During the same call where Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook saw a decline in the number of users, Meta CEO also announced that the company is rebuilding its ad infrastructure. Zuckerberg says that the company has to re-think its ad business and model mainly due to Apple's App Tracking transparency changes and Europe's new regulations.
"Next up is ads. With Apple's iOS changes and new regulations in Europe, there's a clear trend where less data is available to deliver personalized ads. But people still want to see relevant ads, and businesses still want to reach the right customers. So we're rebuilding a lot of our ads infrastructure so we can continue to grow and deliver high-quality personalized ads."
Mark says that there is "less data available" to target ads to the users. But, people still want to see relevant ads, claims Meta CEO, so the company is working to build a new model that will deliver "high-quality personalized ads" to the iOS users.
Apple implemented App Tracking Transparency with iOS 14.5. This technology makes it harder for companies like Facebook and Instagram to see the usage behavior of the app user and target ads based on it. This hurt the core advertising model of Facebook, and it can be seen in the latest revenue numbers of Meta as well.
Other than Facebook, Snapchat owner Snap has also reported a decline in revenue due to Apple's new tech. The company is reportedly working on a technology that would bypass Apple's App Tracking Transparency and would deliver personalized ads to the users regardless of the feature being enabled/disabled. And now, it seems that Facebook is also building a similar tool behind the scene.