“Completely Running Blind.” Apple’s Power Move To Kneecap Facebook Advertising Is Working.

Facebook can survive its scandals, but Apple’s anti-tracking initiative is doing meaningful damage to its business.

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Facebook this week dispatched its high-level executives to ask customers to hang in there. They weren’t, of course, visiting to discuss the Wall Street Journal’s recent exposé of the company’s unsavory practices. But instead, Facebook VPs, including Simon Whitcombe and Graham Mudd, spoke to advertisers about Apple’s anti-tracking initiative, the one thing wreaking immediate harm on the company’s ad effectiveness and its bottom line.

“This is where, when something actually affects their business, they get their shit together and they move,” said one Facebook advertiser who attended the meetings.

“It’s been all hands on deck for many weeks,” said Mudd in an interview.

Apple is indeed doing more damage to Facebook than any of its rolling series of scandals so far. The changes Apple made in iOS 14.5 — asking people if they wanted to opt-out of apps tracking them across…