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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

#151

Post by AlexandrB »

ksec wrote: post #140
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…

iCloud Private Relay, Hide my Email, all happened after the ATT (AppTrackingTransparency). And if you read ATT carefully it is designed fist and foremost against Ads. Not Privacy. And the opt OUT of Personalised Ads? When did HN's narrative changed that opting out was ok? Or even Ads were not evil? I can assure you 95% of comments in the past 5 to 6 years on HN front page with Ads were all religiously Anti-Ads.

I agree that's it's not ok for this to be opt-out. And it's also not ok to show ads in system critical places like the App Store (at least without an option to disable them). I hope regulators come down hard on Apple and force them to open up the iOS platform. Their stewardship of the iOS app ecosystem is getting worse.

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

#152

Post by shuckles »

karaterobot wrote: post #113
shuckles wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Apple’s definition of tracking is sharing information about an identifiable person between unrelated parties. That is a weird definition of tracking! By that definition, a single party that follows what you do over time is not tracking you? That is separate from the question of whether or not Apple is actually doing this and not telling us (I'd bet they are), I'm just saying that that definition of tracking reads l…

The analogy isn’t particularly applicable. If you engaged with many Walmart stores and they recorded that, it wouldn’t be tracking. If a Walmart agent followed you into Target and recorded what you did, it would be. The Facebook pixel and other status quo data practices in the online advertising marketing look a lot more like the second than the first. It seems valuable to engage with that as an especially bad practice.

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

#153

Post by ethbr0 »

hyuuu wrote: post #129
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…

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 wer…

The terrifying truth for the future is that advertising revenue is addictive and inherently corrupting.

Google makes strategic decisions that are user-hostile, because they can't wound their golden cow.

How much more ad revenue expansion at Apple before suddenly user privacy's priority decreases a few notches? And on a much more locked-down, controlled-platform, no less.

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

#154

Post by jtbayly »

vineyardmike wrote: post #135
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…

Yea but people don’t spend a lot of time on weiner dog forums, even weiner dog owners. People want to advertise to customers where the customers actually go . Customers actually go to Facebook not weiner dog forums. Don’t use Facebook if you don’t like the value proposition. I’m guessing most people who complain about tracking on HN don’t use Facebook properties anyways.

If you want to be tracked, go ahead and turn it on! That’s up to you.

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

#155

Post by smoldesu »

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?

In this analogy, Wal-Mart isn't happily selling other harmful chemicals for a 30% cut, so I don't think your metaphor matches up with reality. I don't trust Wal-Mart to make my decisions for me in the first place, this scenario would be entirely circumvented if the government just had a list of all the chemicals you're not allowed to sell. Why do we need to let private corporations be the authority on which chemicals are harmful to sell and which are not?

But of course, Apple will fight to the death avoiding regulation. US authorities don't seem to care, but the EU is getting pretty pissed off.

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

#156

Post by shuckles »

jsnell wrote: post #92
shuckles wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 trac…

I think you’re trying to argue Apple’s definition is contrived, but I don’t see it. Buying identifiable information from a poorly regulated data market is very unlike personalizing ads based on first party data.

Apple isn’t trying particularly hard to hide that it personalizes ads. It puts up a modal telling users about it and giving them a choice in the apps where it advertises. I’m not sure why you imply that Apple is fomenting confusion.

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

#157

Post by jtbayly »

hyuuu wrote: post #129
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…

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 wer…

No end user agrees with you that it affected them negatively. They all made the choice to turn it off and still have the choice to turn it back on.

We like the trade offs.

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

#158

Post by smoldesu »

Jcowell wrote: post #79
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…

> 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? Probably. But if the means in which you can connect with those customers requires a surveillance apparatus that infringes on the privacy of the unconsented than perhaps the question that should be asked is does your business have a greater right to exists than the p…

It's a moot-point. Switching away from AdSense isn't going to protect you from surveillance, it's just going to change the pool of customers buying your information. All your iCloud data is a few clicks away for most NSA employees, and I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that they also have root capabilities on your iPhone. No matter how you slice it, Apple isn't going to give you privacy. The data you hold near-and-dear is already in adversarial hands. The game is lost before you even put your chips on the table, that's the consequence of agreeing with TOSes for more than a decade. Nobody wants to admit it, but privacy is literally unattainable in a digital era.

What Apple sells is security. They do a fairly good job with security, and their whitepapers are almost industry-leading. Their commitment to privacy is entirely lip service though, and the volume of their marketing seems to indicate the emptiness of that promise.

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

#159

Post by shuckles »

dialtone wrote: post #115
shuckles wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple does not track your activity across unrelated apps, websites, or the real world. They can offer personalized ads based on your interactions with Apple, which is not tracking, and they allow you to turn off that personalization. What rule are they exempting themselves from?

oh but they do. All of the apps you purchase, stocks you own, news stories you read, location of your phone/mac based on precise geolocation, your name, address, age, gender, oh and this too: > We may also use local, on-device processing to select which ad to display, using > information stored on your device, such as the apps you frequently open. But who's counting? https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-…

Your reference or comment doesn’t disprove my point, but with the way you wrote it, it seems like you think it does? When they say unrelated, they mean offered by different providers, not of different purposes.
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