Rumblings are surfacing about the impact to Meta Platforms advertising on Facebook and Instagram due to increased costs resulting from the new user privacy policy introduced by Apple last summer. Meta expects to take a hit of as much as $10 billion to this year’s revenue as a result of the change, which requires users to grant permission to apps to track their activity for advertising purposes. Meta’s market value dropped by roughly $300 billion in the wake of that forecast. In light of Google’s discussion this month of implementing privacy changes of its own, it remains to be seen whether the changes are triggering a digital advertising transition or crash. Read more

The legislative tide seems to be turning against Apple and its App Store, marking what some note is a shift in attention previously trained on Meta Platforms and its alleged child endangerment through Facebook and Instagram, Amazon’s behavior toward its retailers, and Alphabet’s advertising controls on Google. The Apple attack is building worldwide, as Dutch antitrust watchdog Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) on Monday fined Apple $5.7 million over what it says are abusive payment requirements that prohibit developers from using third-party platforms for dating app fees. Read more

Having ridden the short-form video wave to popularity, TikTok now faces a quandary: advertisers want longer-form content in which to place their messaging, while users say they don’t even have sufficient attention span for minute-long videos. Last year, a TikTok survey indicated 50 percent of its users find clips of more than a minute stressful, and about a third of them zip through 60-second clips at double-speed. “It’s not because I don’t have time, but because I can’t concentrate,” one twentysomething user reportedly explained in a survey response. Despite that feedback, TikTok began experimenting through the second half of 2021 with videos of five minutes and 10 minutes. Read more

Google is working on measures to protect consumer privacy by limiting data sharing from Android OS smartphones. The Alphabet-owned company says its changes will not be as disruptive as steps taken last year by Apple, which revamped its iOS iPhone software so users were required to grant permission for ad tracking. The resulting volume of users who blocked tracking had a profoundly negative effect on companies that rely on targeted advertising. Google didn’t indicate when the changes will roll out, but did say it will support existing operating systems for two more years. Read more

Investment banking firm JPMorgan Chase is betting on the metaverse, which it predicts “will likely infiltrate every sector in some way in the coming years, with the market opportunity estimated at over $1 trillion in yearly revenues.” The company has opened a virtual branch in Decentraland, a browser-based 3D world to coincide with publication of the 18-page “Opportunities in the Metaverse” report by Onyx, the blockchain division the bank launched in 2020. Although it’s the first bank known to open a branch in the metaverse, JPMorgan is just the latest of numerous businesses to plant its flag. Read more