Former Facebook Employees Explain How iOS 14 Privacy Features Affect Business

Apple has become more aggressive in its privacy policy since the introduction of iOS 14, which added several new features to allow users to control how third-party apps use their data. Facebook has criticized the changes, and now some former employees are talking about how iOS’s privacy features affect the business.

Apple is working on a new feature called App Transparency Monitor which will be made available to all users this spring with iOS 14.5. Once this feature is downloaded from the internet, apps will not be able to track users between apps and other websites without needing user consent. Facebook, of course, is not happy with this as the social network relies on ads for its revenue.

CNBC Talk to former Facebook employees who explained in detail how the company is affected by Apple’s new privacy policy. Much like other platforms that sell ads, Facebook uses something called ‘show conversions’ to gauge the number of users who saw an ad and did not immediately contact it, but then made a related purchase. .

After the purchase is made, the retailer authenticates the IDFA of the user who purchased the jeans and shares it with Facebook, which can determine if the IDFA matches the user who saw an ad for the jeans. The retailer shows that its Facebook ad worked.

Advertiser ID (IDFA) also provides Facebook and advertisers with a lot of information about the user who contacted the ad, which also helps them determine which users will see a particular ad.

Thanks to iOS 14’s transparency tracking apps, users will be able to revoke their approval from Facebook for the IDFA registration, making it difficult to assess the success of the ad. This could cause advertisers to at least use Facebook apps to promote their products and services, which would certainly result in the business losing money.

The company is also concerned that it will lose advertisers to Google, which currently has the largest online advertising platform with Google Ads.

Facebook is the second largest recipient of the dollar in online advertising, after Google. One particular threat is that advertisers will invest more money in Google’s search advertising activity, which Facebook cannot replicate and which targets users at the time of conversion.

Facebook has attacked Apple in campaigns saying the privacy changes in iOS 14 will hurt small businesses, as many of them use Facebook platforms to advertise their products and services. However, a former Facebook employee argues that these changes may not affect small businesses, as these businesses are typically located in specific cities or countries, making it easier to identify the target audience for the ad without using tracking. IDFA.

If you’re a small cafe in Austin, Texas, for example, you might not need a lot of data to target your ads, said Henry Love, a former employee of Facebook’s Small Business team. Typically, such activity limits their targeting to fairly broad categories – for example, their age range and long term will allow them specific targeting to target ads to nearby Facebook users.

“If I talk to a restaurateur and ask them about IDFA, I don’t think any of them will know what it is,” Love said. “It largely affects Facebook. Not on small business owners.

It doesn’t look like Facebook will try to disobey Apple, but the company will struggle to convince its users to turn on the iOS 14.5 tracking option – which is expected to be released later this month.

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