehner in a statement blames the headwinds on new privacy features Apple baked into its iOS operating system.

"We continue to expect increased ad targeting headwinds in 2021 from regulatory and platform changes, notably the recent iOS updates, which we expect to have a greater impact in the third quarter compared to the second quarter," Wehner said.

Apple in April rolled out updates to iOS that are designed to limit ad targeting by restricting app access to users' Identification for Advertisers (IDFA) tags. Called App Tracking Transparency, the feature requires developers to ask users for permission before using IDFA tags to track their activity across apps and the web.

The notification comes in the form of a consent prompt that is displayed when an app is first opened. It is expected that more users will opt out of ad tracking with the option surfaced so prominently, leaving ad companies in search of new targeting technologies. Apple provides the privacy-conscious SKAdNetwork and Privacy Click Measurement ad attribution tools as replacements for IDFA tags.

Facebook has aggressively resisted Apple's implementation of ATT on claims that the privacy change will deal a major blow to the bottom lines of ad tech companies and small businesses reliant on ad sales. CEO Mark Zuckerberg previously predicted fallout from ATT would begin to impact Facebook's bottom line this quarter.

20 Comments

mac_dog 1083 comments · 16 Years

About 3 years ago

Fear-mongering crybabies.

amar99 180 comments · 14 Years

How are they able to operate in such a behind-the-scenes way without full transparency and make billions upon billions? Apple has done at least part of what it could via their App Store transparency labels, but it's clear there's a long way to go. Regulation might wind up being the only way to reign in the seemingly unlimited data-harvesting power of most big tech companies. Although from the government-tech hearings I've seen, my hopes are low that the right people are in office to understand what's needed, let alone to act in ways beneficial to people / society, yet not detrimental to the Internet's functionality and benefits.

dewme 5737 comments · 10 Years

Sounds like the drama queen can afford to buy himself some new arrows, spears, and replacement bowling pins. Who knows, maybe he is planning to require his employees to compete in an actual Hunger Games competition against him and was just practicing his throw against representative unarmed pinheads.

chadbag 2026 comments · 13 Years

If you have to use FB OR Instagram (or Twitter but different comoany), and happen to see an ad for something you are interested in, don't touch or click the ad. Just go to Safari and look up the company or shop directly, outside of FB. We don't want the companies that use FB to advertise to think their ads do anything. Also ads outside of FB should get the same treatment. FB and others are selling that ad space as well.

ArchStanton 200 comments · 3 Years

amar99 said:

How are they able to operate in such a behind-the-scenes way without full transparency and make billions upon billions? Apple has done at least part of what it could via their App Store transparency labels, but it's clear there's a long way to go. Regulation might wind up being the only way to reign in the seemingly unlimited data-harvesting power of most big tech companies. Although from the government-tech hearings I've seen, my hopes are low that the right people are in office to understand what's needed, let alone to act in ways beneficial to people / society, yet not detrimental to the Internet's functionality and benefits.

How are they able? Because most consumers aren't aware of what it means when Facebook(or Google) says "advertising" or "user experience" or my favorite "user interaction". To most consumers, they hear "advertising" and they think of a beer or car commercial on TV, or a corner of webpage with an image selling Tshirts, Most consumers have enough on their plate, are tech internet savvy limited, and will not be digging into what Facebook actually does behind the scenes to make "advertising" so lucrative. Plus most consumers get much of their information snippets from online platforms and corporate media. None of these entities (some of who are in on the data mining money stream stream to small extents) question or explain data mining whatsoever. Then add to that troll farms and Android users online (some you'll read hear at AI) who purposefully muddle the issue with 'they all do it', 'the internet is not private', 'everyone knows they collect your data, it's no big deal'. This is purposeful clouding of th issue. But factually, indisputably, Android users(and Apple haters) have to muddle it. The truth is clear in regards to expanded data mining and who does this on big scales. Be aware when you see posters on AI trying to make the 'they all do it' claims in differing ways. They ultimately are saying the same thing that is trying to cloud the truth.

Apple is a minority portion of the mobile operating system market. Further, it has only been the last 18 months that Apple has significantly begun to cutoff these big personal data miners, Facebook and Google. Hopefully more people will become aware over the next 18 months.
Simply cutting off the ability for one installed app to not be able to record what you do while using other apps (maps, texts, internet, calendar, contacts etc) is a huge step in the right direction. Probably the biggest step that could be taken.