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Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market

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Re: Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market

#11

Post by imposterr »

nielsbot wrote: post #6
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #5

How has this been so effective, when Panopticlick still says my Safari browser has "a nearly-unique fingerprint"? (And based on what I've read from other users's experience, this is normal.)

I'd love to know this too--maybe fingerprinting isn't yet being used most places? Or maybe fingerprinting isn't that useful without additional cookie tracking?

From what I understand, a lot of the ad networks still work off cookies, they haven't moved to using fingerprinting yet. I think as browsers implement more anti-tracking features they may start to though.

Re: Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market

#12

Post by Wowfunhappy »

jedberg wrote: post #7

I was talking to my friend about this the other day. He's an executive at an ad company (not Google). He had an interesting take on this: Yes, it is in fact working and breaks targeting and retargeting. But what is the outcome of that? The CPMs (how much the website makes) are 10x higher for re/targeted ads. So as they stop working, do you think the website will cut their revenue? No, they'll either put up a paywall,…

> No, they'll either put up a paywall.

Personally, I think I'm fine with that, provided the paywalls get cheaper—right now, they're all very clearly more expensive than what you'd make in ad revenue. Of the two options, paying content creators for what they produce seems much more "healthy" for society.

> or put 10x more ads on their page.

If the site becomes impossible to browse, I will leave.

> And those ads will frustrate you even more, because they aren't targeted to you.

I don't find targeted ads any less annoying than untargetted ones.

Re: Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market

#13

Post by jedberg »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #5

How has this been so effective, when Panopticlick still says my Safari browser has "a nearly-unique fingerprint"? (And based on what I've read from other users's experience, this is normal.)

When you load Panopticlick, you'll notice it takes a minute or so to fingerprint you. That's a pretty long time and a lot of CPU.

Re/Targeted ads require the decision to be made in milliseconds, including network transit time. They just don't have the time to fingerprint you on every request. They could do it once, but then they are back to the problem of having to set a cookie to keep track of you after that.

Re: Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market

#14

Post by manigandham »

Overall this doesn't make much of a long-term difference. Ad serving will shift to first-party with DNS or entire reverse proxies and is already in progress.

Apple has made some solid improvements but should now focus on not letting Safari become the next IE. The real impact changing the adtech industry is new regulations around data and privacy. That will change everything in a few months.

Re: Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market

#16

Post by Wowfunhappy »

harikb wrote: post #9
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #5

How has this been so effective, when Panopticlick still says my Safari browser has "a nearly-unique fingerprint"? (And based on what I've read from other users's experience, this is normal.)

They say "nearly-unique" - I get an odds of '1 in 50,000'. Granted, that may be enough combined with IP or some other factor as a transient/session cookie. However the hash might change as soon as a plugin or some dependency is updated.

Combine my Canvas fingerprint (which a plugin update won't change) with my rough location (based on IP address), and I have to imagine you'd get very, very close to identifying me.

Re: Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market

#17

Post by signal11 »

jedberg wrote: post #7

I was talking to my friend about this the other day. He's an executive at an ad company (not Google). He had an interesting take on this: Yes, it is in fact working and breaks targeting and retargeting. But what is the outcome of that? The CPMs (how much the website makes) are 10x higher for re/targeted ads. So as they stop working, do you think the website will cut their revenue? No, they'll either put up a paywall,…

I don’t get targeted ads. They’re quite dumb. If I look at product X, ads for product X follow me around the web, which isn’t that useful because I’ve already done my research and am not quite ready to hit “buy” no matter how many ads you show.

Ads for similar products I might be interested in, but I’ve not seen too many of those served up by these ad networks.

Untargeted ads at least might show me something new and interesting.

Re: Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market

#18

Post by manigandham »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #5

How has this been so effective, when Panopticlick still says my Safari browser has "a nearly-unique fingerprint"? (And based on what I've read from other users's experience, this is normal.)

It's mobile Safari that is hard to fingerprint and getting harder with each version. Most adtech still runs off cookies to share data and store identifiers and those have been basically eradicated.

Having to fingerprint every pageview also creates latency and still isn't that deterministic so everything will need to shift to probabilistic and contextual targeting. That's a hard change to make for most legacy networks.

Re: Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market

#19

Post by inetknght »

manigandham wrote: post #14

Overall this doesn't make much of a long-term difference. Ad serving will shift to first-party with DNS or entire reverse proxies and is already in progress. Apple has made some solid improvements but should now focus on not letting Safari become the next IE. The real impact changing the adtech industry is new regulations around data and privacy. That will change everything in a few months.

Good. If the ads are served from the first party domain that should make it a hell of a lot easier to attribute mal-action to that specific first party instead of offloading blame elsewhere.

Re: Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market

#20

Post by dave5104 »

jedberg wrote: post #7

I was talking to my friend about this the other day. He's an executive at an ad company (not Google). He had an interesting take on this: Yes, it is in fact working and breaks targeting and retargeting. But what is the outcome of that? The CPMs (how much the website makes) are 10x higher for re/targeted ads. So as they stop working, do you think the website will cut their revenue? No, they'll either put up a paywall,…

> And those ads will frustrate you even more, because they aren't targeted to you.

I would have thought that the frustrating part of an advertisement is the presentation of the ad itself--not necessarily its content.

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