Facebook highlights small businesses as it ramps up Apple criticism

Facebook has already made it clear that it isn’t happy with Apple’s upcoming restrictions on app tracking and ad targeting, but the advertising battle has entered a new phase today.

Over the summer, Apple Starting with iOS 14, developers must ask users for permission to use their IDFA identifiers for ad targeting. At one level, users only have a choice, but since they have to sign up to participate, it is believed that it will drastically reduce app tracking and targeting.

The actual change has been postponed until early next year, but in the meantime, Facebook suggested that this could spell the end of its Audience network (which uses Facebook data to target ads on other websites and apps) on iOS.

Then, this morning, Facebook placed and published print ads in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post declaring it “Can Stand Apple for Small Business Anywhere.” a blog post and website make the same argument.

While all of this can easily be seen as an attempt to give a more personable face to a public relations campaign that is really only protecting Facebook’s advertising business, Dan Levy – the company’s vice president of advertising and business products – received a call from reporters today argue.

Credit: Facebook

For one thing, he said Facebook, with its “diversified” advertising business, will not feel the effects as much as small businesses, especially since it recognized potential ad targeting challenges in its most recent earnings report.

“We’ve already built this into our expectations for the business,” he said.

In contrast, Levy says, small businesses rely on targeting to run efficient ad campaigns – and because they have small budgets, they need that efficiency. He predicted that if Apple pushes its plans, “small businesses will struggle to stay afloat and many aspiring entrepreneurs may never get off the ground.”

Two small business owners, Monique Wilsondebriano von, joined Levy Charleston Gourmet Burger Company in South Carolina and Hrag Kalebjian from Henry’s coffee house in San Francisco. Kalebjian said while the cafe’s business was down 40% year-over-year, his online sales tripled, and he credited targeted Facebook campaigns so he could tell personal stories about his family’s love for Armenian coffee.

Meanwhile, when she and her husband Chevalo started a business selling their homemade burger marinade, Wilsondebriano said, “We had no radio or television commercials, we just didn’t have a budget” – and so they reached out to Facebook and Instagram. With the marinade now available in 50 states and 17 countries, Wilsondebriano said, “I am sad that so many small businesses are not getting the same chance that Cheval and I had with this update.”

Levy also suggested that Apple’s bottom line could benefit from the changes. As developers make less money from ads from Facebook and other platforms, they may have to rely more on subscriptions or in-app transactions (with Apple taking the much-discussed fee). and they could turn to Apple’s own targeted advertising platform.

A number of groups in the advertising industry have also grappled with Apple’s politics. SVP Craig Federighi defended himself in a speech in which he criticized what he described as “fancy” and “false” claims made by the adtech industry. In that speech, Federighi said that Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature “gives our users the ability to choose when or whether to allow an app to track it in a way that is shared with other companies’ apps or websites can be”.

To update: Apple has sent the following statement.

We believe this is an easy thing to stand up for our users. Users should know when their data is being collected and shared with other apps and websites – and they should have a choice of whether or not to allow it. The transparency of app tracking in iOS 14 doesn’t require Facebook to change its approach to tracking users and creating targeted ads, it just requires users to make choices.

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