Oliver Haslam on August 27, 2020, 10:05 pm

Facebook Says iOS 14’s Privacy Features Will Cut Ad Business Significantly

In a blog post yesterday Facebook told its ad partners that the changes coming in iOS 14 will directly impact their revenue because it will require apps ask permission to track them across websites and apps.

Facebook knows that people are unlikely to allow such tracking, preventing its ability to do exactly that. The blog post points out that while Apple devices will provide an Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) Facebook doesn’t intend to use the new opt-in feature.

This is not a change we want to make, but unfortunately Apple’s updates to iOS14 have forced this decision. We know this may severely impact publishers’ ability to monetize through Audience Network on ‌iOS 14‌, and, despite our best efforts, may render Audience Network so ineffective on ‌iOS 14‌ that it may not make sense to offer it on ‌iOS 14‌ in the future.

Facebook says that the iOS 14 move will make its Audience Network less useful for devices running iOS 14, potentially cutting revenue by as much as 50%.

While it’s difficult to quantify the impact to publishers and developers at this point with so many unknowns, in testing we’ve seen more than a 50% drop in Audience Network publisher revenue when personalization was removed from mobile ad install campaigns. In reality, the impact to Audience Network on ‌iOS 14‌ may be much more, so we are working on short-and long-term strategies to support publishers through these changes.

While Facebook itself doesn’t expect to be impacted too badly, it’s warning its partners that they should expect to suffer once iOS 14 arrives within the next few weeks. Instead, it now looks likely advertisers and publishers will look at other ways to monetize users who run iOS 14.