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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

#201

Post by mrguyorama »

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 can assure you 95% of comments in the past 5 to 6 years on HN front page with Ads were all religiously Anti-Ads.

HN is full of Facebook and Google engineers so I doubt that's accurate.

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

#202

Post by mrguyorama »

Cederfjard wrote: post #180
pessimizer wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you know your audience, then you already know the places where you should advertise. And if your audience is a very odd niche, and you can't find where they congregate, go old school and make a place for them to congregate. If you can't figure out how to market your wiener dog slide without facebook, create a weiner dog site with information about weiner dog health, pictures of weiner dogs, stories about weiner…

That’s way more difficult than just asking Facebook who already knows, though. You could go out of business before you manage to build that audience, if you ever would have. I’m not saying that makes Facebook’s invasion of their users’ privacy alright (I personally haven’t pondered it enough to have a well-thought-out opinion), but I really disagree with the grandparent comment that the only businesses that suffered…

>That’s way more difficult than just asking Facebook who already knows, though. You could go out of business before you manage to build that audience, if you ever would have.

Cry me a river. If your business can only be sustained by a 3rd party implementing a massive, global, impossible to avoid and opt out of tracking and surveillance apparatus, I genuinely don't care if it fails. Weiner dog slides aren't that important.

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

#203

Post by mrguyorama »

fnikacevic wrote: post #100
Nextgrid wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except that ecosystem is entirely opt in. If you are okay with a walled garden that you can't control, that's on you. Apple tracking what you do in all of their various properties and apps that they've built to try and be your one stop digital life isn't perfect but it is IMO categorically better than going to a random website and having my data get scooped up into my google account or my facebook shadow profile.

If I leave the apple ecosystem, they no longer track me or sell ads to be displayed to me. That is not the case with facebook or google.

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

#205

Post by nr2x »

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…

Totally agree - these takes are fucking stupid. Apple is basically just enforcing GDPR and other laws on iOS. Most of the shit these privacy trolls talk about “mean old Apple” blocking revenue are already full-on illegal in many places

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

#206

Post by nr2x »

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

Please, publishers have been fighting to get more data from Apple News and they won’t give it. I know for a fact several Big Name outlets aren’t on Apple News precisely for that reason.

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

#207

Post by kornhole »

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…

Almost any corporation can look like a saint by comparing themself to Facebook. Apple and Microsoft are playing the long game. They both collect a ton of data about everybody who uses their products and properties. They are definitely expanding their ad business behind the scenes. It is difficult to get exact advertising numbers since they obscure revenue by lumping it into 'services' like many data companies do. Direct sale of data to third parties is also classed as services.

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

#208

Post by nr2x »

interblag wrote: post #44
monkin wrote: post #11

They put everywhere “we do not track or share data with third-parties” maybe that’s the key difference with other ad networks? It’s not like they follow you around over the web which FB or Google does. I actually don’t even see those ads, as they are only in few apps and App Store.

I think this assertion from them is misleading (in the same way that it is when Facebook et al make it). If Apple is allowing micro targeting then they are implicitly sharing data. E.g. let's say they let me buy targeted ads for "dog lovers aged 34-39", and then you show up on my website as a lead via that campaign, then Apple has just implicitly sold me demographic/interest information about you, even if it wasn't d…

See here:

Privacy Preserving Ad Click Attribution For the Web

https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-att...

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

#209

Post by morcheeba »

idk1 wrote: post #98
morcheeba wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Cool, thanks! I use Stocks on a variety of platforms and never seem to scroll down far enough to see the ad, so I had to check to see why my experience was vastly different. I'm in the same boat as you without News+.

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

#210

Post by vineyardmike »

mrguyorama wrote: post #200
vineyardmike wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple is prioritizing user-privacy which necessarily means it is more difficult for advertisers to place their niche ads. …while rolling out their own alternative, complete with user tracking .

But if apple's tracking is not sold to third parties, is secure, and people trust apple from a security standpoint, is it actually bad for individual privacy?

1. Lots of ifs…

2. Facebook (the comparison here)/Google/etc don’t sell to third parties either.

3. Is tracking customers the issue, or is facebook tracking the issue. Most people seem to indicate they don’t support tracking writ large

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