Nearly 12 months after Apple rolled out its app tracking transparency feature, a new analysis predicts that its second year will still cause significant disruption to advertisers Facebook, YouTube and others will collectively lose about $16 billion.
Apple released the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature on April 26, 2021, in iOS 14, which immediately had an impact on companies that rely on advertising revenue. By July, it was estimated to have caused advertisers a 15 to 20 percent drop in revenue.
Then, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg reported that his company’s revenue would be hit by $10 billion in 2022. In October 2021, shares of Snapchat’s parent company Snap fell 25 percent due to concerns about the impact of ATT.
Now, a new analysis by research firm Lotame says ATT is continuing to have an impact — though it’s decreasing. In addition to ATT, Apple has also scrapped its old IDFA (Advertiser Recognizer) technology, but it has introduced a new framework to help advertisers and appears to be being adopted.
“[Year 2] we think the change in IDFA will have an impact of nearly $16 billion on businesses,” Lotame said in its report. “Again, the vast majority (81%) of this impact comes from Facebook.”
Facebook’s 81 percent represents an estimated $12.8 billion, and Lotame estimates the rest of the revenue losses at Snap’s $546 million, Twitter’s $323 million, and YouTube’s $2.2 billion.
Lotame, however, described snap and Twitter as having “basically shaken off” the situation. For example, they are all adapting to the new measurement system provided by Apple. Facebook is then also working to reduce its reliance on Apple, which is said to be offering new tools to advertisers.
Despite predicting that ATT’s revenue will take a hit of $16 billion in the second year, Lotame has even said it won’t continue to study the topic. Lotame said it expects “other shocks” to affect the advertising industry, and the impact of ATT will continue to “burn” through the second half of 2022.