Apple surpassed $3.5B in annual revenue from its ad network • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple surpassed $3.5B in annual revenue from its ad network

#61

Post by nightpool » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 4:02 PM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #59

jsnell wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is Apple's privacy policy on ads: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertisin... > We create segments, which are groups of people who share similar characteristics, and use these groups for delivering targeted ads. > We may use information such as the following to assign you to segments: > ... The music, movies, books, TV shows, and apps you download ... > ... The topics and categories of the st…

> We may use information such as the following to assign you to segments My take is that this information is used to give you some sort of cohort identifier that is itself devoid of PII.

Isn't that the definition of an "advertising profile"?

Re: Apple surpassed $3.5B in annual revenue from its ad network

#62

Post by Nextgrid » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 4:02 PM UTC

cloutchaser wrote: post #34

chunkyguy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're in the "kill competition" mode right now, so are obviously doing different than what others are doing. But what are the guarantee that they won't start selling user's data to advertisers when they're big enough? Didn't Steve Jobs say that the 30% cut was just to keep the AppStore running?

OP is also just wrong. Apple is sharing data from all their properties like apple news. This is pretty similar to google and Facebook tracking you across the web. I just don’t see how it’s better for my privacy if apple sees everything I read on their app and targets advertising to me based off that, rather than google seeing I visited a news site

The difference between Apple News and Facebook or other third-party tracking is that Apple News only tracks what you do within their app while FB/etc track what you do everywhere on the internet.

I wouldn't actually have any problems with Facebook tracking what you do on the Facebook app (or Google doing so in their own apps), the problem is when they litter the rest of the internet with spyware (Facebook "pixel", Google Analytics, etc) and then spy on what people do on other domains without clear disclosure or opt-out.

Re: Apple surpassed $3.5B in annual revenue from its ad network

#63

Post by thomasahle » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 4:02 PM UTC

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #18

edgyquant wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the assumption that it isn’t? Apple has been a lot better at privacy than places like google. Not betting on this being the one exception. They absolutely are better if it’s true they don’t do any tracking

https://safety.google/privacy/ads-and-data/ > We never sell your personal information

Neither does Google or Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/help/152637448140583

Both of them hold on to your data and allow advertisers to target based on it. Just like Apple does.

Re: Apple surpassed $3.5B in annual revenue from its ad network

#64

Post by shuckles » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 4:03 PM UTC

cloutchaser wrote: post #34

chunkyguy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're in the "kill competition" mode right now, so are obviously doing different than what others are doing. But what are the guarantee that they won't start selling user's data to advertisers when they're big enough? Didn't Steve Jobs say that the 30% cut was just to keep the AppStore running?

OP is also just wrong. Apple is sharing data from all their properties like apple news. This is pretty similar to google and Facebook tracking you across the web. I just don’t see how it’s better for my privacy if apple sees everything I read on their app and targets advertising to me based off that, rather than google seeing I visited a news site

You don’t see a difference between Apple using your article reading activity in their own News app and Facebook creating a shadow profile of you even if you’ve never signed up for their service which collects your entire browsing history?

Re: Apple surpassed $3.5B in annual revenue from its ad network

#65

Post by rq1 » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 4:03 PM UTC

fancl20 wrote: post #46

uncomputation wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I read about Ramon and his wiener dog ramps when this was first submitted to HN months ago and I said the same thing then as I am now. It’s bullshit. If Ramon wants to sell wiener dog ramps, then the system to do that should be “buy adspace when people search for wiener dog,” advertise on wiener dog enthusiast forums, sponsor videos/meetups, etc. Not “create an all knowing digital surveillance system tying toge…

I mean, wether this is a bullshit won't affect "Small business were crushed by Apple" is a fact? It's a statement based on data. How you or apple justifying their behaviour is another story.

Well so be it, we value more privacy than some random businesses. Get along.

