Social media companies lost $10 billion in revenue due to Apple anti-tracking

Apple’s measures against tracking iOS users in April are estimated to have lost about $10 billion in ad revenue to social media companies. The impact of the privacy measure was greatest at Facebook and Snap.

Facebook, YouTube, Snap and Twitter have lost $9.85 billion in revenue in the past two quarters as advertisers spend less on the platforms. That is what advertising company Lotatme calculates in the Financial Times. Another ad expert says this is probably a conservative estimate.

Facebook has lost the most money because the company is by far the largest. The expert thinks that the company has earned $8.3 billion less in two quarters due to the measures taken by Apple. This resulted in a 13.2 percent decrease in turnover. Also at Snap, turnover would have fallen by 13.2 percent as a result of the measures. Snap relies entirely on mobile ads as there is no desktop version of Snapchat. At YouTube and Twitter, the turnover decrease by percentages is around 7.5 percent. Those two also get a lot of revenue from ads on PCs.

Apple released iOS 14.5 in late April with the App Tracking Transparency feature. Since that version, apps have to request explicit permission from users whether they can track them before showing personalized advertisements. Most users would refuse that. As a result, advertisers are less able to target iOS users, forcing them to buy more ads. As a result, companies invest less in advertisements aimed at iOS users and choose to buy advertisements elsewhere, for example.

Source: Financial Times