LinkedIn today announced that it will stop collecting Identifier for Advertising (IDFA) data. Twitter even welcomed Apple's privacy stance. Facebook, not so much.
Apple will bring new privacy features online later this year to iOS 14 that will see developers forced to ask users for their permission before they can be tracked from app to app. Facebook has been making plenty of noise, saying it will harm small businesses and, of course, its ad business. LinkedIn, however, isn't worried.
We have decided to stop our iOS apps' collection of IDFA data for now. Although this change affects the LinkedIn Audience Network (LAN), Conversion Tracking and Matched Audiences, we expect limited impact to your campaign performance, and don't foresee major changes required for your campaign set-up.
Twitter CFO Ned Segal says that his company knows that it will only get one chance to make a first impression and it wants to make sure it knows the lay of the land before doing so.
"We don't want to be in a rush around IDFA," he said. "You only have one chance to ask somebody if you can have access to their device ID to show them more relevant ads. You want to ask in a really thoughtful way, and you want to take time to learn from the industry and the broader ecosystem before you ask a question like that."
And then there's Facebook, throwing its toys out of the pram. CEO Mark Zuckerberg even tried to tell us that Apple will hamper the recovery from COVID-19, no less.
It's obviously very difficult to feel any sympathy for Facebook, nor Zuck. The fact that other social networks are seemingly fine with Apple's privacy stance should probably further drive home the point that whatever Facebook is doing with our data, and however it's selling it, is probably bad for us.
I'm all for Apple and other companies doing what they need to do to make life hard for Facebook.