Re: Apple surpassed $3.5B in annual revenue from its ad network

#66

Post by lotsofpulp » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 4:03 PM UTC

fancl20 wrote: post #30

uncomputation wrote: post #24

> But it crushed FB, Snap, and 1000s of small businesses in the process. Ironically, this is far more of a narrative than this guy’s idea of Apple’s “narrative.” The idea that banning user tracking hurts small businesses was FB’s narrative to try and get backlash against Apple for its tracking crackdown. That genuinely is a narrative because from Apple’s decision we have seen that consumers (1) prefer not to be track…

While this is a "narrative", there is quite a lot data back that this is a fact. You can argue that you trust and fell comfortable to give apple the power of crushing any other small businesses they don't care based on Apple's own company decision. BTW, you can here the same story from small businesses' narrative: https://www.npr.org/2022/03/17/1087425495/tech-giants-and-ti...

This wiener dog guy story is not compelling. The guy starts umpteen businesses with either little value to society or little ability to execute, as evidenced by him being paycheck to paycheck after starting numerous businesses.

Nobody owes him an audience for ads.

Re: Apple surpassed $3.5B in annual revenue from its ad network

#67

Post by thomasahle » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 4:04 PM UTC

mupuff1234 wrote: post #51

thumbsup-_- wrote: post #37

I don’t understand the point of this thread. Apple never said that advertising is bad. They just said tracking users across web is bad. When I use FB app, FB can still use my activity in their app to show me relevant ads, which they do. Apple can do the same but their prompt gives users the ability to turn that personalization off as well. This is different from tracking and apple is giving a choice where FB and Goog…

Pretty sure you can disable personalization in Google as well (no idea about fb)

Of course. Everyone allows that these days: https://m.facebook.com/help/568137493302217

Except maybe Tiktok?

Re: Apple surpassed $3.5B in annual revenue from its ad network

#68

Post by plantain » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 4:04 PM UTC

> But it crushed [snip] 1000s of small businesses in the process.

There's a lot of comments here suggesting this is a narrative from FB/Snap, but it really isn't. I was previously able to target adverts directly to the tiny audience of potential users of my product, and the return on those adverts was nearly 10x.

Overnight it entirely evaporated as a source of new customers and I don't know how I'd build a niche business again without it.

Advertising gets a bad rap, but I like to believe I am providing value to my customers and they wouldn't have found my product otherwise. Who was hurt?

Re: Apple surpassed $3.5B in annual revenue from its ad network

#69

Post by Nextgrid » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 4:05 PM UTC

ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #56

As an Apple investor, I am happy to seem them grow an advertising business. Human attention is the ultimate analog resource. Throughout our lifetime, it will stay in high demand. It cannot be inflated away or commoditized. What I don't get is: How can Apple prevent or even detect that other apps or websites tell Facebook about what you do? If I go to example.com and example.com sends fingerprinting and useage informa…

They wouldn't, but until recently they provided explicit functionality that allowed apps to access a persistent identifier so advertising SDKs in those apps could link activities happening in between apps, something that's not normally possible due to app sandboxing.

Now they've made that identifier explicitly opt-in (it prompts the user on first run) so if the user declines, advertisers have to fall back on probabilistic methods such as heuristics to try and link sessions together (which is harder especially if other countermeasures such as anti-fingerprinting, IP anonymisation with Private Relay, etc are used).

Re: Apple surpassed $3.5B in annual revenue from its ad network

#70

Post by shuckles » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 4:06 PM UTC

jsnell wrote: post #39

JKCalhoun wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I look at all advertising as obnoxious. If it is unbidden it is little different from a door to door salesman knocking at my door trying to sell me solar. With regard to Apple not tracking us with PII, that is good however.

But Apple is tracking you. They build an advertising profile using your behavior on iOS and your personal information (and at least for me, that included PII that I would never have consented to them using for ad targeting; but they just took it, and hid the opt-out in an obscure settings menu). They then allow targeting of ads based on these fine-grained profiles. Just how is this better than FB?

First of all, your definition of tracking is different from the one used by Apple. Apple’s definition of tracking is sharing information about an identifiable person between unrelated parties. Think Facebook buying all your purchases from Mastercard. Apple simply does not do that.

Next, Apple’s cohorts and interest information about audiences is not nearly as detailed as Facebook or Google. And even at a far less detailed level, they have started asking users for permission to personalize in a modal. The other ad networks have never asked in that way.

It seems like you have a problem with how Apple personalizes ads, but that’s a different conversation than whether they track and if tracking without consent is acceptable.