It is not new this open war that Facebook has through all its means to criticize the anti-tracking system incorporated by iOS 14. Well, According to a new Harvard Business Review publication, Facebook would have used false data against the anti-tracking system that Apple will implement in its operating system.
As you know, Apple will require users to accept that any application "tracks" their data so that they can use it for other functionalities such as offering personalized advertising. This directly impacts Facebook's business model. so he launched his campaign criticizing him from the first moment.
The Harvard Business Review publication report the following:
Apple will soon require users to agree to whether businesses (or apps) can do tracking of your data to personalize advertising. Facebook is fighting against this decision with a very aggressive advertising campaign, showing evidence that this measure will negatively impact small and medium-sized businesses. But this evidence is false, as Facebook probably knows.
The post highlights a claim that Facebook makes in its campaign and on its website, stating that “an average small business advertiser can see their sales reduced by more than 60% for every dollar you invest. However, the post indicates that this is a reference to Facebook's return on ad spend (ROAS). More from the post:
In its campaign against Apple's new privacy policy, Facebook indicates that if you compare the ROAS of advertising campaigns with personalized advertising with those that do not, small businesses would see their income reduced by up to 60% by being deprived of advertising personalized.
That 60% that can be so scary, however, is too high. Controlled tests of campaigns comparing personalized versus non-personalized advertising reveal much smaller differences in revenue.
The Harvard Business Review post also discusses Facebook's claim that small and medium-sized businesses started or increased the use of personalized ads on social media during the pandemic:
According to Facebook, Apple's decision is especially damaging during this pandemic, as, as stated by Facebook's ads and website, “44% of small and medium-sized businesses started or increased their use of personalized ads on social media during the pandemic, according to a new Deloitte study.
That number seemed wrong to us, so we took a closer look at the Deloitte study and found that Facebook reported the number incorrectly.
In its study, Deloitte asked companies in nine industries whether they had increased the use of targeted advertising on social media during the pandemic. The sector with the highest increase was telecommunications and technology, but the increase was only 34%. Other sectors had much smaller increases. Professional services companies, for example, had an increase of only 17%. It seems Facebook chose the data that best supported its arguments, and then increased its data by a third.
This is not to say that Apple's move cannot have an impact on advertising revenue for small and medium-sized businesses. However, the way to criticize this new measure by Facebook is far from correct. Misleading information, manipulation of results and scaremongering so that they do not drop the beach bar. Zuckerberg certainly looks scared.
