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One year on: how Apple’s privacy changes are still hurting Meta

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By Chris Sutcliffe

Facebook owner has found its status as an advertising giant more precarious than it could have imagined. As part of our Data & Privacy Deep Dive, we look at what it is doing to ameliorate effects of Apple’s updates.

When Meta announced its Q2 financial results earlier in the year, it had ready-made excuses to explain away its first-ever revenue drop. Reason number one, a global slowdown in ad spend, had also hit the other tech giants, but the elephant in the room was the impact Apple’s privacy changes had had on the company’s ability to operate – and Meta wasn’t shy about saying so.

The company announced in February that Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency feature would cost it in the region of $10bn in advertising revenue over the course of 2022 alone. At the time, Raj Shah, lead for telecom, media and technology at Publicis Sapient, said: “Five factors contribute to the decline. These are the competition from TikTok, reduced ad spend in a downturn, iOS privacy changes and questions about Meta leadership, both with COO Sheryl Sandberg’s departure and negative PR about corporate policies.”

While the company’s foray into the metaverse (or lack thereof) has been responsible for some of its more recent and more talked-about losses, the Apple tracking changes have in many ways presaged those conversations. Upon opening an app, users were prompted to agree whether to share information; without that permission, the developer is forbidden from accessing the IDFA – the device ID used to target and measure the effectiveness of digital ads.

The changes, which Apple argues are made in service of user privacy, gave a billion iOS users the option to opt-out of being tracked by apps, with an estimated 62% of them choosing to do so.

That tracking tool was how digital advertising giants created user targeting profiles for advertisers and was the basis for how Facebook became one of the largest digital advertising companies in the world. It is small surprise that the changes caused huge consternation among brands that had been used to having access to those targeted tools, or that Facebook’s revenue suffered significantly as a result.

Making the best of it

Prior to publication of its Q2 results, Meta had clawed back a little of the ground lost by the changes. It announced it had narrowed the underreporting estimate from around 15% to around 8% as a result of fine-tuning its measurement and analytics capabilities. That mitigation was welcome news for investors and advertisers, but it also demonstrated that the damage of Apple’s changes would haunt Meta for some time to come.

That was further demonstrated by the changes Meta made to its feeds to prioritize higher-yield ad formats, with a particular focus on short-form video. The company was also accused of trying to circumvent the changes by collecting data from websites users visit using its apps’ built-in browsers, although the company strenuously denies that.

For Meta, the challenge comes from the fact that users are broadly in favor of privacy and Apple has managed to communicate that its changes are in their best interests.

Matt Navarra is a social media and tech analyst. He says: “The impact now, in terms of the relationship with Apple and other tech companies, is converging on this and that makes it a challenging environment [for Meta]. And that is something that Apple has done very well to navigate and still come out looking like the good guy.”

As a result, Meta has attempted to push back against Apple’s changes in a number of ways, from appeals in public-facing media to regulatory efforts. In May, the company announced it was filing a complaint with the US Department of Commerce, stating that: “Despite having some of the most popular apps in the world, Meta’s ability to innovate on its products and services and even reach its customers is determined, and in some cases significantly limited, by the most popular mobile operating systems, such as Apple’s iOS.

“Apple’s self-serving tactics prevent consumers from realizing the innovation and benefits of a dynamic and otherwise well-functioning mobile app ecosystem.”

Sailing into the headwinds

That undercutting of its advertising capabilities continues to impact Meta. While much of the coverage of its Q3 results earlier this month focused on the huge losses accrued by its metaverse division, as well as encroachment from TikTok and the 11,000 jobs lost as a result, the underlying issues remain Apple-related.

Insider Intelligence’s principle analyst Debra Aho Williamson explained: “Meta in 2022 is a far cry from Facebook one year ago. Many aspects of its business are in disarray and its near-term prospects do not look promising. After a dismal earnings report in Q2, we aren’t expecting Q3 to be any better. It’s very possible it will be much worse.

“Many people want to blame TikTok, but it’s not the main reason why Meta is having challenges. Even if some advertisers are moving ad budgets from Meta’s properties to TikTok, it’s likely not a very significant portion of Meta’s overall ad revenue. Instead, Meta’s revenue growth problems stem primarily from the weak economy and from Apple’s privacy changes, which are affecting many digital platforms, not just Meta.“

Notably, during the announcement of the job cuts, Mark Zuckerberg blamed two things. The first was his decision to increase the number of investments the company had made over the past few years, while the second was the changes enforced by Apple.

