- Facebook parent Meta presented a three-tier plan to save its ad business from Apple’s privacy crackdown.
- The company plans to push ad units that drive customer actions on Facebook.
- The stakes are high, as Meta potentially faces $12.8 billion in lost revenue this year.
Meta laid out for the first time a rough gameplan on how it will rebuild its flailing ad business, which has been rocked by Apple’s privacy crackdown.
During its Q1 2022 earnings call, Meta described how near term, it’s working with large and small advertisers to use its Conversion API to create a direct connection with Meta. That connection lets marketers know if their ads on Meta’s properties got people to take an action like signing up for something on an advertisers’ website or buying a product.
The second step is promoting ad units that spur actions on Facebook itself. Company COO Sheryl Sandberg discussed click-to-message ads or Shops ads, which were introduced in 2020. When someone clicks on a Shops ad, it opens up a product catalog within Facebook, which means Meta can track the action.
Meta previously talked up these ads as a way to help
ecommerce companies
that were losing customers due to Apple’s restrictions. But during its earnings, Meta was frank about how such units would ultimately help save its own ad business.
“If commerce is successful over the longer term, we’ll be able to close the loop on our service,” Sandberg said.
Long term, Meta plans to develop artificial intelligence and machine learning to let advertisers target people with less personalized data. The company did not detail any further what type of AI or machine learning tools it needed to develop, or when these tools would be available.
The stakes are high for Meta as the impacts of Apple’s privacy restrictions are expected to intensify throughout the year. The company could lose $12.8 billion in revenue by the end of 2022, data management company Lotame estimated.
