Google-backed groups criticize Apple's new warnings on user tracking • Hacker News Board

Re: Google-backed groups criticize Apple's new warnings on user tracking

#131

Post by jsnell » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 6:04 PM UTC

valuearb wrote: post #93

harikb wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are way past the argument that “free” => “no value to business”

Profits are value to business. Profits require revenues. We are well passed the second internet bubble where Instagram et al can get billion dollar valuations on market share alone. There needs to be a business plan to generate revenues and profits. So what us Apples business plan for identity? If it’s to add value to iOS and MacOS by providing convenient privacy secure logins to customers, I hardly see that as forci…

Lock-in. If you move off iOS but are using Apple as the identity provider for third party spots, how painful is migrating your accounts going to be? How well do you think Apple will support the use case of non-Apple device users signing in with Apple? Might as well buy another Apple device when the current one breaks.

There's nothing wrong with Apple trying to increase the stickiness of their platforms, if there's a legit argument to be made that it also improves user experience. The part I find distasteful is the requirement for iOS apps to give preferential treatment to Apple. And honestly, if they were only doing doing this to improve UX, I don't think they would be this heavy handed. Somebody with decision making power wants to make sure that iOS users are selecting that option no matter what.

Re: Google-backed groups criticize Apple's new warnings on user tracking

#132

Post by tareqak » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 6:04 PM UTC

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #122

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You definitely don’t understand causal inference of ad attribution if this is what you think. I’ll give an example from a real experience I worked on before. A client was a large haircut chain and they gave us a data set of individuals that had received a specific ad campaign from them via a loyalty program (so it had a variety of demographic and customer history data). When we used the transactions data on this coho…

Perhaps for a simpler example: imagine you start an ad campaign on the same exact day the government issues a huge stimulus check. You see a big increase of sales. Is it because the ad did a good job of causally impacting people to choose your brand? Or is it because the world changed underneath your feet and suddenly lots of people with pre-existing demand had more money? Maybe your ad even had a negative effect bec…

I see what you are saying: that there are too many confounding variables involved and it is not as simple as A implies B. I’d then argue the same thing about attribution then though: a company like Google or Facebook might be measuring many variables for a given user across however many surfaces they can possibly reach, but some set of offline variables that are invisible / unknowable from their vantage point might be the actual cause of a given conversion. If this is indeed the case, then measuring aggregate advertising metrics should be sufficient enough to inform ad spend in the long run.

Re: Google-backed groups criticize Apple's new warnings on user tracking

#133

Post by dralpha7 » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 6:05 PM UTC

thank you

Re: Google-backed groups criticize Apple's new warnings on user tracking

#134

Post by koheripbal » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 6:05 PM UTC

papeda wrote: post #65

csmattryder wrote: post #11

It's cool to conciously see the death of an industry and watch as marketing firms fail to migrate away from traditional ads. You can whinge and whine, but progress stops for nobody. It's also great to see Apple building this into iOS, definitely a highlight of WWDC, for me. I often see the location indicator come on and wonder what else I'm not seeing.

There seem to be two conflicting lines of thought about the future of advertising. 1) Companies are learning that non-online advertising is not very worthwhile and so are reducing the resources allocated to, say, network TV ads. This has already happened to a large extent to print and radio advertising. This suggests that the future of online advertising is bright. 2) Companies are learning that online advertising is…

3) Companies are learning that Ads that don't appear to be Ads, which also happen to reinforce customers' existing belief system, is a great way to lower their emotional guard and inject a positive product injection. The future of Native Advertising [1] is bright. So many examples already... [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_advertising

[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/HailCorporate/top/?sort=top&t=year

Re: Google-backed groups criticize Apple's new warnings on user tracking

#135

Post by ocdtrekkie » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 6:08 PM UTC

papeda wrote: post #65

csmattryder wrote: post #11

It's cool to conciously see the death of an industry and watch as marketing firms fail to migrate away from traditional ads. You can whinge and whine, but progress stops for nobody. It's also great to see Apple building this into iOS, definitely a highlight of WWDC, for me. I often see the location indicator come on and wonder what else I'm not seeing.

