Former Facebook employees detail impact of Apple's upcoming anti-tracking privacy feature
A group of former Facebook employees describe the massive impact Apple's App Tracking Transparency feature will have on the social network, explaining why the company has been so vocal in protesting the change.

Speaking to CNBC, former Facebook staffers who worked on ad products and businesses detailed the importance of IDFA tracking, which will be explicitly opt-in on iOS starting this spring.
Expected to launch with iOS 14.5, Apple's App Tracking Transparency initiative requires developers to gain permission before tracking a user's device advertising identifier, or Identifier for Advertiser (IDFA) tag. The feature automatically opts users out of tracking by default, though users can allow tracking manually in settings or by interacting with a special dialogue box that appears when opening an app for the first time.
Facebook and others have pushed back against the change, guessing users will likely opt out of ad tracking when presented with the choice. That would deal a major blow to the bottom lines of ad tech companies.
According to former Facebook employees, the anti-tracking feature will block insight into a key metric called view-through conversions. The technology enables ad firms to measure the number of users who purchase goods after viewing, but not interacting with, an ad.
For example, a user might see an ad for a TV while scrolling through their feed, but doesn't tap on the accompanying link. They later purchase that TV or related item from a retailer that shares the consumer's IDFA with Facebook. Pairing IDFAs can therefore help quantify an ad's influence even if a user fails to directly interact with the original post.
Similarly, Facebook's Audience Network, which furnishes targeted ads on non-Facebook platforms, will be negatively impacted by Apple's IDFA screening decision. Also on the chopping block is access to analytics data outside of Facebook's suite of apps.
In protesting Apple's upcoming change, Facebook in December began to run newspaper ads warning of the havoc App Tracking Transparency will wreak on small businesses. It issued similar notices on its own platform. According to at least one former employee, however, those calls for action are slightly disingenuous.
Henry Love, a former employee on Facebook's small business team, told CNBC that many SMBs are unlikely to see a change in ad performance because they don't necessarily need the hyper accurate targeting data provided by IDFA. A coffee shop was cited as an example. Such an establishment typically limits targeting to broad categories like age and physical proximity to a brick-and-mortar store, information that is already available from Facebook's own apps.
"If you talked to any restaurant owner anywhere and asked them what IDFA is, I don't think any of them would know what that is," Love said. "It's affecting Facebook at scale. Not the small business owners."
That said, well-funded start-ups could be vulnerable once the feature goes live.
"The only people targeting across mobile, web and Facebook Audience Network, they're not really small businesses," Love said. "They're sophisticated, VC-backed startups. They're not your typical SMB."
Apple's App Tracking Transparency feature is currently in beta testing as part of iOS 14.5 and should launch in the coming weeks.

Speaking to CNBC, former Facebook staffers who worked on ad products and businesses detailed the importance of IDFA tracking, which will be explicitly opt-in on iOS starting this spring.
Expected to launch with iOS 14.5, Apple's App Tracking Transparency initiative requires developers to gain permission before tracking a user's device advertising identifier, or Identifier for Advertiser (IDFA) tag. The feature automatically opts users out of tracking by default, though users can allow tracking manually in settings or by interacting with a special dialogue box that appears when opening an app for the first time.
Facebook and others have pushed back against the change, guessing users will likely opt out of ad tracking when presented with the choice. That would deal a major blow to the bottom lines of ad tech companies.
According to former Facebook employees, the anti-tracking feature will block insight into a key metric called view-through conversions. The technology enables ad firms to measure the number of users who purchase goods after viewing, but not interacting with, an ad.
For example, a user might see an ad for a TV while scrolling through their feed, but doesn't tap on the accompanying link. They later purchase that TV or related item from a retailer that shares the consumer's IDFA with Facebook. Pairing IDFAs can therefore help quantify an ad's influence even if a user fails to directly interact with the original post.
Similarly, Facebook's Audience Network, which furnishes targeted ads on non-Facebook platforms, will be negatively impacted by Apple's IDFA screening decision. Also on the chopping block is access to analytics data outside of Facebook's suite of apps.
In protesting Apple's upcoming change, Facebook in December began to run newspaper ads warning of the havoc App Tracking Transparency will wreak on small businesses. It issued similar notices on its own platform. According to at least one former employee, however, those calls for action are slightly disingenuous.
Henry Love, a former employee on Facebook's small business team, told CNBC that many SMBs are unlikely to see a change in ad performance because they don't necessarily need the hyper accurate targeting data provided by IDFA. A coffee shop was cited as an example. Such an establishment typically limits targeting to broad categories like age and physical proximity to a brick-and-mortar store, information that is already available from Facebook's own apps.
"If you talked to any restaurant owner anywhere and asked them what IDFA is, I don't think any of them would know what that is," Love said. "It's affecting Facebook at scale. Not the small business owners."
That said, well-funded start-ups could be vulnerable once the feature goes live.
"The only people targeting across mobile, web and Facebook Audience Network, they're not really small businesses," Love said. "They're sophisticated, VC-backed startups. They're not your typical SMB."
Apple's App Tracking Transparency feature is currently in beta testing as part of iOS 14.5 and should launch in the coming weeks.

