William Gallagher
Almost 12 months after Apple launched App Tracking Transparency, a new analysis predicts its second year will still see major disruption to advertiser, with Facebook, YouTube and more collectively losing around $16 billion.
Apple released its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature in iOS 14 on April 26, 2021, and it immediately had an impact on companies relying on advertising revenue. By July, it was estimated to be causing a 15% to 20% revenue drop for advertisers.
Then Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg has reported that his company would see a $10 billion revenue hit for 2022. In October 2021, Snapchat parent company Snap saw its stock price fall 25% over fears regarding the impact of ATT.
Now a new analysis by research firm Lotame says that ATT is continuing to have an impact - even though it is lessening. Alongside ATT, Apple deprecated its old IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers) technology, but it has introduced new frameworks to help advertisers, and they appear to be being adopted.
"[For its second year] we think the IDFA change will have an impact on the companies of nearly $16 billion," says Lotame in its report. "Again with the lion's share of that impact (81%) coming from Facebook."
That 81% for Facebook represents an estimated $12.8 billion. Lotame estimates the rest of the lost revenue as $546 million for Snap, $323 million for Twitter, and $2.2 billion for YouTube.
However, Lotame describes both Snap and Twitter has having "largely shrugged off" the situation. Each is adapting to using the new measurement systems provided by Apple, for instance.
Then, too, Facebook is working to decrease its reliance on Apple, and is reportedly providing advertisers with new tools.
Despite the forecast of a $16 billion hit to revenues in the second year of ATT, Lotame even says that it will not continue researching the topic. Lotame says that it expects "other shocks" to affect the advertising industry, and that by the second half of 2022, ATT's impact will have been "cauterized."
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11 Comments
Good. I have to wonder how many people actually read the ads being presented or even buy what’s being hocked.
It is rare to have good news these days
Much of the reason Google's ad revenues seem barely affected (in fact up since ATT began rolling out) is that search ads don't rely on user data anyway, being completely interest-based.
Display ads are a different beast, but Google is far less reliant on them compared to Facebook. In addition Google had already started transitioning to Modeled Conversion* which doesn't need user tracking to show ad results, and that was before Apple announced App Tracking Transparency.
The entire online ad-industry is in flux, and some companies will just be better equipped for the challenges. Facebook appears to be ill-prepared.
*Modeled conversions use data that does not identify individual users to estimate conversions that Google is unable to observe directly. This can offer a more complete report of your conversions. This approach is in direct contrast with non privacy-safe tactics like fingerprinting, which relies on heuristics, such as IP address, and attempts to identify and track individual users. Google has a strict policy against utilizing fingerprinting for ads personalization, as it doesn't allow reasonable user control and transparency.
Very good!