Facebook And YouTube Have Lost Billions Of Dollars Due To Apple's Privacy Features

Apple last year launched its app tracking transparency feature that gives users the option of not letting apps track their behaviour. This has naturally hurt a lot of applications? ad revenue as people are not letting third party developers get access to their data. The App Tracking Transparency feature came with iOS 14.5 to stop developers from tracking users across websites and other apps. Facebook had a very public response to Apple?s move, saying that it will hurt the company?s ad business. Well, it has, and not just Facebook, and in billions of dollars.

According to a report in Lotame, Apple?s App Tracking Transparency feature could cost big companies $16 billion (roughly Rs 1.21 lakh crores). These include companies like Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube, Twitter, and more that rely heavily on tailored ads. Among these, Facebook has taken the largest hit of $12.8 billion loss in revenues. This is followed by YouTube?s $2.1 billion losses in revenue. ?The effects of these changes on these companies are hard to isolate because all four players are still growing extremely strongly, still taking share from the last bastions of traditional media and gaining share in digital media as privacy regulations make it harder and harder for independent publishers and technologies to execute. To add to the complexity, the COVID-19 pandemic has introduced volatile and unpredictable gyrations in the pacing of media spend,? Mike Woosley, the COO of Lotame said.

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Apple?s App Tracking Transparency feature that came with iOS 14.5 also bans developers from offering users perks or rewards for enabling the feature. Further, there is also a toggle that allows users to stop apps from prompting them to enable app tracking altogether. To overcome this heavy loss in revenue, companies like Facebook have been working on new ways to provide tailored ads without needing to depend on tracking across other apps and websites.

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