The Kübler-Ross grief cycle—which you in all probability know higher because the “Five Stages of Grief”—isn’t the kind of factor you’d sometimes affiliate with an organization like Facebook. Hell, it’s not what you’d affiliate with any firm, interval. The whole cycle is a deeply personal response to some deeply private loss, and firms aren’t individuals, irrespective of how hard they insist in any other case.

So when Facebook’s VP of product marketing, Graham Mudd, put out a notice Wednesday morning in regards to the platform’s ongoing makes an attempt to thwart Apple’s privateness updates in iOS, all the change felt shockingly… human. Facebook swapped out its typical self-righteous approach to public relations and changed it with one thing that felt downright Kübler-Ross-y. For the primary time ever, it felt like Facebook really understood the gravity of Apple’s updates, and it was prepared to speak that gravity to its ad-buying public.

“We expected increased headwinds from platform changes, notably the recent iOS updates, to have a greater impact in the third quarter compared to the second quarter,” Mudd wrote, referring to the continued sequence of privacy-preserving tweaks Apple’s continued to make to its cellular working system all through the previous yr. On Monday, Apple rolled out the most recent version of this software program with iOS 15, which options—amongst different perks—tech that’s designed to thwart in-email trackers.

Mudd’s message is easy, telling the platform’s numerous advertisers that Facebook has “heard from many of you that the impact on your advertising investment has been greater than you expected.”

“The cost of achieving your business outcome may have increased and it’s also gotten harder to measure your campaigns on our platform,” he wrote. “In some cases, this is due to underreporting on our part.”

Specifically, the platform realized it had been under-reporting the so-called “conversions”—like app downloads or advert clicks—that Facebookers had been taking when seeing adverts of their cellular browser. According to Mudd, Facebook’s estimate is that it was underreporting these end-user actions “by approximately 15%” till now, with an untold variety of “real world conversions” taken in response to Facebook adverts simply… evading the corporate’s line of sight completely.

“We’re on this journey with you as our business also navigates and adapts to these changes,” Mudd went on, earlier than detailing a slew of tweaks companies could make to their very own campaigns to chop down on these discrepancies. Over the approaching months, the corporate mentioned, Facebook can be introducing “new tools” to assist these companies adapt, and these instruments can be rolled out to advertisers in “real time.”

For of us that aren’t within the wild, wacky world of Facebook promoting, the majority of Mudd’s assertion in all probability seems like advertising jargon—which it 100% is. But it’s advertising jargon that previous iterations of the corporate would have in all probability saved quiet exterior of earnings calls with buyers or non-public calls with high-spending manufacturers. Facebook has a years-long track record of downplaying or outright obscuring sure advert metrics from advertisers presumably as a way to hold them pouring as a lot cash into the platform as potential, and people fibs are leading to a mounting pile of sophistication motion circumstances being filed by a mounting variety of companies who’re realizing that they had been duped.

The undeniable fact that Mudd got here out and admitted that, sure, Facebook’s numbers had been just a little wonky over the previous few months—and admitting that without having a class-action to power his hand—feels uncharacteristically clear, nevertheless it additionally seems like acceptance. It’s the sort of acceptance that solely comes after your entire year-long marketing campaign of denial, bargaining, outbursts, and moping around finally did jack shit to vary your present state of affairs.

You don’t have to look additional than the high-profile antitrust suits being lobbed in opposition to Facebook to know that this can be a firm that’s not comfy with any kind of loss. It’s pulled each smarmy and underhanded trick within the guide to maintain advert {dollars} or customers from pouring into the fingers of rivals, after which buying out these rivals each time these schemes didn’t pan out. Thanks to Apple, Facebook’s now misplaced a ton of priceless monitoring intel on iOS customers, and can probably proceed to lose extra intel shifting ahead. Meanwhile, Facebook’s bizarre company grief will proceed pouring out in ways in which we’re solely beginning to comprehend.