New Delhi: Share prices of Facebook Inc. increased on Friday, adding to a recent advance after CEO Mark Zuckerberg played down the risk the social-media company could face due to an upcoming change in Apple’s privacy policies.
“I’m confident that we’re gonna be able to manage through that situation,” Mark said in an interview on Josh Constine’s PressClub Clubhouse room. “We’ll be in a good position. I think it’s possible that we may even be in a stronger position.”
The stock went up as much as 5.1% and could have led to its biggest one-day percentage gain since November. The stock also touched its highest intra-day level since November.
The issue at hand is a code embedded in Apple devices known as ‘Identification for Advertisers’, which is used by companies like Facebook to target users and to monitor the performance of their ads. But an upcoming update to Apple’s iOS 14 operating system, expected to roll out in early spring, will change the policy which will require the device users to choose whether they want to share their information with developers.
Investors were concerned that this change will negatively impact the Facebook’s ability to serve ads to sought-after category of consumers which saw the stock struggle in the wake of this issue. The stock is 5% below the record hit on 26th August last year, Facebook published a blog post the same day where it first warned about the impact of Apple’s changes will have on its targeted advertising business.
Facebook Chief Financial Officer Dave Wehner said in a press conference earlier this month that there was “significant uncertainty as to what the opt-in rates are going to be,” and that the policy change is “going to be a challenge in a variety of places.” Zuckerberg’s recent comments seem to diminish the risk Apple’s change could represent to Facebook’s revenue.
The changes on iOS14 are expected to roll in early spring and it will force the app developers like Facebook to ask users for permission before tracking them via ‘Apple’s Identifier for Advertisers’ (IDFA) feature.
Earlier in January, Zuckerberg said Apple had become one Facebook’s “biggest competitors” and accused it of stifling competition under the guise of privacy protection.
