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Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market

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Re: Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At an Apple all-hands around 2005, an employee asked Steve why they made the iPod, and he said "because we love music." And the answer was so simple and so earnest, that you just knew it was true. Apple, for better or for worse, makes products based on what its executives personally want to use. That's not the only consideration, but it's unusually salient compared to other companies. My guess is that Apple works to…

Apple under Steve Jobs 2005 and Apple under Tim Cook now are different beasts. Steve would go crazy at the executives releasing all the buggy/unpolished products Apple released recently. Imagine the Macbook keyboard or the Touchbar being released under Steve. iPod was a great product. But time has changed, and I would be cautious in extrapolating that experience to Apple today. I can't imagine Apple executives saying…

Apple had plenty of misfires under Steve as well. iTools, Apple Hi-Fi, etc. People forget.

The crappy MBP keyboard illustrates my point. I suspect that Apple neglected the Mac for a long time (in many ways) because its executives switched to using primarily iPads [1].

1: https://appleinsider.com/articles/15/11/09/apple-ceo-tim-coo...

Re: Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple under Steve Jobs 2005 and Apple under Tim Cook now are different beasts. Steve would go crazy at the executives releasing all the buggy/unpolished products Apple released recently. Imagine the Macbook keyboard or the Touchbar being released under Steve. iPod was a great product. But time has changed, and I would be cautious in extrapolating that experience to Apple today. I can't imagine Apple executives saying…

I feel the same way. Imagine how Steve Jobs would feel if he found out you could go to an Apple store, buy a Macbook and an iPhone, and still have to buy an additional cable to connect them together!

He would wonder why they need a physical cable to connect at all.

Re: Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market

#123

> A Criteo spokeswoman said that by making the ad-blocking feature automatic in Safari, Apple “does not truly promote choice for the users of its browser.” That's an... interesting take on the situation.

People don't use browsers to look at ads. So from a user standpoint ads shouldn't be there in the first place.

Re: Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market

#124

> The cost of reaching Safari users has fallen over 60% in the past two years, according to data from ad tech firm Rubicon Project. Meanwhile ad prices on Google’s Chrome browser have risen slightly. This is a great metric for privacy.

I’m confused by this. If Safari users are harder to target, and demand for targeting Safari users hasn’t changed, shouldn’t the price go up?

It's still trivial to target users where browser="safari".

But with Safari's recent changes you can no longer target users on Safari where "non-empty cart"=true, because that relied on cookies and tracking which are no longer available.

On a per-impression basis advertisers are willing to pay (way, way) more if they know they are reaching someone who has already visited their site and been engaged enough to add-to-cart. There are plenty of other examples but abandoned-cart-retargeting is one of the most obvious ways advertisers can see good ROI on expensive ad impressions.

Re: Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market

#125
post #65

I'd like to see a p2p mesh network where articles stripped of ads are upvoted, annotated, and shared. Something like outline, but truly distributed. The markup doesn't allow for embedded javascript or cookies. If it were to get popular, a microtransaction system could be built on top to pay the authors. In fact, payment could serve as one kind of ranking heuristic. Store articles in a blockchain and garbage collect t…

in your system, who would write the articles?

Re: Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market

#126

> A Criteo spokeswoman said that by making the ad-blocking feature automatic in Safari, Apple “does not truly promote choice for the users of its browser.” That's an... interesting take on the situation.

People don't use browsers to look at ads. So from a user standpoint ads shouldn't be there in the first place.

People don't go to the grocery store to give their money to the cashiers. So from a user standpoint the cash registers shouldn't be there in the first place.

The ads typically are paying for what the users are going to the website for. I don't like it, but most users seem to prefer visiting sites with ads over sites they have to pay directly for. I hate how intrusive and abusive many ads can be, block ads on many sites, pay to subscribe to some sites, and hope other models succeed someday, but have to acknowledge that ads do serve a purpose.

Re: Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market

#127

> A Criteo spokeswoman said that by making the ad-blocking feature automatic in Safari, Apple “does not truly promote choice for the users of its browser.” That's an... interesting take on the situation.

Whenever I hear a lobbyist or business person talk about “choice” or “freedom” it’s usually bad for people....

You’ve forgotten to include politicians.

Re: Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple under Steve Jobs 2005 and Apple under Tim Cook now are different beasts. Steve would go crazy at the executives releasing all the buggy/unpolished products Apple released recently. Imagine the Macbook keyboard or the Touchbar being released under Steve. iPod was a great product. But time has changed, and I would be cautious in extrapolating that experience to Apple today. I can't imagine Apple executives saying…

I feel the same way. Imagine how Steve Jobs would feel if he found out you could go to an Apple store, buy a Macbook and an iPhone, and still have to buy an additional cable to connect them together!

You think that’s bad, you should’ve seen the work I had to do to plug my Model 3 into my Model S.

Re: Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I hear a lobbyist or business person talk about “choice” or “freedom” it’s usually bad for people....

You’ve forgotten to include politicians.

I think it's reasonable to think of politicians as mouthpieces for lobbyists - most of them will become lobbyists after losing a reelection anyways.

Re: Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The demand for highly-targeted users is what drives up prices. Since Safari users all look the same now and can't be highly targeted, they have lost that high-end demand and prices have fallen to generic display rates.

I would disagree. "People who can afford Apple gadgets" is a desirable high-income audience. I wouldn't be surprised if it was broken out as a special category for purchase by FB and GOOG soon.

That’s already priced in, and is likely the floor to which prices have dropped.
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