New Delhi, Sep 7 (IANS): Apple's privacy changes in the App Store called App Tracking Transparency (ATT) has given a boost to its ad business, and the iPhone maker has managed to break the Facebook-Google advertising monopoly in the online search market.

According to a report by performance insights platform InMobi's Appsumer, Apple Search Ads (ASA) joined the duopoly of Meta and Google at the top table of advertiser adoption as it grew adoption nearly four percentage points (year-on-year) to 94.8 per cent

In the same period, Meta's ad adoption declined three percentage points to 82.8 per cent.

This trend also played out with share-of-wallet as Apple's search ad business gained five percentage points to reach a 15 per cent share, whilst Meta declined four percentage points, still finishing significantly ahead with a 28 per cent share.

"Meta also recovered share-of-wallet when comparing Q4 21 to Q2 22, suggesting that they're starting to recover from initial ATT headwinds. Google remained fairly steady on both metrics as most of their inventory sits on the Android platform," the report noted.

The question now is how much can Apple increase its search ad business share-of-wallet, given that inventory is constrained by the volume of searches on the App Store.

Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that Apple iOS privacy changes will cost the company a whopping $10 billion in 2022.

Meta has also accused Apple of favouring Google over app-based platforms like Facebook with its privacy policies.

Apple's iOS 14.5 update, released in April 2021, came with an ATT feature that has affected digital advertising for tech giants.

"We believe those restrictions from Apple are designed in a way to carve out browsers from the tracking Apple requires for app. So what that means is that search ads could have access to far more third party data, for measurement and optimisation purposes, than app-based ad platforms like ours," according to Meta.