April 12, 2021

Small online retailers are expressing concern about the new iOS updates coming to iPhones, causing problems between tech giants Apple and Facebook. While the issue causing widespread uproar is related to changes to the iPhone and iPad operating systems that have turned the last decade of the online advertising industry upside down, forcing users to decide whether or not they want to be tracked by the apps they use, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, for his part, accused Apple of a power grab that seeks to take control of data that has long been available to advertisers and data brokers.

While Facebook has launched an advertising campaign that insists that those most affected by Apple’s changes are small and medium-sized businesses, Apple CEO Tim Cook insists that the iOS update that is currently being rolled out is about user privacy. For many small business owners who advertise heavily online, Facebook is telling the truth about how Apple’s transformation could disproportionately affect them.

For so many years, merchants have used online advertising, which builds on data, to track users that can be assigned to them by email addresses, phone numbers, and the unique advertising identity of their phones. While this allows advertisers to spend a small amount of money to reach a very specific audience on Facebook or Instagram, and to repeatedly optimize their targeting and ads to find the most receptive audience almost in real time, Apple’s recent change in app user tracking would significantly reduce the flood of user data.

For more information, read the <a href=”https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-facebook-clash-over-ads-small-businesses-fear-theyll-be-impacted-11618009627?mod=tech_lead_pos10″ target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>original story</a> in the Wall Street Journal