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

#91

Post by gigel82 » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 4:35 PM UTC

ransom1538 wrote: post #85

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…

tl;dr; Apple stopped Facebook from tracking (for privacy lol), now Apple gets more cash in the ad game because they are the only ones that can track. Well played Apple.

No post body was provided.

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

#92

Post by jsnell » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 4:36 PM UTC

shuckles wrote: post #70

jsnell wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 det…

Yes, of course Apple would try to define tracking in a way that doesn't apply to their data collection. But the fact is that they are taking my activity across apps, my PII entered for non-ads purposes, and allowing ad targeting using that. What is the word you'd use for that instead of "tracking"? Why is that OK, but the advertising profiles built by other companies aren't?

I don't have a problem with how Apple tracks people for ad targeting. They're not a particularly bad actor, but they're not a particularly good actor either. And a thing I do have a problem with is people thinking that Apple isn't doing all of this and giving them a free pass.

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

#93

Post by asdajksah2123 » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 4:36 PM UTC

TakeBlaster16 wrote: post #74

fancl20 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let's say a chemical is found to cause cancer (outside of the state of California), then Walmart pulls all offending products from the shelves. Would you say Walmart is "crushing" these manufacturing businesses, or would you say Walmart is keeping their customers safe?

For that analogy to be accurate Walmart would have replaced the offending product with their own in house brand of the same product.

Which is exactly the justification Apple uses. What I don't understand is why people paying upwards of $600 to buy those shelves from Walmart and use in their own homes are ok with Walmart insisting that those shelves actually still belong to them and putting up their own products in the shelves you bought from them and installed in your home.

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

#94

Post by reaperducer » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 4:37 PM UTC

plantain wrote: post #68

> 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 busi…

Who was hurt?

Someone too lazy to buy ads directly.

If you know your audience, then you already know the places where you should advertise. Contact them directly. I've placed ads directly with dozens and dozens of web sites, podcasts, vloggers, and others. Very often they're more than happy to take your money because they get to keep all of it, instead of a tiny percentage sent back to them by Google, Facebook, etc.

Business is hard. Welcome to business.

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

#95

Post by keepquestioning » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 4:41 PM UTC

dgs_sgd wrote: post #31

devoutsalsa wrote: post #8

You know you're a big company when 3.5 billion USD is less than 1% of your total annual revenue.

The numbers are mind boggling. Airpods alone does more revenue than Twitter, Spotify, and Square combined [1]. And that was back in 2020.. [1] https://www.acumenfinancial.co.uk/advice/airpods-revenue-vs-...

This is a mind boggling stat

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

#96

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 4:41 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #62

cloutchaser wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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", Go…

Apple will only let you install apps through their App Store, and they correlate your actions in the App Store with the ads you click in the News app. How is that any different?

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

#97

Post by reaperducer » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 4:41 PM UTC

jsnell wrote: post #45

nightpool wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some examples / links for this? it's almost impossible to search for, with everybody talking about Apple's IDFA changes

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…

That's not ideal, but it's certainly much better than every other ad company out there.

Apple can at least enumerate the ways it profiles you in plan text, and most of it makes perfect sense. (Though I'd be happier if they excluded age and gender.)

The other companies profiling information requires a massive spreadsheet, or even a JSON dump that no human being can make sense of. And that's just for their internal data, not the data they sell (oops, "share with trusted partners").

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

#98

Post by idk1 » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 4:43 PM UTC

morcheeba wrote: post #86

idk1 wrote: post #58

It's a shame Apple are going down the ad route, this is what the Stocks app on MacOS looks like - https://i.imgur.com/xGrzfyL.png I'd be ok if it was a big 'Diet Coke' or other big brand app, but low level spam being injected into first party apps is just not on, it might have made more revenue but at what detriment to the brand value? Over time I think more ad revenue is going to equal more brand damage in 1st party…

That's not what Stocks looks like - you scrolled down about two pages to get to the ad. You make it look like the ad is first. https://imgur.com/a/t7ncKoc

Oh yes sorry, I've edited my comment to add some context, I would stand by it is what Stocks looks like, as the app is Stocks and it looks like that. I did scroll just past the top stories to take the screenshot. I didn't mean to mislead at all, I do agree I did make it look like that, not intentionally.

Also maybe the add disappears for Apple News+ subscribers? I'm not subscribed to Apple News+ so I can't speak to that.

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

#99

Post by ska » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 4:46 PM UTC

plantain wrote: post #68

> 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 busi…

I suspect you are being disingenuous here, and you know the issue was not the nominal harm your niche business caused by advertising, but rather the perceived danger of the entire infrastructure created that made this possible for you.

This is a classic issue of technological capability vs societal interest (i.e. we can do it, but should we?), and there are rarely easy solutions. Some of the trade offs may just mean that some business models aren't as viable - this in principle seems reasonable to vast majority of people.

The good news is that if your business model has any non-superficial value there are bound to be other ways to reach people and make a go of it, if so desired.

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

#100

Post by fnikacevic » Fri, Aug 19, 2022, 4:51 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #62

cloutchaser wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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", Go…

The problem with that is that Apple's strategy is to draw in a user into completely relying on their ecosystem. I'm guilty of falling victim to this myself. So even while they only track across Apple's apps, the tracking of the phone, news, music, app store, watch, fitness, laptops, etc. will add up to a monopolistic advantage.