There seem to be two conflicting lines of thought about the future of advertising. 1) Companies are learning that non-online advertising is not very worthwhile and so are reducing the resources allocated to, say, network TV ads. This has already happened to a large extent to print and radio advertising. This suggests that the future of online advertising is bright. 2) Companies are learning that online advertising is…

User targeted advertising maybe moves the needle 4%. The reason people believe it's so key is that adtech companies need businesses to believe it's vital since they're the only companies with enough user data to do it. That 4% figure came from an independent study, I believe a Google-backed study claimed it had a 50% impact.

Remove that and smaller ad companies can sell ads based on the content they're displayed next to. A reasonable "targeting" method which doesn't require tracking users at all. Sites could partner directly with advertisers for similar effectiveness at a drastically lower price.

Re: Google-backed groups criticize Apple's new warnings on user tracking

#136

Post by geoka9 » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 6:09 PM UTC

yoaviram wrote: post #130

floatrock wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple will give them a choice soon enough. And hopefully one not reliant on so many dark patterns. The OneTrust opt-outs are the worst (and don't even work! which must be against the california consumer privacy act). On my iphone in safari: say I'm cooking dinner and go to epicurious.com. Greeted with the now-standard opt-out banner at the bottom. 1. Click the "Do not sell my advertising" 2. Greeted with a giant Co…

Let me plug https://YourDigitalRights.org . Search for a company and send them a CCPA/GDPR deletion request. Or better yet install the browser extension and do it while visiting the company's website.

Thanks! Would it be possible to have an option to display the email text the site has generated, instead of having to configure a default MUA?

Re: Google-backed groups criticize Apple's new warnings on user tracking

#137

Post by cpach » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 6:10 PM UTC

hn_check wrote: post #60

notatoad wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i can't imagine how somebody could see the creative process in Mad Men and think that's something to be emulated. It's a bunch of privileged rich people (ad execs) coming up with ideas that they think are clever, and the only criteria for whether or not those ideas are good is if other privileged rich people (client company execs) agree. There's no objective measures of success, just a bunch of people patting each ot…

I'm pretty sure there is an "objective measure of success" in the most plainly obvious way possible -- sales. Versus the bullshitty stats like impressions or accidental click-throughs that dominate online advertising.

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

Re: Google-backed groups criticize Apple's new warnings on user tracking

#138

Post by spideymans » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 6:11 PM UTC

fairenough42 wrote: post #25

justapassenger wrote: post #23

> Apple engineers also said last week the company will bolster a free Apple-made tool that uses anonymous, aggregated data to measure whether advertising campaigns are working and that will not trigger the pop-up. > “Because it’s engineered to not track users, there’s no need to request permission to track,” Brandon Van Ryswyk, an Apple privacy engineer, said in a video session explaining the measurement tool to deve…

Are they moving into ads as the hardware business dries up for them? In my personal experience, many people don't replace their phones as often as they did, say, 10 years ago. A similar story played out earlier with laptops. There's no obvious new hardware category for Apple to pivot into so maybe software is their next play.

>There's no obvious new hardware category for Apple to pivot into so maybe software is their next play.

Lets revisit this comment in a year or two when they release their AR and VR products.

Re: Google-backed groups criticize Apple's new warnings on user tracking

#139

Post by notatoad » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 6:11 PM UTC

hn_check wrote: post #60

notatoad wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i can't imagine how somebody could see the creative process in Mad Men and think that's something to be emulated. It's a bunch of privileged rich people (ad execs) coming up with ideas that they think are clever, and the only criteria for whether or not those ideas are good is if other privileged rich people (client company execs) agree. There's no objective measures of success, just a bunch of people patting each ot…

I'm pretty sure there is an "objective measure of success" in the most plainly obvious way possible -- sales. Versus the bullshitty stats like impressions or accidental click-throughs that dominate online advertising.

If you're only running one campaign in one channel, and your product hasn't improved, and the competition's product and marketing hasn't changed, and there are no external events that will trigger a change in demand, then i suppose you could take sales as a measure of success.

Re: Google-backed groups criticize Apple's new warnings on user tracking

#140

Post by js2 » Fri, Jul 03, 2020, 6:11 PM UTC

I wish the Safari content blocking API allowed cookies to be blocked. I'd block cookies for 99% of sites I visit, allowing them only for the handful of sites to which I login.

I'd suggest Safari could even make cookies require getting user permission, the same way location access needs to be granted. "Allow, allow for 24 hours, deny." It could default deny except for sites to which it has a saved password which could default allow.