🗝️ Meta's Plans to Bypass iOS

Hello, Marketers.

In today’s edition

• A Meta App Store?

• Last Week’s Must-Knows

Let’s jump in 🪂

Meta is preparing to create an App Store to bypass Apple in Europe

Europe’s Digital Markets Act is a big deal. It will force Apple to offer alternative options for downloading apps and processing in-app payments on iOS.

Right now Apple takes a 30% cut of the revenue of in-app transactions. And most app companies have no real choice but to pay Apple if they want their app downloaded. The DMA will change that.

There’s a huge knock-on effect too for Marketers.

Because, as you probably know, with the iOS 14.5 software update Apple rolled out privacy measures that restrict the amount of data that apps collect.

Meta relied on that data to power its supremely effective ad delivery system. And less data meant Meta couldn’t target ads so precisely. Meta’s CFO said the change would cost them around $10 billion in 2022 alone as advertisers pulled back budgets.

Meta confirmed to The Verge that it will offer an ad that enables users to download an app directly from Facebook, side-stepping the app store. Only Android developers have been invited to the initial pilot.

Playing this out a few steps, this new ad product could be a prelude to Meta launching its own app store in Europe. If that happens, Meta could get back some control of the data that Apple took away. And enhance its advertising product again.

Microsoft already strongly hinted at offering iOS & Android app stores and Meta looks like it will take a similar approach.

Last Week’s Must-Knows

Google has been accused of misleading YouTube’s advertisers. Advertisers can opt-in to show video ads on YouTube and other sites across the web, called Google Video Partners. A report from analytics research firm, Adalytics, says those Partners often don’t display the videos in the way Google states. Apparently: “42 to 75% of TrueView in-stream ad spend was allocated to [Partner] sites and apps which did not meet Google’s standards." Google denied the claims in response. (The Guardian ↗️)

Shopify launches ‘Collabs Network’ to streamline affiliate deals. The feature enables brands on Shopify to list their products for promotion by verified creators. And creators generate their own commission links to track sales. Creators must have completed the Collabs onboarding, have a public social media account with 1K followers, and be located in the US, Canada, or UK. (WWD ↗️)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has cracked down on misleading Influencer Marketing with new guidelines. This includes making disclosures of sponsorships “unavoidable”. Small text at the bottom of the description isn’t going to be enough on its own. Also, if the Creator was gifted the product for free, that should now be announced too. (Lindsey Gamble ↗️)

TikTok could launch an online retail store in the U.S. app, competing with the likes of Amazon. TikTok will sell its own merchandise like toys and kitchen items and handle logistics and customer service. The storefront will be found within the TikTok app under an e-Commerce tab and could launch next month. (Semafor ↗️)

Plus

LinkedIn launches ‘Thought Leader Ads’, which enable brands to promote the LinkedIn posts published by its executives and employees.

LinkedIn also updated its algorithm to prioritize content from first-degree connections, highlight expert knowledge and advice, and filter content into relevant topics.

Threads, Meta’s new Twitter competitor, briefly showed up in the app store which showed some screenshots of the expected new app.

Meta describes how it uses artificial intelligence to decide to show content to users on Facebook & Instagram.

YouTube is trialing a new policy where people using ad blockers must turn them off or pay a monthly fee for YouTube Premium in order to watch videos.