While the company may have found and be seeking ways to ameliorate the changes, the reality is that Apple’s privacy changes have shaken Meta’s foundations. Its once insurmountable status as an advertising giant has been questioned and while the company isn’t going anywhere for the foreseeable future, it has been proven to be vulnerable.

By Chris Sutcliffe

Sourced from The Drum

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It’s Official: Meta Is a Disaster

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The recent story of Meta, née Facebook, has really been two stories. One of them, going back some time now, is about a brand in crisis. 2016 was “the year Facebook became the bad guy.” The next two years were the ones that “shook Facebook.” 2018 brought 15 months of “fresh hell” for the company, before, in 2020, amid some perhaps more salient issues facing the company and the world, Fast Company awarded it “worst brand of the year.” 2021 was “Facebook’s very bad year,” according to The Guardian. “No, really, it might be the worst yet.”

The other story, which didn’t discredit the first one but certainly didn’t agree with it, was basically a line going up and to the right:

This chart ends in September 2021 — a moment when things were still looking good for the company then known as Facebook.

Was Facebook destroying democracy, driving your family and friends insane, racking up thousands of dollars in future therapy bills for your kids, and fracking the discourse until the water isn’t safe to drink? Okay, maybe. But, and, it was also a strong buy — every “worst” year also its best one yet.

These parallel stories started converging right after the crop in this chart, in September of 2021, when Facebook’s stock peaked above $353. The next month — almost exactly a year ago — Facebook molted into Meta, a “Social Technology Company” with a foot in the metaverse.

Over the next year, its stock halved in value and Meta saw its first reported declines in daily users, as well as its first year-over-year decline in revenue.

With its Q3 earnings announcement, Facebook’s two stories became one, with the stock chart corroborating that the company is indeed in crisis. For the second quarter in a row, its revenue declined, and the company projected more pain next quarter. Its operating margin fell from 36 percent to 20 percent year over year, and its net income fell by a shocking 52 percent. “While we face near-term challenges on revenue, the fundamentals are there for a return to stronger revenue growth,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. The stock tumbled in after-hours trading and at Thursday’s open it was below $100 for the first time since 2016 — the first of its Very Bad Years. It is now down about 70 percent from its highs last year shortly before the rebranding.

A broad slump in tech stocks, challenging macro conditions, and even-worse-than-expected fallout from Apple’s restrictive App Tracking Transparency rules share some blame here. Meta has company: Snapchat’s earnings were a disaster, and Alphabet blamed its own bad quarter on “pullbacks in advertiser spends.”

But Meta’s bad quarter, and bad year, also belong squarely to Meta. The company lost more than $9 billion on Reality Labs, which encompasses most of its VR and Metaverse ventures, so far this year. This new line of business — the plan for a post-Facebook Meta — has been losing more money by the quarter as its revenue has decreased. Recent reporting from both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal suggested that the project is internally regarded as a disaster and a distraction. (If you’re still not sure what the metaverse is, or is supposed to become, Meta has happened upon an early use case: It’s a place where you can send billions of dollars to make it disappear.)

Mark Zuckerberg’s story here remains the same: The core business still makes a lot of money, and the metaverse is the next big thing, and we’ll be ready for that, but it’s going to take a while, so please be patient. Which, sure, but we should be as clear as possible about what this means. That core business does continue to make a lot of money, but every possible alarm is going off regarding its future prospects.

Facebook, the main app, is not a healthy platform; within Facebook, it’s understood to be in a sort of managed decline, as users in its most mature and lucrative markets continue to use and enjoy it less; Meta’s big plan for the platform is to replace its guts with a TikTok-style recommendation engine, which, considering the raw material it will be working with, sounds like a rolling family reunion hosted in a chumbox. Instagram is hemorrhaging attention to TikTok, and is midway through an unbecoming transformation into a TikTok clone — a playbook that worked for Facebook, when it copied Twitter for the News Feed, and for Instagram, when it incorporated a version of Snapchat’s Story feature, but which, this time around, seems mostly to be alienating users, creators, and advertisers. Meta, in other words, is profoundly remaking the older services that make the vast majority of its money. It’s taking a serious risk in doing so — materially, tampering with or failing to save these services is much more significant than Meta’s metaverse spending. But it’s also not clear that the company has a better option. It took half a decade for Facebook’s foul vibes to catch up with it, which doesn’t bode especially well for Instagram in 2023.

