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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

#331

Post by manigandham »

nottorp wrote: post #318
manigandham wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's what I described about the ecommerce system being different than the ad network. Products usually have their own pages where you can easily be added to a 'interested' segment.

It's very hard to remove you from that segment on a consolidated check out page that would need some backend mapping with the products you bought and the removal pixels for each product and ad network, along with lots of other issues. It's just not that simple as you may think to keep things in sync.

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

#332

Post by manigandham »

Zak wrote: post #327
swish_bob wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read loads of suggested explanations for why this is a thing over the years, and none of them have ever felt satisfactory to me. However, none of the people doing this really care why this is a thing, they care that, for some reason, this is a thing. It's vastly more profitable than nearly every other type of advertising, and since nobody _really_ knows how that works either, they just follow their tried and tes…

I suppose it might be true that the sort of person who buys 50 sets of office chair casters first buys one set to try out, and if they're happy with that, comes back for more in a week. The chance that I might be that person is relatively high reward (a ~$1000 sale), and Amazon doesn't have a better idea of what I'm going to buy.

The simple answer is that there's a far greater number of people who saw the product but didn't buy then those who did. Conversions are a tiny percentage that scales with price, so showing ads to everyone who saw it raises that conversion rate.

It doesn't really affect the people who already bought it since the conversion is complete, and the wasted impressions are trivial compared to the cost of implementing more complex tech to keep things in sync.

Perhaps there's a secondary effect of negative reputation from seeing ads for stuff you bought but the data doesn't bear it out.

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

#333

Post by lilyball »

layoutIfNeeded wrote: post #208
lilyball wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rendering engine also includes the entire network infrastructure. I can't think of how I would plug my own network infrastructure into WKWebView on iOS, which means I can't block any built-in tracking prevention.

I think you’re confusing WKWebView with SFSafariViewController. Content blockers are not used for WKWebView. You can use your own content blocking logic via the appropriate delegate calls, but the “system-wide” content blockers are not inherited from Safari.

Intelligent Tracking Prevention and content blockers aren't the same thing though. I don't know if ITP runs for WKWebView but I really hope so.

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

#334

Post by lilyball »

reubenmorais wrote: post #229
lilyball wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rendering engine also includes the entire network infrastructure. I can't think of how I would plug my own network infrastructure into WKWebView on iOS, which means I can't block any built-in tracking prevention.

Chrome on iOS uses its own networking stack.

What's your source for this claim?

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

#335

Post by zwaps »

jcfrei wrote: post #245
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…

> [...] 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…

One need not perfectly discriminate. Any discrimination eats consumer surplus.

It is a major concern. It is used in booking sites, and it will be used in other sites. We can not rely on regulation.

My point stands: User targeting is a threat and we, the users, are entirely justified in not liking it.

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

#336

Post by zwaps »

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.

Price discrimination itself is not illegal (for example in the EU), it is only so if it is based on certain parameters. And this you'd need to prove in court, which makes it unlikely that regulation will solve this issue any time soon.

Beyond the legality of the issue, the point remains: Here, companies and consumers are strategically at odds.

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

#337

Post by tatersolid »

simonh wrote: post #255
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.

The point is they are less valuable because you can't track them, so you can't take advantage of their potential value. Lets say an average Android user is worth 100 value units, and you can get lots of uniquely identifying information about them, say 90% of the ideal amount of info, so their effective value to you is 90 value units each (90% of 100). Uniquely identifiable Apple users info is potentially much more va…

> The point is they are less valuable because you can't track them, so you can't take advantage of their potential value.

This is simply bullshit. So-called “targeted” advertising is a giant scam pulled on non-technical marketers who don’t understand it at all and use “measurements” provided by the ad networks themselves.

Targeted ads don’t actually work in any meaningful sense: https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-h...

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

#338

Post by tatersolid »

aembleton wrote: post #317
rimliu wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There’s a whole bunch of non-games in the Xbox store

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

#340

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

turdnagel wrote: post #30
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #28

> 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?

Advertisers look for a certain ROI on their ads. If Safari users are harder to target, then the absolute return on ad spend will be lower (apparently enough to offset the affluence of Safari users). The way to bring the ROI of Safari ads in line with the ROI of ads on other browsers, then, is to pay less for Safari ads.
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