As Apple’s opt-in ad tracking pops up, Facebook has another trick up its sleeve
The fact that Facebook and Apple have been at loggerheads for a decade is no mystery. Many of these have to do with their business philosophies that are not in harmony with each other.
Apple, the pioneer of innovation, believes that privacy is the fundamental right of every human being. It is understandable that their products are expensive, but largely guarantee your data security.
Facebook, on the other hand, believes in free services. But we all know: “if you do not pay, you are the product”. The social network king relies primarily on harvesting user data and re-marking through ad campaigns to boost their revenue.
Recently, Apple has doubled the privacy of data by giving users more transparency and better control over who uses their data.
After a slew of improvements in the form of limited ad tracking (which was buried deep beneath the settings), privacy-focused Bluetooth and location permissions with iOS 13, the Cupertino technology giant took business to iOS 14 further by introducing the approximate location, privacy reports from the App Store and the blocking of third-party cookies in Safari.
But from the perspective of advertising agencies, the newly announced framework for app tracking transparency has become an important point of discussion and led to more problems for Facebook.
If the ability to not track exact location was not an advantage for location-based advertisers, digital advertisers have certainly become a source of concern.
For those who do not know, every app in the App Store that makes money from ads usually uses Facebook or Google’s Ad SDK. One of the SDKs uses Apple’s Advertising Identifier (IDFA), a unique device range to identify a user. In this way, advertising agencies can track individuals through applications, new installations via deep links, and then earn revenue with retargeted advertising campaigns.
With the advent of iOS 14, Apple has announced a new privacy-oriented advertising framework, SKAdNetwork. Unlike before, apps are now expected to indicate the ATT (App Tracking Transparency) system, giving users the final choice of whether to “Allow” or “Ask the app not to track”. This one dialogue caused a stir throughout the mobile advertising industry as IDFA was rendered useless. If a user selects ‘Ask the app does not follow’, the SKAdNetwork would only send general user information to the advertiser.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that most users would deny the permission as it is a private nightmare. It is not surprising that this led to a call from Facebook and Apple decided to postpone the feature until 2021 to give digital marketers and developers more time.
Now that the iOS 14 ATT designation has started rolling out, Facebook is trying to change the story of the entire campaign again. They ran full-page newspaper ads portraying Apple as the Darth Vader of small businesses and criticized them for killing the free internet.
Ironically, Facebook is a company that has never stood by small businesses and is known for its “copy, buy or kill” strategy. To add more fuel to the fire, Facebook is also the firm that recently tried to force WhatsApp to “send their data or lose the account” in the name of the privacy policy (although it fell back and they had to withdraw).
Their entire anti-Apple marketing campaign was hilarious, sparking desperation and just showing how concerned they are about the privacy features of iOS 14.