Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14 • Hacker News Board

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#261

Post by dialtone » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 1:08 AM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #131

gregorythecat wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SKAdNetwork is severely restrictive. In my group we’re still forecasting a major hit to our ability to perform attribution or lift analysis.

Why can't attribution be solved by including a campaign ID in the links to the product the ad is selling, and then counting the number of purchases per campaign ID? Is it because it's a manufactured problem by this scummy industry where they try to consider anything a "conversion" like "we showed this guy an ad 2 years ago and now he finally happened to look the right way at our client's shop while walking past it, t…

There's a limit to how many campaigns you can be a part of as well since one could display an arbitrary set of campaigns to you and understand who they targeted once again. In any case "show this guy an ad" like you quote, won't leave signs or campaign IDs in the apple framework unless there's a way to track that user explicitly. And tagging people that viewed ads is not anywhere in the scheme for apple. As an aside, attribution of online ads is vastly more sophisticated than you paint it and it involve statistical and causal models. https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/2020408.2020453 https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/eaa4/875ae2376d681e156dcc3b... https://research.netflix.com/business-area/marketing-and-gro...

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#262

Post by danShumway » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 1:09 AM UTC

dialtone wrote: post #254

danShumway wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair though, don't you remember how the DNT header worked really well for everybody involved, and how all these advertisers today universally respect it, and how they totally didn't abandon the entire concept as soon as it started seeing mainstream use and platforms started turning it on by default? What could go wrong if we give them another spot at the table? I mean, PRAM has already released so many good pla…

Yeah the DNT header didn't work due in large part to middle men (like routers or anti-virus tools) flipping that bit without asking the user in automatic, or again broad decisions, such as from Microsoft, of flipping the default of that header without asking users. Obviously if one side chooses to just do what they want, the other side is free to do what they want as well. This whole situation needs people to sit dow…

> Yeah the DNT header didn't work due in large part to middle men (like routers or anti-virus tools) flipping that bit without asking the user in automatic

A privacy option that's not allowed to be turned on by default based on user data and likely preferences isn't a real privacy option. Advertisers are the kings of trying to guess what users want, did they really think that browsers wouldn't be allowed to do the same with request headers?

This argument comes up a lot, and I'd debate it, but I also think behind the surface-level objections, the heart of the argument basically boils down to, "we didn't realize that people were going to use this thing."

The advertising industry was happy to have an opt-out as long as not too many people used it. Once it started getting turned on by default (because of course a user who's installing antivirus or privacy tools wants DNT to be enabled), Microsoft just became an excuse to abandon the whole thing.

If Microsoft had never turned DNT on by default, but the majority of users had sought out the option and turned it on, then advertisers would have come up with an excuse. Their participation with DNT was a compromise: "you can have a few of these users that probably run adblockers anyway, and in exchange, we want you to get off of our back about everything else."

For these people, respecting DNT always depended on it not being adopted. And that's why trusting them to talk about "responsible ads" or "consumer choice" is a waste of time. They know what they want the consumer choice on privacy to be, and they will only offer that choice as long as the average consumer chooses what they think the 'right' option is. If advertisers discover that the average consumer doesn't want to be tracked, then all of their talk about sitting down and having a dialog is going to go away.

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#263

Post by klyrs » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 1:16 AM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #190

cactus2093 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You kind of took it off the deep at there with the last sentence. Sure the Trump dept of education has been especially bad, but you can't blame all of the past decades of US public education mediocrity on corporate interests. Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.

Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. Or unions. While teachers unions have been great for teachers, they've been lousy for teaching.

In every place I've lived, teachers bargain hard for their students. Yes, they bargain for their own pathetic wages and benefits, but they're also bargaining for classroom resources, smaller classrooms, better education for kids with additional needs, etc. And DAMN the short-sighted politicians who play with kids' futures and use those asks as bargaining chips. Childhood education is one of the highest ROI investments we can make as a society, but apparently we'd rather spend money on cops and emergency rooms.

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#264

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 1:23 AM UTC

Razengan wrote: post #253

nuker wrote: post #245

Cannot wait for iOS 14. Apple is the only big company taking privacy seriously, well done. How is that so many anti-Apple comments in this thread? Are we already in a stage when giant Ad Corps are intentionally distorting public discussions?

As a user, when developers and other companies complain about Apple’s overreach, it just tells me to avoid those developers and companies. As to your last question: Of course, why wouldn’t they?

[deleted]

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#265

Post by bthrn » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 1:24 AM UTC

treyfitty wrote: post #259

It’s interesting that Apple is taking steps that are tough on Ad networks and tracking. From Apples perspective, why are they waging this war? Sure, user experience in the Apple ecosystem is improved, but there has to be more to the story. At first, I thought it was a long-game strategy of chipping away at Google + Facebook while developing a walled-off user base that only Apple (and their affiliates/partners) can mo…

Apple has usually billed itself as a high quality hardware manufacturer, and more recently they've expanded into services. The lion's share of their revenue is from these two things.

Privacy has always been a core tenet of Apple's value proposition. They ask for more money, and in return you get assurance that the system you're using values your privacy more than other ecosystems.

