Google Brings a Sigh of Relief to Digital Advertisers

I wrote in my previous article that digital advertising is in trouble. Mainly because of growing privacy concerns and the elimination of third-party cookies. It turns out digital advertising may be here to stay after all.

If you run Facebook ads like me, I am sure you are familiar with the annoying notification on your Ad Manager dashboard. The one that warns you that, due to Apple’s privacy update, your ad may not reach as many people as you targeted. 

And of course, the performance of our ads has been impacted by Apple’s privacy feature. 

We have not been able to enjoy the power of Facebook ads like we used to. The platform has been struggling to deliver. Except, of course, if your target audience is in Africa where more than 90% of people use android smartphones.

What did Apple do? In April, Apple introduced a privacy feature that asks users whether they want to be tracked by apps. If users opt out, apps like Facebook won’t be able to target them with the most relevant ads.

The Apple iOS privacy changes have cost social media platforms like Snapchat, Facebook, and Twitter billion of dollars in revenue in the second half of this year. Facebook suffered the most.

“Apple’s changes are not only negatively affecting our business, but millions of small businesses, and what is already a difficult time for them and the economy”

Mark Zuckerberg

But there is good news for advertisers

While Facebook and Snapchat complain about being affected by Apple’s privacy changes, Google on the other hand did not budge from those changes. 

The company has bagged 32% more in ad revenue compared to 24% in the same quarter last year. Completely ignoring Apple’s privacy changes.

Google’s resilience over these changes (thanks to its Artificial Intelligence technology) means a sigh of relief to advertisers.

So if you are struggling to get results with Facebook Ads, try Google Ads.