Live data from Hacker News

Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

bloomberg.com

111–120 of 632 posts

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#111
post #67

If people opt out of what you're doing to them as soon as they're made aware you're doing it, then perhaps that's a sign that you shouldn't have been doing it in the first place. I don't even believe that 25% of users actually wanted tracking. I think a lot of people just blindly tap buttons to make annoyances go away, and these guys just hit the wrong button.

As soon as ad supported free services start shutting down because of ad blocking and lowered clickthrough rates on ads because of targeting being blocked, most people will probably start changing their minds. (The alternative being maintaining 10-20+ paid subscriptions.) For now, all this change means is that users who are opted-in to tracking are subsidising those who aren't.

If subscriptions were always as easy to manage in one place like they are on an iPhone, I would have absolutely no problem with 20 subscriptions.

Where’s the subscription management startup model?

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#112
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s almost as if, given information and a choice, people prefer not to have their eyeballs monetized. I wonder, are people who use facebook and who would prefer to not have their eyeballs monetized like this not aware of Facebook's business model? How do they think Facebook will stay operational? I personally think it's best to just drop Facebook, but I'm sure my parents and grandparents would rather have Facebook…

Facebook has x billion users. What you do have net 0% impact on them, but a large impact on you. So people block ads and use Facebook anyway. But a more direct answer to the question is they don't think about it, they don't care about it, or they don't want Facebook to stay in business. If Facebook crashed tomorrow I would need to start emailing a bunch of people to put together contacts but other than that it would…

> If Facebook crashed tomorrow I would need to start emailing a bunch of people to put together contacts but other than that it would be a net benefit.

Why not start today?

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#113
post #79
post #65

It’s almost as if, given information and a choice, people prefer not to have their eyeballs monetized. Of course, if this catches on (and I hope it does), we ultimately run up against “people prefer not to pay for things.” Will be fun to watch.

It's a bit of a cynical take, but maybe it'll help cut useless apps and help people focus on what matters a bit more. A good thing about paying for something with money is that it makes you conscious of what you're doing. When you're paying with your data, it's harder.

Yeah, but facebook would just take the money and still harvest your data.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#114

If Facebook and its child companies blocked users who opted out, users would eventually opt in, they could even do it in rolling waves to prevent a mass exodus. Facebook and Google would likely be able to beat Apple and both depend on Ad revenue.

And Apple could then decide that the Facebook SDK is banned from their ecosystem due to abusive practices, and require any apps incorporating it to submit a new version with the SDK removed or face delisting. This is an arms race.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#115
post #67

If people opt out of what you're doing to them as soon as they're made aware you're doing it, then perhaps that's a sign that you shouldn't have been doing it in the first place. I don't even believe that 25% of users actually wanted tracking. I think a lot of people just blindly tap buttons to make annoyances go away, and these guys just hit the wrong button.

> people just blindly tap buttons to make annoyances go away

This is a real phenomenon known as consent fatigue.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#116
I own an advertising agency. I've tracked ios impressions % over time on all of our remarketing campaigns (as a proxy), its down about 30% from peak and stabilized. Not a huge deal.

LOL at this below:

"Seufert estimated that in the first full quarter users see the prompt, the iOS changes could cut Facebook’s revenue by 7% if roughly 20% of users agree to be tracked. If just 10% of users grant Facebook tracking permission, revenue could be down as much as 13.6%, according to his models. The first full quarter with the prompt is the third quarter. Facebook reports second quarter earnings at the end of July."

FB revenue is going to be up in Q3, not down, would bet $10k on that.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#117
post #106

cant they track by just ip address? for most, the ip address is quite unique. Apple only disallowed the unique id from being passed around right?

On Wi-Fi, you're going to have multiple people sharing one IP. On cellular... good luck.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#118
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally wish the wording was slightly different. Something like Deny Tracking Allow Tracking instead of the "Ask app not to track" I have to read the prompt a few times to make sure i pick the right one

I agree. My guess is that Apple suspects it can't be 100% effective at preventing apps from tracking, so they're trying to set expectations accordingly in case someone figures out how to track users anyway. But yeah, my preference would be just something like "Do not track".

Perhaps because you login to Facebook on the Facebook app, they obviously know who you are on your phone. They won't have access to the advertising identifier, but they can still track everything within the app, if they want.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#120
post #67

If people opt out of what you're doing to them as soon as they're made aware you're doing it, then perhaps that's a sign that you shouldn't have been doing it in the first place. I don't even believe that 25% of users actually wanted tracking. I think a lot of people just blindly tap buttons to make annoyances go away, and these guys just hit the wrong button.

As soon as ad supported free services start shutting down because of ad blocking and lowered clickthrough rates on ads because of targeting being blocked, most people will probably start changing their minds. (The alternative being maintaining 10-20+ paid subscriptions.) For now, all this change means is that users who are opted-in to tracking are subsidising those who aren't.

This is not destroying the whole concept of ads, it is only pushing back against awful variants.

It is definitely possible to have “nice” ads, like simple text or images, with no creepy or CPU-draining elements in them. Nothing is preventing those ads from supporting free services.

Post reply on HN