For years, a rumor swirled inside Shopify that Meta Platforms, formerly known as Facebook, was looking to buy the Canadian e-commerce giant. Nothing ever materialized—and regulatory scrutiny on the social media giant’s deals makes it seem likely nothing ever will—but the mere fact that the chatter persisted highlights how intertwined the two already had become.
Shopify, which offers software that around 2 million mostly small online sellers rely on to power their businesses, has grown to represent a powerful block of e-commerce digital ad buyers on Facebook and Instagram. That aligns Shopify’s interests with those of Meta. It also means Apple policy changes that make it harder to target ads to iPhone users and measure their effectiveness have squeezed both companies.
But Shopify and Meta aren’t seeing eye to eye as the companies try to come up with solutions to Apple’s changes. Since 2020, Meta has consistently been asking Shopify’s product and engineering teams to make more merchants opt in to sharing data about their customers to improve ad targeting, three people familiar with such conversations told The Information. But Shopify was not willing to be as aggressive as the social media company urged it to.
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