Apple's new privacy rules cut off data "lifeline"! Facebook and other platforms lost nearly $10 billion in total

According to the Financial Times, the revenue of several social media platforms including Snap, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube will be greatly affected by Apple's changes to the privacy settings of the iPhone. These companies have lost a total of about US$9.85 billion due to this change.

Apple introduced a new app tracking transparency policy in April that requires apps to obtain user consent before tracking user activities and sending personalized ads, and many users have chosen to refuse.

Therefore, the inability to track user data means that some social platforms that use this data to generate advertising push have their "lifeline" cut off.

According to Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, the iPhone changes have made Facebook's ad targeting less accurate, which has increased costs for advertisers and made it more difficult to measure those results.

Facebook is the company that loses the most as it is increasing the company's advertising operating costs by $8 billion each year. Analysts point out that companies that cannot reap the benefits of Facebook advertising in the past may withdraw immediately.

Other platforms have suffered relatively little loss. TikTok is becoming increasingly popular, and its advertising operating costs are much lower than Facebook's.

Although Snap was relatively late to be affected by the iPhone changes, as they were introduced in late April and did not start to affect its advertisers until June, the loss is still significant for Snap, which does not have a desktop version.

Twitter, which saw its advertising revenue grow 41% last quarter, said it was not affected by Apple's policy because its ads rely more on context and branding rather than tracking user data.

Google parent Alphabet has enough first-party user data that it doesn't have to track users in other apps, and Google's third-quarter performance growth mainly came from growth in search and advertising.

Editor ✎ Xiao Zhu/

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