The biggest US tech companies – Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft – are often lumped together.
But their ad platform businesses have distinct dynamics, and each was affected by the trials and tribulations of 2021 in very different ways.
Although Apple’s privacy changes took a knife to Facebook and a hammer to Google, for example, ad prices were on the rise. When iPhone owners became more difficult to reach, CPMs across Google, Android, YouTube, the Play Store, Facebook and Instagram jumped as the next-best options.