And while it’s easy to joke about the specifics of Meta’s metaverse work, the promotion of which has included staggering quantities of raw Zuckerberg, this, too, should be understood as riskier, and weirder, than Meta would have us think. Meta became one of the largest companies in the world by selling ads on two of the largest social-media platforms on the internet; it did this with a combination of shrewdness, ruthlessness, and a great deal of good timing and luck. Now, the plan is basically to manifest a whole new more favorable environment in which it’s free to grow without limits again. It’s a blank slate within a blank slate! It’s nothing like anything the company has succeeded with before. It’s ambitious, because it has to be, and we can’t ignore it, because Meta is spending billions to make it happen. But nobody has to pretend it makes much sense, either! Not even Wall Street.

Feature Image Credit: Virtual Zuck has legs, but Meta stock very much does not. Photo: Meta

Sourced from Intelligencer

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Meta is planning more paid features for Facebook and Instagram

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By Alex Heath

A new team will be tasked with building paid experiences across Meta’s apps

Meta is setting up a product organization to identify and build “possible paid features” for Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, according to an internal memo sent to employees last week that was obtained by The Verge.

The new division is Meta’s first serious foray into building paid features across its main social apps, all three of which boast billions of users. It’s being set up after Meta’s ads business was severely hurt by Apple’s ad tracking changes on iOS and a broader pullback in digital ad spending. The group, called New Monetization Experiences, will be led by Pratiti Raychoudhury, who was previously Meta’s head of research.

In an interview with The Verge, Meta’s VP of monetization overseeing the group, John Hegeman, said the company is still committed to growing its ads business, and that it had no plans to let people pay to turn off ads in its apps. “I think we do see opportunities to build new types of products, features, and experiences that people would be willing to pay for and be excited to pay for,” he said. He declined to elaborate on paid features that are being considered.

Meta’s revenue almost entirely comes from ads, and while it has several paid features already across its apps, the social media giant hasn’t made charging users a priority until now. Hegeman downplayed paid features becoming a meaningful part of the business in the near term, but said that “on the flip side, I think if there are opportunities to both create new value and meaningful revenue lines and also provide some diversification, that’s obviously going to be something that will be appealing.”

Longer term, Meta sees paid features becoming a more meaningful part of its business, he said. “On a five-year time horizon I do think it can really move the needle and make a pretty significant difference.”

Facebook group administrators can already charge for access to exclusive content, and virtual “stars” can be purchased to send to creators. WhatsApp charges certain businesses for the ability to message their customers, and Instagram recently announced that creators could also begin charging a subscription for access to exclusive content. In June, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company wouldn’t take a cut of transactions from paid features and subscriptions until 2024.

Meta isn’t alone in pushing toward more paid features. Social media apps have been increasingly turning to charging over the past couple of years. TikTok started testing paid subscriptions for creators earlier this year, Twitter has paid Super Follows, and Discord makes its money entirely from its Nitro subscription. In addition, this year both Telegram and Snapchat added paid tiers that unlock additional features. Snapchat’s paid tier has proven to be an early hit.

“We’re obviously paying attention to what’s going on in the industry,” said Hegeman. “And I think there are multiple companies that have done interesting things in this space that I think hopefully we can learn from and emulate over time.”

Feature Image Credit: Nick Barclay / The Verge

By Alex Heath

Sourced from The Verge

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5 New Ways to Make Money on Facebook and Instagram

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Meta is rolling out new ways for creators to make money on Facebook and Instagram.

Content is king on social media, and all the platforms are in a sort of gold rush to ensure the supply of new content does not run dry. Every day, it seems, one platform or the other announces some new scheme or incentive for content creators to sign up to.

Not to be left behind, Meta has announced several new ways creators can monetize their content on Instagram and Facebook. Here are the details.

Meta Announces New Ways to Make Money on Instagram and Facebook

All social media platforms have one way or another of making money, and perhaps YouTube offers the most accessible ways to make money.

These monetization options are always being updated. Thus, Mark Zuckerberg has posted several new monetization tools Meta is rolling out for creators on Instagram and Facebook.

In addition, Meta’s blog confirms the company will not charge subscribers a fee on Subscriptions, Badges, Paid Online Events, and Bulletin for an additional year until January 1, 2024.

