Apple’s decision to stop app developers from tracking users without their permission has been a hot topic in the industry for months. Even though many developers have come to terms with the new rules, some have come out strongly against them. After all, no matter how scary it may sound, in fact, no catastrophe happened. It’s just that you need to get permission to interact with advertising user IDs from now on. But companies like Facebook got really scared. True, few people understood why.
No, it doesn’t take a genius to realize that Facebook, losing the ability to interact with user ad IDs with the release of iOS 14.5, could lose some of its revenue. Moreover, she herself speaks openly about it.
But, if you look closely, it becomes clear that only she threw such a tantrum about this. After all, even Google quietly agreed to stop tracking, not to be branded as a spy. But a former Facebook employee who worked in advertising at the company spoke about the reasons for this reaction.
Why do you need an advertising ID
It’s all about the peculiarities of the functioning of advertising identifiers (IDFA). Every time a user of a site or application buys a product from an advertisement that he has seen on the Internet, this is recorded in his identifier.
The seller passes this information on to the advertising company to evaluate its effectiveness. Analysts or special algorithms track the number of ad impressions, calculate how long it took from the first demonstration to the purchase, under what circumstances it was made, etc.
The iOS feature that prevents developers from interacting with user IDs by default will make ad networks impossible to read all of this information. It will make it difficult to assess the effectiveness of advertising, and it will not be clear under what circumstances the user bought the product and what can be changed to increase conversion. Without this, advertisers will start going to competitors who have not lost access to IDFA and can still track conversion rates.
How is being watched on the Internet
For example, to Google. Even though Google has moved away from using advertising IDs in its applications, it still has the largest advertising platform on the Internet – Google Ads. It collects user data in many other ways, from Android apps to search engine. But Facebook doesn’t have a search engine, and it can’t switch to one like Google. Therefore, the social network fears a serious drop in income – but also for its own and others.
According to Facebook, Apple’s new rules will hurt small businesses because they use the social network as an advertising platform to promote their products and services. And if it fails to target consumers, it is obvious that conversions will drop. However, the same Facebook employee said that this is just a substitution of concepts.
The point is that small businesses tend to target specific regions. Therefore, there is no need to target residents of one city specifically – they will come anyway if the product interests them. Why? Because if you have a coffee shop in Penza, visitors can be targeted by age or physical removal. In general, nothing complicated. But Facebook cannot say that it is afraid of competition from Google, and therefore says everything in a row so that no one suspects it.