Comments
I've got no issue with anyone using a process of measurement to make decisions based on real world information, and seeking more accurate measurement isn't intrinsically a bad thing. If I'm trying to measure the influence a piece of advertising has, then sure I'd like to know if someone saw it but didn't act on it straight away. That's something that can be inferred from traditional methods, but actual measurement is better.
I question, though, both how accurate this IDFA process is (we can assume very, given the efforts to block it) and how valuable that information ends up being. As the article says, it's only the most sophisticated advertisers who care about it - which I take to mean that the vast majority of advertisers don't see anything particularly valuable in it. So this problem is being caused, as usual, by a small proportion of the population who are nowadays able to leverage technology to a shocking degree to affect everyone on the planet with an online presence. And most of them don't care about the customer experience, as evidenced by the number of proposals one receives for prices on a product one has already purchased. Creepy and lame, as Gruber said.
I wonder if those people are feeling very insecure about the intrinsic value of the products and services they're bringing into the world. It's one thing to push hard for the best possible performance from a successful business that satisfies customer needs; it's another to squeeze blood from a stone trying to make an unviable proposition profitable.
As a consumer, I performs my own research on products I intend to buy, be it physical visits to retailers, word of mouth from extended family or friends, search engines, etc. If it happens that Facebook dished me ads relating to these products that I end up buying from an online store, and they get credited as success influence for their ads???
I am totally behind Apple on this one. As consumer, we should have choice and control over how our digital footprint is being managed, not being invaded silently without choice to opt out. Same thing telcos are doing - ads to your mobile number and we becoming their product to sell to businesses who choose to put ads via telco. Unacceptable!!!
As a small business owner, the last thing our business needs is false-positive claims of success for ads we choose to buy/put out. IMO, if it isn’t direct ad link purchase, it isn’t counted towards to ad platform. Period!
This is the reality of the situation. Facebook is an ad business that peddles engagement in exchange for views - how they get that engagement involves deliberately feeding users of the website a set of materials which are controversial, repulsive and most likely to generate anger. This might seem benign on the surface, it's not. It's the idea that you can be reckless with disinformation for the sole purpose of getting longer screen time. This has led to mainstreaming conspiracy theories, destroying the personal lives of people who have done nothing wrong, and other examples including vigilante violence, shootings and similar. Facebook peddles in territory that the FBI deem to be the greatest threat to the country: white nationalism, white supremacists, racist terrorists and other sources of organised violence and domestic terrorism. Repeatedly failing to act when this has been brought to their attention, and in many other examples publicly refusing to act.
Facebook know this, in fact during the 2020 US elections facebook agreed to not deliberately push as many known sources of disinformation - this also led to a decrease in engagement.
So why should you care that a mere action to protect your privacy from digital-creeps is going to harm their revenue stream. You shouldn't care, you should be celebrating it, because the benefits extend beyond your personal privacy and safety.
The concept that there can be a parasite to an individual's stress and even the harmony of society seems abstract, but here we are.
it isn't even corporate sized advertising that’s an issue. As others have said, these insights are tenuous at best for tailored ads that are ubiquitous online, including this site.
No. The obscene part is for political ads, social issue ads, foreign influence ads, ads mimicking native content, ads propagating lies, conspiracies and chaos through undermining facts and information that the internet could have been a solid reference for.
The dispersal of blatantly false and chaotic uncertainty is a huge problem of this era, and these tools are most powerful and most disgusting when used fit these ends.
No, I didn't think so either.
Piss Off.