Clearly, Meta is going all out to attract and hold on to its best creators.

The New Monetization Tools on Instagram and Facebook

Meta has released five new ways for creators to make money on both Instagram and Facebook.

1. Interoperable Subscriptions

Facebook will now allow creators to automatically add their fans on other platforms to subscribers-only Facebook Groups. This allows them to receive payments from their fans on the other platforms, and save time by not having to manually let individual members into their Facebook Groups.

Facebook will launch the service with a limited group of partners before expanding.

2. Facebook Stars

Facebook Stars is now open to all creators. However, they must have at least 1000 followers since the preceding 60 days, be in a country where Stars are available, and meet Meta’s Partner Monetization Policies and Content Monetization Policies. This applies to Facebook Live, videos on-demand, and will soon be available on Facebook Reels.

3. Monetizing Reels

The Reels payment program was previously only available to creators on an invite-only basis. Now Facebook is allowing US-based creators to apply to join. However, they must have created more than five Reels and have a total of 100,000 views in the previous 30 days, and they must meet Meta’s Partner Monetization Policies and Content Monetization Policies to be eligible.

Facebook is also now allowing creators to cross-post Reels on both Instagram and Facebook and earn money on both platforms.

In addition, creators will shortly be able to use the “Paid Partnerships with” label for their branded content on Facebook Reels. This will allow sponsors to convert them to Branded Content Ads.

4. Creator Marketplace

Meta is following in TikTok’s and Snapchat’s footsteps by launching a Creator’s Marketplace on Instagram intended to match creators with suitable brands.

Creators will be able to indicate the brands and topics they’re interested in making branded content for. Brands will be able to find and collaborate with creators through the Meta Business Suite.

“When they’ve found a creator they want to partner with, they’ll be able to send a project that outlines the details of the opportunity, including deliverables and payment offered,” according to Meta.

5. Digital Collectibles

Instagram started allowing NFTs to be shared on its platform in May 2022. Now Meta will allow this feature to be available to more creators in select countries, and soon on Facebook as well (starting with a small group of US creators). Users will be able to cross-post on both Instagram and Facebook.

Instagram Stories will also start hosting NFTs, in partnership with SparkAR.

Creators Have the Upper Hand

In the old days, the content we consumed was determined by a few people at the top of a production company sitting around a boardroom table. These days, social media has shifted the power to independent creators who execute and deliver content directly to us, with no oversight.

The leading social media platforms have taken notice and are scrambling to find ways to lock in the best creators on their platforms in order to lock in our eyes as well. Clearly, it’s a good time to be a creator.

By Patrick Kariuki

Kariuki is a Nairobi based writer. His entire life has been spent trying to string together the perfect sentence. He is still trying. He has published extensively in Kenyan media and, for a hot 7 years or so, dived into the world of Public Relations where he discovered the corporate world is just like high school. He now writes again, focusing mainly on the magical internet. He also dabbles in the vibrant Kenyan start-up scene, AKA the Silicon Savannah, and occasionally advises small businesses and political actors on how to communicate better to their audiences. He runs a YouTube channel called Tipsy Writers, which attempts to get storytellers to tell their untold stories over a beer. When not working, Kariuki enjoys taking long walks, watching classic movies – especially old James Bond movies – and spotting aircraft. In an alternate universe, he would probably be a fighter pilot. More From Patrick Kariuki

Sourced from MUO

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Meta To End Discriminatory Housing Ads in Midst of ‘Historic’ Lawsuit – How It Benefits Users

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By Yaёl Bizouati-Kennedy

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division announced it has entered into a settlement agreement resolving allegations that Meta Platforms, formerly known as Facebook, engaged in discriminatory advertising in violation of the Fair Housing Act. This is the department’s first case challenging discrimination under the FHA, and Meta has agreed to change its ad delivery system, the Justice Department said in a press release.

Among other things, the complaint filed on June 21 alleges that Meta uses algorithms in determining which Facebook users receive housing ads, and that those algorithms rely in part on characteristics protected under the FHA, including race, colour, religion, sex, disability, familial status and national origin. This is the department’s first case challenging algorithmic bias under the Fair Housing Act.

