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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

#181

Post by mrweasel »

malshe wrote: post #177

Yet another Twitter thread without any supporting evidence for the numbers. The claim here is that Apple "surpassed" $3.5 billion in annual revenue from the ad network. This is the headline so obviously I would like to know how the author got this number. However, all we get is irrelevant information. Below m3at has linked to the original article. It says Apple's ad revenue in 2019 was $500 million. Source? It links…

Nice research. Exactly, without a source I seriously question if $3.5B is correct. $500M maybe, that not a much money as it once where. Given the places where ads are even a thing, $3.5B seems excessive.

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

#182

Post by zarriak »

vineyardmike wrote: post #133
hbn wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How do they suppress businesses that don’t pay? By not advertising for them for free? That’s a stretch to compare it to the mafia…

You can look at many accounts from the mid 2010s but the one I can recall the most clearly was FB updated to the algorithm and everything was fine. They then began actively suppressed people who were posting YouTube links a few months later. They told at least Phillip Defranco that the reason was they should advertise. They then came back months later and instead said why not post your videos here. This failed policy years later re-emerged as the video push for news organizations where FB intentionally deceived them into pushing into video to on the platform only for them to later update to honest video view tracking and make all of the media companies realize there was much less viewership than they were initially told was there.

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

#183

Post by Nextgrid »

smoldesu wrote: post #158
Jcowell wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-…

> is a few clicks away for most NSA employees

I'd rather have NSA employees having access to my data rather than NSA employees and employees of the hundreds/thousands of players in the digital advertising ecosystem.

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

#184

Post by scarface74 »

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…

The same way that it was traditionally done - trade shows, advertising on sites and in podcasts that cater to your target audience, search ads, etc.

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

#185

Post by tbyehl »

reaperducer wrote: post #82
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…

personalized ads - has an opt out button right there! I saw something amusing last week. It was an ad being played on a local TV station. It had one of those little blue swirly "Your Ad Choices" arrow icons in the corner that are displayed on advertisements on the web.¹ This was being transmitted by a television station over the air. What, exactly was I supposed to do with that? On a related note, getting an ATSC OTA…

> getting an ATSC OTA DVR is an awesome way to watch television with zero tracking

Assuming your TV isn't tracking what you watch.

https://advertising.roku.com/resources/blog/insights-analysi...

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

#186

Post by plantain »

cwkoss wrote: post #125
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You owe me 5$.

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

#187

Post by j245 »

shuckles wrote: post #159
dialtone wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s a pretty loose standard for the word “related”

If you play around with definitions enough, nobody is collecting unrelated data I suppose.

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

#188

Post by malshe »

mrweasel wrote: post #181
malshe wrote: post #177

Yet another Twitter thread without any supporting evidence for the numbers. The claim here is that Apple "surpassed" $3.5 billion in annual revenue from the ad network. This is the headline so obviously I would like to know how the author got this number. However, all we get is irrelevant information. Below m3at has linked to the original article. It says Apple's ad revenue in 2019 was $500 million. Source? It links…

Nice research. Exactly, without a source I seriously question if $3.5B is correct. $500M maybe, that not a much money as it once where. Given the places where ads are even a thing, $3.5B seems excessive.

> Given the places where ads are even a thing, $3.5B seems excessive.

I agree. I see the ads primarily in the News app and it is almost always the same 2-3 ads. Of course, I am not going to extrapolate that to all the Apple News readers. That's why I was curious to learn how the OP on Twitter found these numbers. In their 10-Qs and 10-Ks, Apple has been consolidating the revenue streams and expenses under larger items (e.g., advertising spending is now not disclosed separately but only as a part of SG&A expenses, iPhone sales by model are no longer disclosed). As such, finding out their ad business is not easy by any means.

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

#189

Post by plantain »

justapassenger wrote: post #101
praestigiare wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who have obviously made their preferences clear that they prefer not to be profiled and tracked that way, because the possibility is still there for those who consent to tracking.

It’s merely a corporate story (from both sides) that people made informed choice about that. It’s full of BS everywhere. Apple fighting for privacy is BS (look at China). Ads networks not affecting privacy is BS. Reducing effectiveness of ads not affecting small business is BS. Moving monopoly in ads market from one group of companies to others being good for people is BS. People understanding impact of all of that o…

I like this phrasing - I don't think users made an informed choice to be tracked, or an informed choice not to be.

They were victims both times of big tech power plays.

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

#190

Post by mikeiz404 »

smoldesu wrote: post #158
Jcowell wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-…

> 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.

There is still value for most people in being able to limit personal data access from many data brokers even if that data is still potentially accessible by the NSA. It’s a spectrum and not a binary outcome.

You are right though our rights to the data we create for most services have been relinquished via the TOSs that no one is really expected to read. It’s certainly broken. However I still think there are steps one can take to resist cross linking of that data by companies; it does take a bit of effort though which isn’t realistic for most.

While I think Apple’s choice to support privacy are ultimately self serving it is still beneficial for many consumers (at least for now).

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