Facebook Warns iOS 14 Could Drop Publisher Revenue By Over 50%

Facebook has posted a notice to Audience Network publishers warning them that their revenue could drop by over 50% once iOS 14 is released.

In iOS 14, developers must request permission to track users across different apps and websites. It's unlikely that many users will grant this permission, leading to a significant reduction in the ability to deliver targeted ads.

Here's the full announcement posted by Facebook...


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Today, Facebook shared how we’re addressing Apple iOS 14 changes, which includes not collecting the identifier for advertisers (IDFA) on our own apps on iOS 14 devices. This is not a change we want to make, but unfortunately Apple’s updates to iOS14 have forced this decision. We know this may severely impact publishers’ ability to monetize through Audience Network on iOS 14, and, despite our best efforts, may render Audience Network so ineffective on iOS 14 that it may not make sense to offer it on iOS 14 in the future.

For developers and publishers using Audience Network, our ability to deliver targeted ads on iOS 14 will be limited. As a result, some iOS 14 users may not see any ads from Audience Network, while others may still see ads from us, but they'll be less relevant. Because of advertisers’ reduced ability to accurately target and measure their campaigns, app developers and publishers should expect lower CPMs on Audience Network and likely other ad networks on iOS.

While it’s difficult to quantify the impact to publishers and developers at this point with so many unknowns, in testing we’ve seen more than a 50% drop in Audience Network publisher revenue when personalization was removed from mobile ad install campaigns. In reality, the impact to Audience Network on iOS 14 may be much more, so we are working on short-and long-term strategies to support publishers through these changes.

We understand that iOS 14 will hurt many of our developers and publishers at an already difficult time for businesses. We work with more than 19,000 developers and publishers from around the globe¹ and in 2019 we paid out billions of dollars. Many of these are small businesses that depend on ads to support their livelihood.


We stand in strong support of the developer community and will share updates as we learn more about Apple’s policy and what actions publishers can take. We’ll also release an updated version of the Audience Network SDK to support iOS 14, in line with updates to the Facebook SDK. While the iOS 14 release schedule has not been announced, we plan to release the Audience Network SDK beforehand and will provide an update as soon as these dates are confirmed.

We remain committed to helping the thousands of developers and publishers that rely on ads from Audience Network, and we’re investing time and resources into building monetization products for publishers as well as supporting other platforms outside of iOS 14.
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