Only 10% of iOS 14.5 users opt-in to Facebook

Ted Helfrich
Jun 1, 2021

When users get asked on iPhone devices if they’d like to be tracked, the vast majority say no.

Roughly 75% of the world’s iPhone users have downloaded iOS 14.5. Only 17% of users globally have opted in for data tracking (only 10% in the US), severing a data pipeline that has powered the targeted advertising and paid marketing industries for years.

Facebook advertisers, in particular, have noticed an impact in the last month. Facebook used to capture around 95% of the sales data from his clients. In one case now, there is a 57% gap between sales he can see on Shopify and what Facebook is reporting, he said.

Missing this sales data also makes it harder for Facebook to properly measure the impact of its ads because media buyers don’t know how many sales are being driven by their marketing campaigns.

Many predicted this would be a tough blow to Facebook ad revenue. That was not the case.

The social network raked in $28.6 billion in advertising revenue for the second quarter of 2021, up 56% from the same period last year. Advertising accounts for nearly all of the company's income, with total revenue coming in at $29.1 billion.

What do these numbers tell us?

CAC is going through the roof. The company pointed to a 47% increase in average price per ad but only a 6% increase in the number of ads it delivered.

What can businesses do to succeed in this new world?

  1. Shift your focus from paid marketing to community building
  2. Advertisers with strong first-party data will have an advantage in this new environment, and both advertisers and suppliers will be incentivized to push opt-in permissions for consumers. This means that publishers should start working now to solidify the relationships with their audiences that will encourage people to opt in to tracking.
  3. First-party data you get directly from the consumer (they provide it voluntarily)—we can speak to how leveraging direct relationships between sellers and customers can solve for this
  4. Leverage your brand community authentically
  5. Retain and grow your audience.