Higher-priced ads help Facebook record a net revenue of $26.17 billion in the first quarter of 2021. This corresponded with a 48% increase from net revenue the previous year; the company attributed this to a 30% increase in average price per ad and 12% increase in number of ads delivered overall. However, Facebook doesn't expect things to remain rosy forever. CFO Dave Wehner said in the company's earnings release for Q1 2021 that the company expects "increased ad targeting headwinds" from regulatory and platform changes. More specifically, Facebook expects immediate impact from Apple's recently launched iOS 14.5, which requires apps to proactively seek user consent to being tracked for advertising. COO Sheryl Sandberg, in a call with investors, said the company has been putting in a huge amount of work to prepare for Apple's API changes. "We’re working with our customers to implement Apple’s API and our own Aggregated Events Measurement API to mitigate the impact of the iOS14 changes. We’re rebuilding meaningful elements of our ad tech so that our system continues to perform when we have access to less data in the future." Sandberg said that it is also working on long term engagement with industry bodies like W3C for privacy-oriented technologies that can allow personalised ads, while simultaneously limiting access to people's information. Throughout the investor call Facebook emphasised on the supposed importance of personalised ads for small- and medium-sized businesses, since they only want to target a specific demographic and not everyone in general. Sandberg said,…
