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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

#31

You know you're a big company when 3.5 billion USD is less than 1% of your total annual revenue.

The numbers are mind boggling. Airpods alone does more revenue than Twitter, Spotify, and Square combined [1]. And that was back in 2020..

[1] https://www.acumenfinancial.co.uk/advice/airpods-revenue-vs-...

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

#32

> 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…

No, you are factually incorrect, but getting upvotes for a pretty populist view.

As with most centralization or “regulation” (this case from a private company), it hurts the smallest companies the most.

Large brand advertisers don’t care about granular targeting because they have the budget to just advertise to everyone. By definition the very smallest advertisers are the one who are getting restricted here.

Luckily ATTv2 will actually fix some of this, but that’s because apple has realised they’ve killed an entire ecosystem which actually hurts the iPhone in the end.

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

#34
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.

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

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

#35
post #30

> 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…

While this is a "narrative", there is quite a lot data back that this is a fact. You can argue that you trust and fell comfortable to give apple the power of crushing any other small businesses they don't care based on Apple's own company decision. BTW, you can here the same story from small businesses' narrative: https://www.npr.org/2022/03/17/1087425495/tech-giants-and-ti...

Yup. Facebook ads were evil. And now that wiener-dog ramp guy can't spend pennies to buy millions of impressions on cross-app-accessed data, he has to be smarter and work harder to get his ad dollars in the right place.

This remains a Facebook privacy story.

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

#36
post #12

I'm looking forward to the discussion on how Apple's ad business is more ethical and good for us.

If Apple is not doing surveillance capitalism, then their advertising revenue is better compared to TV/Radio than to Facebook. Nobody loves advertising, but society seems fine with TV and Radio being paid for by non-surveillance ads.

The problem has been the micro-targeting / retargeting at the heart of Facebook and Google's surveillance capitalism model. That model enables a lot of direct to consumer small business, but it also turbocharges polarization, misinformation, and radicalization (as does the algorithmic feed). That's what consumers are increasingly looking to opt-out of, and Apple is catering to that interest.

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

#37
I don’t understand the point of this thread. Apple never said that advertising is bad. They just said tracking users across web is bad. When I use FB app, FB can still use my activity in their app to show me relevant ads, which they do. Apple can do the same but their prompt gives users the ability to turn that personalization off as well. This is different from tracking and apple is giving a choice where FB and Google aren’t.

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

#38
post #30

> 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…

While this is a "narrative", there is quite a lot data back that this is a fact. You can argue that you trust and fell comfortable to give apple the power of crushing any other small businesses they don't care based on Apple's own company decision. BTW, you can here the same story from small businesses' narrative: https://www.npr.org/2022/03/17/1087425495/tech-giants-and-ti...

Yeah, I read about Ramon and his wiener dog ramps when this was first submitted to HN months ago and I said the same thing then as I am now. It’s bullshit. If Ramon wants to sell wiener dog ramps, then the system to do that should be “buy adspace when people search for wiener dog,” advertise on wiener dog enthusiast forums, sponsor videos/meetups, etc. Not “create an all knowing digital surveillance system tying together user profiles across devices and networks and embedding tracking pixels in websites.”

So Ramon wants to sell a niche product and that means I have to be tracked across the internet so companies can sell a digital profile of me? Get real.

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

#39
post #12

I'm looking forward to the discussion on how Apple's ad business is more ethical and good for us.

I look at all advertising as obnoxious. If it is unbidden it is little different from a door to door salesman knocking at my door trying to sell me solar. With regard to Apple not tracking us with PII, that is good however.

But Apple is tracking you. They build an advertising profile using your behavior on iOS and your personal information (and at least for me, that included PII that I would never have consented to them using for ad targeting; but they just took it, and hid the opt-out in an obscure settings menu). They then allow targeting of ads based on these fine-grained profiles. Just how is this better than FB?

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

#40
post #31

You know you're a big company when 3.5 billion USD is less than 1% of your total annual revenue.

The numbers are mind boggling. Airpods alone does more revenue than Twitter, Spotify, and Square combined [1]. And that was back in 2020.. [1] https://www.acumenfinancial.co.uk/advice/airpods-revenue-vs-...

I wanted to love Airpods, but the fall out of my ears, even when I'm sitting still. The linked article doesn't mention Beats By Dre, so I'm guessing Beats sales are not included in that $23B/year number. I wonder what is the annual for Beats. I bought a pair of the Powerbeats Pro that go over the ear & I quite like them.
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