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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

#281

Post by labawi »

adgasf wrote: post #270
labawi wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes price discrimination may be overall good, but it easily leads to price gouging and I believe there a laws against it, for a good reason. Should I pay 1.2x, 3x or 100x as much today, just because you know I desperately need the product/service today vs. yesterday? What happens when I get (wrongly) classified as rich and now can't afford a normal life? Should medication cost if it is for life threatening issu…

The argument against that is that if sellers cannot increase prices in times of crisis they have no incentive to stockpile for such events. This leads to shortages and even higher prices on an unregulated black-market. I'm not saying that I buy this line of reasoning, but there's the counter-argument.

It's not really an applicable argument here. That's a general time/availability/word situation discrimination, which I think I would be ok with, to a limited degree.

I was arguing against people based discrimination, without any meaningful relevance on availability. Again, I think reasonable and reasonably qualified discounts are ok, but not increasing prices for the same product and service.

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

#282

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

AsusFan wrote: post #244
panpanna wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate tracking like everyone else but what you wrote is just pure FUD. Apple forces Firefox/chrome to use their crippled engine but that has nothing to do with the parts that do the tracking. For the record, Firefox has built-in anti tracker which is enabled by default and they do that on all platforms. And don't forgot the privacy enhancements Samsung added to their browser years ago.

> For the record, Firefox has built-in anti tracker which is enabled by default and they do that on all platforms Firefox's anti-tracking protection doesn't block google analytics by default. They only block "third party" cookies - which in practice translates as: Google's competition. The fox knows better than to bite the hand that feeds it.

I'm not sure where you got this idea but it's completely untrue.

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

#283

Post by atonse »

panpanna wrote: post #269
acdha wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using “FUD” in one sentence and calling WebKit “crippled” in the next is not a good way to establish yourself as a rational analyst. Firefox is my primary browser but I don’t think advocacy like that is helpful.

3rd party browsers are forced to use a webkit engine instead of their own. By any definition, this adds a severe limitation => crippled. I also think (I could be wrong) safari has access to a slightly different webkit engine than third party browsers.

This hasn’t been true for years. Yes in the past, the embedded safari engine (used by apps) didn’t have JIT capabilities. But since webkit2’s multi process model, and WKwebView in iOS which is now the only way to embed WebKit, it’s the exact same as native.

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

#284

Post by jcfrei »

dorgo wrote: post #248
jcfrei wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [...] the combination of which allows market actors to determine how much of my consumer surplus they can extract in every sense That would only be possible if the online stores could perfectly discriminate users based on price. Which happens to some extent (booking flights is a popular example) but is difficult to pull off and also illegal in most countries. You are not allowed to make personal discounts for each…

> You are not allowed to make personal discounts for each customer for example It is surprising. Couldn't find anything about it in a quick search. It would also make flea markets illegal, wouldn't it? I think that some forms of price discrimination are forbidden (but still practiced). Women pay no entrace in clubs, young students pay less etc.

Here's a recent example from the EU: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2018/302/oj It addresses geo-blocking customers of online shops (and redirecting them to national versions of the shop with different prices).

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

#285

Post by swish_bob »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #197
turdnagel wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Imagine you have two users. One who likes apples and one who likes bananas. Both like oranges. I sell apples and am willing to pay $1 per conversion. You sell bananas and are willing to spend the same. OP sells oranges and is willing to spend $0.75 per conversion. If we can't tell which user is which, we know 50% of our views will lead to a conversion, so you and I will both spend $0.50 per view. The orange seller be…

This makes it clear why it's in the individual advertiser's interest _and_ advertising network/website's interest to get more data on the users.

The cost to the advertiser has stayed the same (or in reality, has probably gone down slightly, as it's likely fewer people are bidding on the impression) while the revenue per impression has overall gone up.

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

#286

Post by girvo »

dorgo wrote: post #246
zwaps wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably would be well advised to read up on the economics of consumer differentiation and price discrimination. All of today's ad-tech is set up and developed for that purpose. Whether overtly or covertly, it is the singular purpose, because the case is so clear cut: We are distributing the share of the pie between companies and consumers. It is therefore clear why people aware of basic economics consider agress…

Why is price discrimination bad? It is about charging the highest price the customer is still ok with. Sure, if a merchant knows how badly you want his product he can increase the price. But, on the other hand, he will decrease the price for somebody who wouldn't pay the high price. It's like bargaining on a fair. A method to determine a price suitable for both sides - instead of charging every customer the same pric…

They don’t normally decrease the price below what the original baseline was. Would be nice if they did, but that’s not how it appears to be used by today’s companies

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

#287

Post by Mirioron »

onion2k wrote: post #213
_eht wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My browser history is none of your business. That’s it. Your browser was made to handle cookie data. It is publicly known. If it bothers you, you can turn it off. I do not see what all this sort of huffing is about.

If you walk in to Walmart you don't automatically think you're sharing your shopping habits with thousands of other companies who pay for that data[1]. People believe the web works the same way - when they visit someDomain.com they, entirely reasonably, accept they're sharing their data with someDomain but don't realise they're also sharing their data with whichever tracking/surveillance services someDomain has insta…

>If you walk in to Walmart you don't automatically think you're sharing your shopping habits with thousands of other companies who pay for that data.[1]

Isn't that exactly what membership cards for stores are for? Isn't credit card data also sold in a similar way? I find the credit card one to be a much bigger problem.

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

#288

Post by Mirioron »

manigandham wrote: post #146
dmitrygr wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are billions of Apple devices now. Just having one is a very weak correlation to any particular action that a marketer is interested in.

It correlates pretty well with "does this person have money?"

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

#289

Post by [deleted] »

buboard wrote: post #161
criddell wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The plan should be to make something so good people will pay for it. Asking Apple to help with that is a little like asking a guitar company to help musicians make money.

if you go by that analogy, it's as if apple is taking away all the tip jars from musicians because they dont like them. wouldn't musicians be right to protest?

[deleted]

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

#290

Post by sails »

Razengan wrote: post #201

Sometimes I wonder if the entire ads racket isn't a case of the emperor with no clothes. Has anyone here actually had a meaningful increase in users and revenue by using targeted-ad services, that they couldn't achieve by more organic methods (e.g. posting on places like Reddit, word of mouth)?

Good question, this [] article proposes that this is indeed a bubble. I tend to agree and generally avoid ad-tech related work, even though it is closely tied to the engineering work I do.

[] https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-h...

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