Facebook warns investors of iOS 14.5 headwinds

News
By Stephen Warwick
published

Mark Zuckerberg in front of the Facebook logo
Mark Zuckerberg in front of the Facebook logo (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

  • Facebook has warned it expects to face headwinds in advertising this year because of iOS 14.5.
  • Despite this, it is predicting a full year of revenue growth.
  • Apple release iOS 14.5 and the option to opt-out of tracking this week.

Facebook has told investors it expects to face headwinds in advertising revenue thanks to changes made in iOS 14.

In its Q1 21 financial highlights the company reported a "strong quarter" and revenue of over $25 billion, up 46% on the same period last year.

Facebook also says that it had nearly 1.9bn daily active users in March, and more than 2.8bn monthly active users. Looking ahead, Facebook warned that iOS 14.5 and a new opt-in prompt for user tracking was one of the "headwinds" it was expecting to run into this year:

We expect second quarter 2021 year-over-year total revenue growth to remain stable or modestly accelerate relative to the growth rate in the first quarter of 2021 as we lap slower growth related to the pandemic during the second quarter of 2020. In the third and fourth quarters of 2021, we expect year-over-year total revenue growth rates to significantly decelerate sequentially as we lap periods of increasingly strong growth. We continue to expect increased ad targeting headwinds in 2021 from regulatory and platform changes, notably the recently-launched iOS 14.5 update, which we expect to begin having an impact in the second quarter. This is factored into our outlook.

As Facebook notes, it has factored iOS 14.5 into its outlook yet still expects to see growth throughout the rest of the year.

Apple released iOS 14.5 this week, with users now being prompted by all of their apps to ask whether they would like to be tracked. A stunning report yesterday based on a survey of iMore readers has revealed that only 2% of users plan to allow cross-app tracking under the new changes.

Stephen Warwick
Stephen Warwick
News Editor

Stephen Warwick has written about Apple for five years at iMore and previously elsewhere. He covers all of iMore's latest breaking news regarding all of Apple's products and services, both hardware and software. Stephen has interviewed industry experts in a range of fields including finance, litigation, security, and more. He also specializes in curating and reviewing audio hardware and has experience beyond journalism in sound engineering, production, and design.

Before becoming a writer Stephen studied Ancient History at University and also worked at Apple for more than two years. Stephen is also a host on the iMore show, a weekly podcast recorded live that discusses the latest in breaking Apple news, as well as featuring fun trivia about all things Apple. Follow him on Twitter @stephenwarwick9