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Apple is becoming an ad company despite privacy claims

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Re: Apple is becoming an ad company despite privacy claims

#22

Post by rapind »

denkmoon wrote: post #9

Please no. There is no refuge from the ads. Not for all the money in the world, apparently. This is the worst timeline. Can I pay 2x to get an ad-free iPhone? 3x? Surely there is some point where it makes sense to sell an ad free phone for those who _need_ to not see ads. They won't even take my money ;_;

Nope. You become an edge case which now has to be supported which likely costs more than you’re paying (except to a smaller efficient business). If you pay more and more you just become more and more of an outlier.

Re: Apple is becoming an ad company despite privacy claims

#24

Post by Someone »

smoldesu wrote: post #6
andreysolsty wrote: post #2

You can be an ad company and respect your users privacy. They’re not mutually exclusive as the headline seems to suggest.

Can you be an ad company and respect your users, though? Google and Microsoft failed to do this, not because they didn't protect their user's identity but because they kept squeezing for more and more cash when the UX was already hurting. I'm not confident that Apple can resist those temptations (judging by the way they treat their own native advertising).

Adding advertising likely will cost them hardware sales. if so, their hardware branch might have enough clout to keep their advertising branch under control.

Phrased another way: adding a few billions of advertising revenue wouldn’t make Apple an advertising company, just as selling smartphones hasn’t made Google a hardware company

Re: Apple is becoming an ad company despite privacy claims

#26

Post by pifm_guy »

andreysolsty wrote: post #2

You can be an ad company and respect your users privacy. They’re not mutually exclusive as the headline seems to suggest.

> be an ad company and respect your users privacy

As an ad broker, you usually cannot. If you respect the users privacy, and another competing ad broker does not, then the competitor will make better ad placement decisions, get a higher click through rate, and give advertisers better ROI. Therefore, the ad broker that respects privacy will get less and less business and die.

The only way an ad broker can respect privacy is if they can prevent any other ad broker operating in the same marketplace. Ie. You need to be a monopoly in your niche.

Apple can do this by hobbling any other ad provider operating on iPhones or targeting iPhone user through their app store rules.

Re: Apple is becoming an ad company despite privacy claims

#29

Post by seaal »

frankjr wrote: post #17

Who is clicking on these ads? Or do companies pay for the ad to just show up? I have never in my life intentionally clicked on an ad.

I just recently clicked on an App Store ad for the first time. It was on a desperate search for an IPTV that didn’t suck.

I was hoping it might be good considering the dev was paying for ads, it was not.

Re: Apple is becoming an ad company despite privacy claims

#30

Post by ml_basics »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #11

With an accountant at the head of the company, what would you expect? They also have too much power, too much money, not enough competition and a deteriorating company culture. But aside from their dominance, they also have a few gems, their bet on ARM is paying off big time.

> a deteriorating company culture

Could you elaborate on this? Genuine question, because how Apple is so successful is a complete mystery to me.

I worked there during the pandemic and my experience was that there is no company culture, it's just a bunch of totally siloed small teams. Culture grows as a result of people speaking to each other, which I didn't really see happening.

Could be that I was in a particularly siloed part though.

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