“When a company develops and deploys technology that deprives users of housing opportunities based in whole or in part on protected characteristics, it has violated the Fair Housing Act, just as when companies engage in discriminatory advertising using more traditional advertising methods,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in the release. “Because of this ground-breaking lawsuit, Meta will – for the first time – change its ad delivery system to address algorithmic discrimination. But if Meta fails to demonstrate that it has sufficiently changed its delivery system to guard against algorithmic bias, this Office will proceed with the litigation.”

This settlement marks the first time that Meta will be subject to court oversight for its ad targeting and delivery system, the Department said.

Under the settlement, Meta has until Dec. 31 to stop using an advertising tool for housing ads (known as the “Special Ad Audience” tool) that, according to the department’s complaint, relies on a discriminatory algorithm. Meta also will develop a new system to address racial and other disparities caused by its use of personalization algorithms in its ad delivery system for housing ads. That system will be subject to Department of Justice approval and court oversight.

Meta must also pay the United States a civil penalty of $115,054, the maximum penalty available under the Fair Housing Act.

Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division called the settlement “historic.”

“The Justice Department is committed to holding Meta and other technology companies accountable when they abuse algorithms in ways that unlawfully harm marginalized communities,” she said.

In a statement to The Wall Street Journal, Meta said that it also plans to change its ads related to employment and credit in addition to housing.

“Discrimination in housing, employment and credit is a deep-rooted problem with a long history in the U.S., and we are committed to broadening opportunities for marginalized communities in these spaces and others,” Meta said in a statement posted on its website.

Feature Image Credit: Fritz Jorgensen / Getty Images 

By Yaёl Bizouati-Kennedy

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy is a full-time financial journalist and has written for several publications, including Dow Jones, The Financial Times Group, Bloomberg and Business Insider. She also worked as a vice president/senior content writer for major NYC-based financial companies, including New York Life and MSCI. Yaël is now freelancing and most recently, she co-authored  the book “Blockchain for Medical Research: Accelerating Trust in Healthcare,” with Dr. Sean Manion. (CRC Press, April 2020) She holds two master’s degrees, including one in Journalism from New York University and one in Russian Studies from Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès, France.

Sourced from GoBankingRates

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Meta launches new tools to help small businesses communicate with customers

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New tools make it easier to manage ads and messaging as well as generate leads.

To commemorate National Small Business Week, Meta has announced a number of new tools to help businesses manage conversations and ads as well as generate leads.

According to a new press release from the company, businesses have had a lot of success getting discovered by new customers and having conversations using Facebook and Instagram ads that open to a WhatsApp chat. In order to make it easier to create these kinds of ads, Meta will soon make it possible to create full ads directly from the WhatsApp Business app.

As businesses using the company’s Inbox are already managing customer messages across Facebook Messenger and Instagram Direct all in one place. Now though, Meta plans to bring WhatsApp to Inbox as well so that multiple people at an organization can manage messages in Inbox from the same WhatsApp number on multiple devices to help save time and boost productivity.

Meta is also testing a new capability in Meta Business Suite that will allow businesses to send promotional message campaigns using Messenger to customers who opt in.

Improved lead generation and customer acquisition

By using lead generation tools, SMBs can grow their customer base by finding new customers and initiating relationships with them which is why Meta is expanding end-to-end management of lead generation on its platform with several new features.

First off, the free product Quote request on Instagram will allow businesses to put a “Get Quote” button on their Instagram profile as well as use “Get Quote” stickers in Stories. With either option, businesses can set up custom questionnaires for customers to fill out before starting a conversation about a quote.

Businesses will also soon be able to pursue promising leads using lead filtering in Lead Ads Instant Forms. Customer responses to a multiple-choice question can then be used to filter leads that may not be a good fit for an organization.

Meta is also in the process of testing a more flexible and personalized Instant Form that allows businesses to add visuals and content in the form so that they can share more visual information about their company and nurture the interest of potential customers.

Finally, Meta Business Suite users can now download lead information directly to their own CRM to follow up with potential customers more quickly.

Feature Image Credit: Meta

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After getting his start at ITProPortal while living in South Korea, Anthony now writes about cybersecurity, web hosting, cloud services, VPNs and software for TechRadar Pro. In addition to writing the news, he also edits and uploads reviews and features and tests numerous VPNs from his home in Houston, Texas. Recently, Anthony has taken a closer look at standing desks, office chairs and all sorts of other work from home essentials. When not working, you can find him tinkering with PCs and game consoles, managing cables and upgrading his smart home. 

Sourced from techradar.pro

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