Apple will soon require consumers to opt in if they want to allow businesses to track their data and use it for personalized advertising. Facebook is fighting this privacy decision with an aggressive ad campaign, citing evidence that the decision will hurt small businesses. But, Harvard Business Review says that evidence turns out to be false, “as Facebook surely knows.”
Bart de Langhe and Stefano Puntoni for Harvard Business Review:
Facebook’s central claim is that small businesses will lose revenues if they can’t use personalized ads. “Without personalized ads,” the company says in its ads and on its website, “Facebook data shows that the average small business advertiser stands to see a cut of over 60% in their sales for every dollar they spend.” It’s an eye-popping figure, and one that suggests that Apple’s pro-privacy policy is poised to deal a devastating blow to small businesses. But where does the data for this apocalyptic claim come from? And does it hold up under scrutiny?
To properly evaluate this claim, you first need to understand the popular metric that Facebook used here to quantify advertising success: return on ad spend, or ROAS. The metric indicates the amount of revenues associated with advertising — but it does not indicate the amount of revenues caused by advertising…
That isn’t the only problem with Facebook’s argument.
According to Facebook, Apple’s decision is especially damaging during this pandemic, because, as Facebook’s ads and website state, “Forty-four percent of small to medium businesses started or increased their usage of personalized ads on social media during the pandemic, according to a new Deloitte study.”
That number seemed off to us, so we took a close look at the Deloitte study — and discovered that Facebook reported the number incorrectly.
MacDailyNews Take: Facebook lie? Say it ain’t so, Joe!
And, if they’re not lying, they conveniently made a “mistake” that, of course, benefited them. Funny how those sort of blatantly obvious “mistakes” always seem to benefit those who make them, innit?
Facebook is to privacy as Chernobyl is to nuclear power. — MacDailyNews, February 3, 2021
All of these “social media” platforms – Twitter, Parler, Facebook – are cancers on society. They are clearly eating society from the inside out. There’s something unsavory within human nature that “digital distance” amplifies to the point of disgust.
If you quit these cancers you will quickly realize what they are and what they do. You will be happier and healthier to have excised them from your life.
We haven’t had personal Twitter or Facebook accounts for many years now. And very happily so. — MacDailyNews, January 9, 2021
The high level of panic that Apple has induced into the Facebook cancer is heartening. — MacDailyNews, February 1, 2021
That ANYONE is still a facecrook customer today is beyond any reasonable thinking. zuckerbomb should be shut down for all the crap he has brought to millions of people!….oh but wait….he may issue another BS apology!
I couldn’t advertise through Facebook, even if I wanted to. They have blocked the love and gratitude nonprofit that I am associated with from linking to our url and emails because we have violated their Community Standards. They don’t tell us which Community Standards we have violated nor do they give us any path to remedy the situation – been at least a year.
It strikes me as the ultimate hypocrisy that Facebook randomly and unilaterally makes these decisions without path to address, while Apple gives the user clear choices and options. Apple manages their business practices tightly and fairly, while Facebook is, well, you know, a big fat joke. Never has there ever been a more clearcut situation of a company being so very wrong.
You had me right up to the point you brought in Apple as morally superior where “Apple gives the user clear choices and OPTIONS. Apple manages their business practices tightly and FAIRLY, while Facebook is, well, you know, a big fat joke. Never has there ever been a more clearcut situation of A COMPANY BEING SO VERY WRONG.”
One word: Parler.
Zuckerberg is scum and Apple is doing right by us users in giving us the choice of whether we want to be tracked or not and the Facebook app tracks users even when you’re not using it by default without consent and Google is the same. Tim Cook is right when he says that with Facebook you are the product.
Facebook provides no discernible value to society.
Facebook doesn’t mislead, you Harvard Business Review idiots. Just look at how up and up Facebook was with the 2020 presidential election. I’m telling you, Facebook is all legit, just like the 2020 vote! There’s not a shred of evidence regarding a misleading campaign of either the two.