Some SMB owners who advertise heavily online say Facebook is speaking the truth about how iOS privacy changes might disproportionately affect such businesses
With big changes coming to iPhones, small online merchants are bracing for lost sales. ‘Why is Apple now the decider?’
Wall Street JournalChristopher Mims
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook had already made small-business harm the centerpiece of its public campaign against Apple’s iOS privacy changes, while separate coverage challenged the scale of the losses it projected. The accounts here matter because they identify a heavily online-advertising merchant segment that expects sales exposure, rather than settling Facebook’s broader numerical claims.
The immediate dispute is therefore not only about privacy rules: it is about Apple’s ability to alter the data and targeting conditions on which Facebook advertising customers rely.
First-order effects
Small merchants that depend heavily on Facebook advertising are preparing for weaker sales as iPhone privacy changes restrict data gathering and targeted ads.
Facebook gains concrete customer testimony for its SMB-focused argument, even as scrutiny of its loss estimates questions the breadth of the claimed impact.
Second-order effects
Facebook must help advertisers operate with less targeting and measurement data, making the effectiveness of its technical response central to retaining small-business ad budgets.
Merchants that cannot reliably attribute sales to ads face pressure to reduce or reallocate marketing spend; later coverage links Apple’s ATT changes with SMB marketing cutbacks and higher customer-acquisition costs.
Third-order effects
Apple’s iPhone-level privacy settings shift bargaining power over advertising data toward the device platform, leaving Facebook and its advertisers to adapt within rules they do not control.
If merchants continue to experience weaker ad performance, platform policy choices will increasingly shape which advertising tools smaller businesses can use efficiently.
The trend: Consumer privacy controls are turning device platforms into gatekeepers of the data flows that sustain targeted-advertising ecosystems.
Narrative violation in this week's column: What if Facebook is not wrong in asserting Apple's new privacy changes will hurt millions of businesses that have come to rely on hyper-targeted advertising? thread 🧵 https://www.wsj.com/...
@dancharvey
@dancharvey on x
When I've worked at small startups we've had to turn away from FB ads because they were bad for our business. Despite targeting we got more bad leads than good. https://twitter.com/...
@libskrat
@libskrat on x
I love (that is, hate) how we're actually seriously discussing whether advertising is more important than, y'know, human dignity. What the actual hell, people. https://twitter.com/...
@matt_cochrane7
Matthew Cochrane on x
In the battle of $FB vs. $AAPL the casualties are SMBs. “But, according to small-business owners who advertise heavily online, and the agencies that help them, Facebook is speaking truth about how Apple's shift might disproportionately affect them.” https://www.wsj.com/...
@bryanrbeal
Bryan Beal on x
It is completely illogical to not want better advertisements. You are going to see advertisements when using these platforms, so is the argument that you want bad advertisements? I've actually bought a lot from relevant ads. I enjoy them. https://twitter.com/...
@jason_kint
Jason Kint on x
Chris, this is a good column. One nuance to this sentence of yours -> “prompting users to choose whether or not they'd like to be tracked by the apps they use.” Actually, “tracking” is by definition when your data is being collected by an you're *not* choosing to use. 1/2 https:/…
@sarthakgh
Sar Haribhakti on x
“Apple's privacy changes are well-intentioned, but they do hurt small businesses in a real, tangible way...” Yes, glad mainstream outlets are catching up finally Turns out everything is a trade off and absolutist ideology is popular but unhinged https://www.wsj.com/...
@jensmithwsj
Jennifer Smith on x
In its battle with Apple, Facebook has enlisted an unexpected ally—small businesses who say changes to how privacy is protected on iPhones will hurt them. Via @mims https://www.wsj.com/...
@bggoodell
Prefermentation on x
If millions of businesses cannot make profit without invasive and unethical surveillance, they need to update their fucking business models. https://twitter.com/...
@procyclicality
@procyclicality on x
“We need to repeatedly and continuously violate your privacy in order to make money” isn't exactly a winning argument https://twitter.com/...
@foxcahn
Albert Fox Cahn on x
@mims But why are we assuming micro targeting actually works? Growing evidence that businesses aren't actually getting much of an upside at all. https://www.wired.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@modeledbehavior
Adam Ozimek on x
This is a big deal to a lot of small & medium sized businesses https://twitter.com/...
@mattyglesias
Matthew Yglesias on x
This view makes perfect sense to me. On the other hand if small businesses were forced to rely on a less efficient means of targeting — like ads in locally-focused digital news outlets — that could have considerable social benefits. https://twitter.com/...
@mims
Christopher Mims on x
Facebook is hardly a sympathetic protagonist when it comes to representing small startups just trying to meet customers where they are. But in the short-term at least, the shift to a new level of privacy (which is good!) is painful for them. https://www.wsj.com/...
@mims
Christopher Mims on x
Obviously, we are all inclined to do everything we can to keep as much of our data as possible out of the hands of companies in the habit of mining it for profit. But that industry has a flip-side. Tons small businesses rely on that data. https://www.wsj.com/...
@mims
Christopher Mims on x
Those millions of small businesses that turned to ecommerce to survive store closures in pandemic, or were started in order to compete with Amazon? They really liked being able to track you. It was a massively efficient system. It's going away now. https://www.wsj.com/...