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Apple Killed Growth And Caused Inflation
Howard Lindzon
October 14, 2022
Good morning.
Back in 2021 Apple put a stake in the growth of Facebook and it seemed like only Facebook cared.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has slammed Apple’s privacy change multiple times and, during Q3 results, stressed that the Cupertino-based company’s new privacy change will adversely affect small businesses.
In April last year, Apple introduced its ATT policy, which forced apps to first ask users before tracking their behaviour across different services for personalised ads. This killed the IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers) tool that is used by apps to track iOS users, leaving advertisers in the dark for having no option to offer targeted ads.
“We believe the impact of iOS overall is a headwind on our business in 2022,” Meta CFO Dave Wehner said on a call with analysts after the company’s fourth-quarter earnings report. “It’s on the order of $10 billion, so it’s a pretty significant headwind for our business,”
I think we can say that Mark was right about how their $10 billion loss was painful for more than just Facebook.
I would guess that most venture backed businesses (at least growth ones) relied on facebook ads to grow their customers. Love it or hate it, that was the way it worked.
Now companies are faced with having to pay a lot more to grow customers. It is the inflation that is not discussed when the world/media/FED discuss inflation.
The cost of customer acquisition is exploding for many.
The inflation that it is causing for ecommerce and software growth companies is a major factor in the valuation compression we continue to see.
The next generation of software engineers and venture capitalists might need to be studying marketing instead.
It’s been so long since my own MBA that when I ‘googled’ ‘The 4 P’s’…there were now SIX!
Even the p’s are inflating.
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