Mike Woosley, Chief Operating Officer at data solutions provider Lotame, has been busy lately.
In October, Lotame launched its own identity offering, Panorama ID, which the company hailed as the “the first global, people-based identity solution for a cookieless open web.” Last month, Lotame announced momentum for the ID, with key support from Magnite, Advance Local, Sovrn, and Eyeota.
Now, Woosley is going on the record over the Facebook and Apple privacy battle.
As seen with Lotame’s Panorama ID, identity resolution in advertising is more important than ever as third-party cookies and mobile device IDs rapidly deprecate.
On the mobile ID front, Apple has been leading the privacy push. Its revised ATT policy, which will go into effect this spring, will require all app developers to explicitly ask for permission to track consumers for advertising purposes. This shift means that the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) — a random ID assigned by Apple to each user’s device, enabling developers and brands to track and target — will become entirely opt-in.
Facebook has been particularly outspoken about ATT’s impact, with CEOs Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook trading barbs in recent weeks.
In a statement to press regarding the Facebook-Apple confrontation, Lotame’s Woosley, a veteran of of the ad tech industry — he founded Videology and was CFO of Advertising.com — didn’t mince words, and is especially critical of Apple. His statement in full:
“Even though Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg are talking past each other, both are absolutely right. Tim Cook says that Facebook’s algorithms have been targeting and radicalizing the impressionable with poisonous rhetoric which incites violence. Mark Zuckerberg says that Apple’s changes will harm the functioning of it’s platform, and that of thousands of small independent developers, and that Apple’s monopolistic domination of distribution creates a responsibility to be more fair.
Both are right. Who has the high ground? It may disappoint you: the answer is Mark Zuckerberg.
Even thought Tim’s on point that Facebook’s platform is echoing misinformation and inciting violence, it’s irrelevant for this set of facts. Tim’s change around IDFA may cost Facebook $5 billion dollars on it’s top line, plus whatever it costs the little guys. That in itself is shocking with respect to scale, impact, and magnitude. It only reinforces the narrative that Apple has arbitrary and monopolistic control over app distribution.
To take the fight further, understand that everything Tim has asserted in the past few years that has been framed as a ‘privacy move’ also serves to further advance and entrench Apple’s economic interest. Coincidence? Apple’s policy is to take 30% of app developer revenue on it’s platform. Apple doesn’t like media and ad-supported business (like Facebook) because it’s much harder for Apple to take its ‘fair share.’ The change around IDFA is particularly cynical. The consumer already has the control to either block or reset it’s IDFA identifier. The only thing missing is the ability to block the ID per app – a capability that already exists on the iPhone for app notifications. If Apple had quietly added this functionality, none of us would be talking about this issue. Apple’s policy to force feed approval to consumers hundreds of times on a case-by-case basis is a scorched earth policy that harms everybody except Apple.
Apple’s marketing and positioning around these changes is so nuanced, so credible, so adroit, that the company even has The Wall Street Journal calling this move by apple a ‘privacy change.'”
Woosley’s criticism of Apple is in line with what others like Mobile Dev Mo‘s Eric Seufert and InMobi’s Sergio Serra have shared. Apple isn’t acting altruistically, at least not entirely. Instead, they have their own motives for reordering IDFA and with it the mobile ad landscape.
Oddly, as a result, Facebook finds itself with a lot more “friends” and supporters than it’s used to.
