Facebook to revamp ad tracking

Facebook wants to fundamentally redesign its advertising tracking system. The reason given is a drop in revenue due to tracking blocking on Apple devices and stricter regulations being sought in the EU.

App Tracking Transparency Causes Revenue Declines

Apple offers all users of its end devices the option to block cross-app advertising tracking. This, in turn, is putting Facebook in a bind, as the company’s business model is based on this very tracking and the personalized ads based on it. Meta, the group behind Facebook, which until recently was also called Facebook, is therefore blaming Apple for its sales decline in the past Christmas business. A decline in advertising revenue is also expected in the current fiscal year – a ten billion dollar drop was recently estimated here.

It is not known exactly how Facebook intends to react to this and redesign its own tracking. However, it is to be expected that there will be a conflict with Apple: Apple prohibits all companies that offer their apps in the App Store from using alternatives to Apple’s advertising ID. Tracking that circumvents Apple’s restrictions is thus basically impossible. Violations could result in exclusion from the App Store, which would in turn cause lasting damage to Facebook.

Device fingerprinting would also be conceivable, which would mean a far greater intrusion into privacy than the current advertising tracking and would also be technically almost impossible to prevent.

Regulations in the EU

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook and CEO of Meta, also blamed the much stricter regulations on data acquisition and use being sought in the EU as an obstacle to the group’s goals: “There is a clear trend that there is less data to play out personalized ads.” For this reason, too, the company wants to adjust its strategy. Overall, the further development of Facebook remains to be seen.