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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

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post #246
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…

Isn't charging different prices for the exact same product online -- i.e. price testing -- illegal, at least in California?

I'm interested how this works. Car dealerships do this all the time in person. I wonder why they can do it, but websites can't.

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

#312
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.

According to html5test.com, the latest Safari on iOS is rated at 463 while Firefox Mobile 48 is 466—not much of a difference.

However, Safari is faster, especially when it comes to JavaScript.

It’s hard to believe that if Firefox ran natively on iOS, it would be more memory and energy efficient than WebKit: https://webkit.org/blog/8970/how-web-content-can-affect-powe...

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

#313
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A forced choice is only a severe limitation if it’s significantly worse. That’s currently a guess as there are no iOS comparable options to consider at this point in time. Further, Google has a competitive interest in eventually crippling their iOS rendering engine.Then again I don’t use desktop Crome so that could be my bias talking.

No, they wouldn't ever do that. That would be like making an anti-demo. Google has an interest in getting as big a market share for their browser as they can. In as much as disabling their web application functionality of you do not use chrome. Android is much less relevant than the browser. And this does not even begin to touch on Firefox. The problem is a policy one, with Apple really liking their walled garden and…

Edit: I don’t think Crome has a better engine.

For sake of argument lets’s suppose Android Crome was a 90 and iOS Crome is currently a 70 due to the rendering engine. In theory they could replace the engine and hit say 85 given enough resources. But, they could also replace the engine hit 75 and blame iOS. Their still demonstrating an improvement and intentionally crippling it at the same time.

That said any such measurement is arbitrary. I personally like having a unified rendering engine because it’s less testing when developing mobile websites. There is no way to improve that situation by introducing a new engine.

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

#314
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very much doubt the small bump in sales of Coke after a major ad campaign actually pays for the campaign. That's not the point. Lets suppose CocaCola stopped advertising completely. No TV adds, no product placement, no billboards, nothing, but Pepsi and the other soft drinks companies kept up their rate of advertising or even increased it to fill the gap. The only time anyone ever saw the name Coke would be when th…

> The only time anyone ever saw the name Coke would be when they saw it on a shelf. Or, when it was posted/mentioned by people who liked Coke.

Or when someone digs up an old coke bottle.

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

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You got too emotional when reading my response. I read a dispassionate rebuttal of your point. Calling the reply "too emotional" is not an okay tactic.

“Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.” https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

And you just responded to the weaker interpretation of his argument (which is easier to criticize) when you called it "too emotional."

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

#316
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they wouldn't ever do that. That would be like making an anti-demo. Google has an interest in getting as big a market share for their browser as they can. In as much as disabling their web application functionality of you do not use chrome. Android is much less relevant than the browser. And this does not even begin to touch on Firefox. The problem is a policy one, with Apple really liking their walled garden and…

Edit: I don’t think Crome has a better engine. For sake of argument lets’s suppose Android Crome was a 90 and iOS Crome is currently a 70 due to the rendering engine. In theory they could replace the engine and hit say 85 given enough resources. But, they could also replace the engine hit 75 and blame iOS. Their still demonstrating an improvement and intentionally crippling it at the same time. That said any such mea…

Technically they are not introducing a new engine. Chrome is well established with a 60-70% market share. Not saying thats a good thing either...

But you have a very pro-apple and anti-google way of thinking here which I think misguided and does not actually benefit you. Even with those made up numbers chrome would improve from 70 to 75 which is by all means a win for the consumer (you!) but you are ready to dismiss it as it might be bad for Apple.

(For the record, I don't use chrome)

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

#317
post #236
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is. Game consoles aren't general purpose computing platforms.

And what makes phones "general purpose" computing platforms?

A wide range of applications. For example, games are available as well as mapping and image editing software.

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

#318
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon has been repeatedly showing me office chair casters as a suggestion after I bought a set on Amazon. Despite having much better information on things I actually spend money on than the average ad network (all my devices have adblockers), Amazon isn't clever enough to figure out that I'm probably done with that product category for years.

To explain how this happens will take several pages of notes on the complexities of ad serving that are the exact opposite of "not clever enough". A summary is that your adblocking may have an impact on syncing stats, your purchases are not unique enough to matter for that category, serving some ad is better than serving no ad, and it maybe better to show you that impression however worthless than to bother with some…

Actually before I was ad blocking, two large local electronics stores did the same stupidity. I bought some expensive electronic toy, then was followed for a week by google ads for the exact same electronic toy. Which i had just bought. And was expensive enough to not buy another. And the ads were for the EXACT SAME STORE i had just bought it from.

I repeat, that was before I began blocking ads. For a while I was on the 'let the web sites make some money' side. Then the web sites became unreadable with ads on so it's uBlock Origin now.

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

#319
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari “opts out” of (blocks) tracking by default iirc. But users have to explicitly choose to opt out of iOS tracking. Most people don’t even know about the tracking ID. Edit: Apple ought to prioritize the privacy of users over “keeping advertisers happy.”

The difference is that users can go to privacy, and switch a single option and they are opted out. In Android, and with Google in general, you have to go through many different menus and hidden option in different places. And then, you can't really stop tracking either, because you'd need to also go to several of these "ad alliance" scam websites and try to disable tracking for hundreds of services. And of course, th…

Nobody is talking about android here. The point is that Apple doesn't care about privacy because it allows ios tracking (Why is that even a thing?)

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

#320
post #238

People are going to unpleasantly surprised by the way the internet changes after tracking for personalized advertising stops working. Already, I see tons of complains about paywalled news sites, micropayments everywhere, and the death of the "old internet". Just imagine how much worse it'll be when only two or three giant social media companies can make money with advertising (since they can rely on first-party data)…

I've yet to see any harm from that lion hiding in tall grass over there, stop panicking and get back to grazing. I have yet to see any harm from eating badly and not excercising for this young person, stop panicking and let them enjoy their double-upsized extra-bacon Monsterbuger.

Is there supposed to be an argument in there?
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