In April, Apple rolled out a significant privacy update, and people and corporations are starting to feel its effects. The privacy update may have changed everything you know about data collection via your phone — and if you value your privacy, it’s a significant change for the better. At least for the time being.
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What Were Apple’s Recent Privacy Changes?
These days, many people are used to distrusting social media and big corporations over what they do with the personal information they collect. As such, Apple implemented its privacy update designed for users to feel they have a bit more control over where their personal data goes.
In a nutshell, this update prevents advertisers from tracking iPhone users and collecting their data without their consent. As an Apple user, you now have to mark whether you want an app to track your demographics. Otherwise, you can opt-out of this data collection.
It also leaves users with the option to hide their email on sites and apps, then forward any essential messages to the email address associated with your Apple ID. This way, the seller never catches a glimpse of your actual email address. While this option may help users tailor how much control they want over their privacy, others seem to think that this new feature gives Apple a leg up when it comes to advertising, unless users turn off Apple’s data collection abilities, too.
How Do These Changes Affect Facebook?
Facebook is one of the many large corporations that felt the ripple effects of this update. The new privacy features make it more difficult for companies to track whether ads lead to website clicks or sales if they do. As a result, Snapchat shares fell, which dragged down Facebook and other large corporations. Collectively, they’ve lost about $10 billion so far.
Facebook pushed back against this update and noted that small businesses use the advertising opportunities to target users who they think would be a good fit for their products. Companies use a tactic called customer segmentation — breaking their customers into groups based on certain characteristics or demographics like age, education level, and gender — to better determine which ads to target to them or entice them to make a click.
Understandably, advertisers are migrating from Facebook to other social media platforms to advertise their services and products. TikTok is a popular choice since advertising is much cheaper for the number of people who view the business’s content or products.
Businesses will go where they feel they can stretch their money the most. Now, it looks like Facebook may have to roll out some changes to its advertising platform or push back harder against the Apple decision.
What Does This Change Mean for You?
Essentially, this change means you can control how far your privacy goes on your iPhone. You can allow Facebook and other apps to use your data for advertising purposes, but you now have the option to turn off data collection. Over 60% of Apple users have already opted out of device-tracking advertisements. The choice is up to you — whether you value data privacy or relevant products and services more is a personal choice.
The Future of Online Marketing
With more people starting to realize the value of their data, online marketing may have to shift to meet the new needs of the public. Businesses want to provide consumers with the best quality product or service, and they need to figure out ways to get people to click. If customer segmentation no longer works, they may need to make their general ads more enticing to pull in the people they can. It may also make businesses value the customers that opt-in even more.
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