Facebook reports record ad revenue for Q2 2021 despite Apple’s ATT

Facebook reported a record-breaking ad revenue for the second quarter of 2021 despite Apple’s controversial privacy changes in iOS 14.5 and the App Tracking Transparency framework which now requires developers to get user consent to track user activity for ad purposes.

The company announced yesterday that it’s ad revenue rose 56% Y/Y to $28.580 billion during Q2, up nearly $10 billion from the same period last year. 

It’s total revenue hit $29.077 billion, up 56% Y/Y, and its net income more than doubled reaching $10.394 billion. 

In addition, Facebook’s daily active users and monthly active users both increased by 7% Y/Y to 1.91 billion and 2.90 billion respectively, while the number of family daily active users (DAP) hit 2.76 billion and family monthly active users (MAP) reached 3.51 billion. 

Also Read: Facebook Revenue and Usage Statistics

Facebook has been one of the most vocal tech companies since Apple first announced the iOS privacy changes at last year’s WWDC event, accusing the iPhone-maker of being anti-competitive and hurting particularly small businesses. It even launched a TV campaign and ran full-page newspaper ads against the IDFA changes. 

After reporting its first quarter earnings in April this year, the company said that it expected a significant drop in ad revenue which it said could start recovering in the third and the fourth quarter.  

Also Read: Zuckerberg reportedly told his staff to ‘inflict pain’ on Apple

While the social media giant exceeded ad revenue expectations during Q2 2021, Facebook CFO David Wehner said that the company still expects ‘increased ad targeting headwinds’ due to Apple’s ATT in the third quarter of this year. 

“We continue to expect increased ad targeting headwinds in 2021 from regulatory and platform changes, notably the recent iOS updates, which we expect to have a greater impact in the third quarter compared to the second quarter,” said Wehner. 

Facebook is not the only tech company exceeding ad revenue expectations for the second quarter of 2021. Google’s parent company Alphabet also reported a record-breaking quarterly revenue of $50.44 billion, up 70% from Q2 2020.