I don't necessarily think there needs to be anything more to it than that. Apple knows it can win privacy conscious people and monetize them in ways Google can't, and that's what it does.

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#266

Post by ceejayoz » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 1:44 AM UTC

samatman wrote: post #238

typeformer wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, unions give teachers power in a system that constantly takes their labor for granted

In other words unions are... great for teachers? You're conspicuously silent here on the "lousy for teaching" clause.

I'm a better employee when I'm not scrambling to make ends meet. I'd imagine the same is true for teachers.

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#267

Post by sli » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 1:49 AM UTC

danShumway wrote: post #113

Despegar wrote: post #2

>We believe that industry consultation is critical for changes to platform policies, as these updates have a far-reaching impact on the developer ecosystem. We’re encouraged by conversations and efforts already taking place in the industry - including within the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the recently announced Partnership for Responsible Addressable Media (PRAM). We look forward to continuing to engage with…

To be fair though, don't you remember how the DNT header worked really well for everybody involved, and how all these advertisers today universally respect it, and how they totally didn't abandon the entire concept as soon as it started seeing mainstream use and platforms started turning it on by default? What could go wrong if we give them another spot at the table? I mean, PRAM has already released so many good pla…

DNT just became another fingerprinting datapoint, so it ended up being better to just set it to whatever the critical mass is using (which is typically off).

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#268

Post by claudiulodro » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 1:51 AM UTC

oblio wrote: post #63

criddell wrote: post #3

> We believe that industry consultation is critical for changes to platform policies, as these updates have a far-reaching impact on the developer ecosystem. Why should platform makers consult the advertising industry? It's not like the advertising industry consulted anybody before they started collecting every bit of data they could.

I'm honestly interested about this, Facebook is a big company. Is there no case of FB screwing over its partners? Like locking or limiting an API that they had offered in the past, etc. One thing that comes to mind immediately is that Facebook Messenger used to be accessible through XMPP and then they blocked that.

You just need to look forward a few weeks to see a big one. The FaceBook and Instagram oEmbed changes that are going into effect at the end of October[1] are going to break all of the Facebook and Instagram embeds on WordPress sites (~1/3 of the internet) and the oEmbed functionality won't be available without a developer account[2].

[1] https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/oembed-legacy

[2] https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/50861

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#269

Post by summerlight » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 2:05 AM UTC

treyfitty wrote: post #259

It’s interesting that Apple is taking steps that are tough on Ad networks and tracking. From Apples perspective, why are they waging this war? Sure, user experience in the Apple ecosystem is improved, but there has to be more to the story. At first, I thought it was a long-game strategy of chipping away at Google + Facebook while developing a walled-off user base that only Apple (and their affiliates/partners) can mo…

It's simple; Apple is aggressively expanding into service business space where many of it doesn't really make sense to make direct revenue while they're largely a underdog. Given that developing those services on par to FB/Google/Amazon's needs at least tens of billions of dollars, they cannot really build a sustainable business without generating actual revenue. And no one has developed a business model applicable to billion user bases for those "free" services other than advertising.

Of course, while it's possible that Apple can keep themselves away from those "free" services but it means that they also need to give up a part of their control on customer relationship. Since it is the core part of their long term strategy, I don't think they can easily give it up. I think they will eventually foray into the advertising business rather than giving up user control.

Here, the only major advantage of their services is platform control. The major disadvantage is their perception of privacy-friendly company, so their options on ad network level optimization are significantly limited. The only relevant ads service from Apple is app search ads because this is the only area they can get user information without privacy troubles; this clearly demonstrates their strong and weak points.

The only logical conclusion that can be derived from this situation is utilizing their platform control to "level the playground"; even if Apple cannot use the same user data, they can force others to give up. This will neutralize Apple's disadvantage while retaining their platform advantages, which likely give them some time to catch up their competitors in service businesses as well.

Re: Preparing Our Partners for iOS 14

#270

Post by gerash » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 2:24 AM UTC

shajznnckfke wrote: post #149

machello13 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it's a poor equivalence. Apple's ads appear only in a few of their own apps. I wouldn't even call it an ad service, because that implies that third-parties can use it. In comparison, Google and Facebook both operate actual, for-profit ad services that are used across almost every website and app in the world. I agree about Apple being too strict on the App Store. But it's not really what I'm talking abou…

Apple does offer an ad service to third parties: https://searchads.apple.com The biggest market for Facebook’s ads on iOS is for apps. Apple is cracking down on that with this change, so Facebook won’t be able to show attribution for app purchases. It’s hard not to think that this change is an effort to take over the market with their competing app advertising service. My claim is that this is part of the larger effo…

In such doomsday scenario and assuming no laws gets passed to change things the service providers (eg. Instagram, Uber, Doordash) can start charging iOS users more to adjust for this. This is already happening as the YT subscription shows.

That is, goods on Amazon, Uber rides, food prices all will be more expensive to iOS users and then maybe Instagram and TikTok can start charging iOS users $50/yr as well. At the end of the day a mobile platform needs third party services as much they need the platform otherwise Windows phone would've survived.