Facebook is manipulating the numbers to make it seem that Apple’s new opt-in feature will kill small businesses.
Besides the above example, Facebook also incorrectly repeated certain figures. For example, Facebook posted on its website and in its ads that “Forty-four percent of small to medium businesses started or increased their usage of personalized ads on social media during the pandemic, according to a new Deloitte study.” But that figure was misleading; the authors looked at Deloitte’s numbers which included the percentage increase in targeted advertising on social media for companies in nine industries. Telecom and Technologies had the largest increase at 34%. Facebook’s figure of 44% was not only overstated, the industry that Facebook chose to use was the one best suited to fit its argument.
Let’s examine this again. Facebook said, “Forty-four percent of small to medium businesses started or increased their usage of personalized ads on social media during the pandemic.” If you read this without double checking the figure, you’d believe that Apple’s new opt-in policy on targeted ads was affecting as much as 44% of small and mid-sized businesses. However, as noted above, the largest industry increasing its targeted advertising during the pandemic was Telecom and Technologies with a 34% hike. As de Langhe and Puntoni wrote, “Facebook, it seems, cherry-picked the data that best supported its case, and then increased the size of the cherries it picked by a third.”
The authors say that they are not trying to dismiss the concerns that small businesses have over Apple’s new privacy policy. However, “Under Apple’s new plan, companies will have to explain their data-collection practices when submitting new apps or making updates, and many users won’t give permission to have their behavior tracked online. Facebook says it wants to stand up for small businesses in the face of these changes, which it is perfectly entitled to do. But disinformation about advertising effectiveness isn’t the way to do that.”
