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

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

#121
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m surprised that people still call Apples stance a “story” All they are saying is that tracking is ok as long as you just ask the end user first. Here’s Steve Jobs in 2010 https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ij-jlF98SzA Are they perfect? No. But at least they haven’t changed their stance in 12 years unlike Google et al.

The problem with that narrative is that apple does not apply the same rules to themselves. I actually agree with apple tracking should be optional, however why should apple get a free pass?

they do apply the same rules to themselves; that's why they've been successful

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

#122
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.

Doesn't really matter if the segment you, if they also store the data they need to do the actual segmentation.

Besides, depending on how many segments you are assigned to, you're probably the only one in the intersection of all of them.

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

#124
Apple should either be forced to allow third party stores, or they should not be allowed to leverage their store to gain unfair advantages. Whether it's about forcing their SSO solution, forcing their payment solution, forcing their (inferior) browser engine, Apple apps showing up first in the store, or disallowing personalized ads only for third parties.

I don't understand why anyone defend these practices when they are so obviously anti-competitive. But as usual lots of people think it's okay because Apple are the good guys and everyone else are the bad guys.

Usually the good guys don't need unfair advantages in order to win.

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

#125

> 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…

Most of the products I like, I didn't discover through ads. I'm ok with your business failing if it can't work without ads. The problem here is that ads are not banned, but that they are now the exclusivity of Apple.

I'll bet $5 the 'niche business' is drop shipping, and the ads are targeting customers already looking for the product who would have found it for cheaper if not for the ad.

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

#127
post #45

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…

basically FLOC; that's quite different than selling your PII to third-parties or targeting you based on your individual profile (i.e., you visited xxxx store so now you all of a sudden see tons of adds from that online store)

not saying it's good, but it's probably the least intrusive way to do it; and many users like it. I'd rather never see an ad, but if I do have to see any, I'd prefer to see ads for watches or cycling gear (which I like) rather than clothing or pick-up trucks.

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

#128
post #90

> 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…

Facebook likes to demonstrate how useful they are by showing traffic/revenue of people who advertise through them vs people who don't, and then say "look! The people who do it are making way more money!" Ignoring the fact that they intentionally suppress businesses who don't pay them. It's like if the mafia came by your business every week to collect their $1000 to not break your kneecaps and say "look at all the hap…

Except now you have to pay Apple for the privilege of protecting your app store rankings.

If someone decides to purchase ads for "HBN App" searches, you're out of luck on your own trademark. You have to pay for ads too.

Let me count the ways that we're now beholden to app store mafias:

- Downloads are no longer free to distribute

- You have to obey draconian and arbitrary rules, and your engineering team has to jump through the hoops constantly

- You can't deploy on your own time. No emergency hot fixes.

- You can't leverage JIT engines and dynamic code (WTF!?) to solve for a bunch of headaches.

- You have to learn multiple platforms

- You're taxed (15+%!) for the privilege

The whole concept of app stores and walled garden downloads is so inherently broken that the DOJ needs to break up the party wholesale for all of the major players.

While I'm happy Apple removed tracking, I also want the government to prohibit Apple, Google and the rest from doing these other godawful things.

This is harming innovation and productivity massively. This is bad for small, medium, and even large businesses. Startup founders, engineers, and business people alike should be up in arms.

We live in the crazy times Stallman warned us about. And as a capitalist, I couldn't agree more with Stallman.

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

#129

> 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…

I have interviewed a lot of small D2C brands, either a single person company or a family. To say that the banning user tracking hurts small business is an FB narrative is not the complete story. Businesses still need to do marketing, the amount of money is just diverted away, in a less efficient manner so they budget has increased and the end users see less relevant ads (just like back in early 2000 where all ads were penis enlargement/real estate/viagra).

Not justifying what FB did / does, but what apple did, does impact the small businesses and end users negatively and it did stem from Apple wanting to get a cut of FB's business, there is a published email thread for this, it's a known thing.

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