Facebook will start showing a prompt to iOS users soon which is designed to convince them to allow ad tracking.
This is in preparation of the privacy change that Apple made last year during WWDC 2020 where they forced developers to obtain permission from users.
The new prompt will be shown to users globally starting this week and it will be a great way for Facebook to determine how that policy change will affect its core business.
Facebook tries to convince you to allow them to track your web activity for a number of reasons. They say that you’ll get ads that are more ‘personalized’ and you can ‘support businesses that rely on ads to reach customers.’
The company understands that Apple’s decision firmly hurts its core business. Facebook is able to serve ads by using cookies to track your activity around the web and that allowed it to have over $84 billion in ad revenue in 2020, which is a whopping 98% of its total revenue. Apple has over 1.5 billion active devices and this decision to allow users to have control whether they want to be tracked or not could seriously hurt Facebook.
According to estimates by The Information, some internal estimates at Facebook predict Fewer than 20% agreeing to allow tracking. This is probably why Facebook has decided to go live with the prompt, ahead of Apple’s planned update in ‘early spring’ that will make the opt-in request mandatory.