Facebook announced record results in the second quarter of fiscal 2021. The company led by Mark Zuckerberg had revenue of $ 29 billion, which translates into year-on-year growth of 56% . At the moment, the social network seems to have been unaffected by the privacy changes promoted by Apple in iOS that would limit the effectiveness of the ads. However, this outlook could change in the third quarter.
The social media giant continues to rake in millions. According to its quarterly report, its earnings grew 101% reaching 10.4 billion dollars in Q2 (fiscal period between April and June). The company also said that the number of active users of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp increased by 12% compared to last year. Now 2,760 million people use these applications daily to connect and share content.
Much of the revenue posted by Facebook in the second quarter came from advertising . Precisely in this segment the company grew 47%. However, it warns that the privacy changes implemented by Apple as of iOS 14.5 remain to be seen and that these could impact more strongly in the third quarter.
“We continue to expect an increase in ad targeting headwinds in 2021 due to regulatory and platform changes, particularly recent iOS updates, which we expect to have a greater impact in Q3 compared to Q2. “.
Facebook CFO David Wehner
Facebook, Apple and Privacy
Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash In April of this year, Apple released its “Transparency in app tracking” function with iOS 14.5. It seeks that users decide in a simple way if they want to allow applications to track them and compare their data with other companies for advertising purposes through the advertising identifier known as IDFA.
Facebook was one of the first companies to lash out at Apple for this privacy feature. The social network launched a campaign, which included full-page advertisements in newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal, in which it ensured that these policies would negatively affect advertisers .
Apple seeks to discourage the use of IDFA. Consequently, it wants to give way to other advertising measurement tools that do not put the privacy of users at risk. One of them is SKAdNetwork, which can also report the number of times a post was installed or a conversion was performed.
