Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 579 posts

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#411

Post by nonameiguess »

ksec wrote: post #63
samwillis wrote: post #9

As a rough datapoint, I run a consumer targeted e-commerce site. We ran a campaign before Christmas were we were selling a new product that was only marketed on Facebook, we are certain that (almost) all customers found it though that Facebook campaign. Facebook was only able to attribute about 50% of the sales to the ads, it should have been close to 100%. This then meant that Facebooks estimated CPA was effectively…

I cant upvote you enough. This single comment contains many of the contrarian view against HN. It is nice we have these real world stories on HN to balance the ideological fight against ads, where All Ads are evil.

While there are plenty of people annoyed by any ads at all or who believe any form of marketing is inherently evil, that is not at all a majority view. Yet almost everyone hates the way Facebook does it except sellers. The problem isn't the ads. It's the level of surveillance required to make them as effectively targeted as they are. People don't want everything they ever do to be recorded, catalogued, and studied to build a psychological profile of their global purchasing habits.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#412

Post by bryan_w »

cheriot wrote: post #377
scarface74 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They killed it because it didn’t work on mobile.

Then they lacked the imagination. The Facebook app would have become a web browser where Facebook controls user auth, contacts and then payments. Big $$$

>would have become a web browser

Not on iOS where that sort of thing is prohibited. Sure they could put a skin over safari, but apple would have banned the entire FB app as soon as they found a developer's app they didn't like.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#413

Post by samwillis »

jbay808 wrote: post #381
samwillis wrote: post #9

As a rough datapoint, I run a consumer targeted e-commerce site. We ran a campaign before Christmas were we were selling a new product that was only marketed on Facebook, we are certain that (almost) all customers found it though that Facebook campaign. Facebook was only able to attribute about 50% of the sales to the ads, it should have been close to 100%. This then meant that Facebooks estimated CPA was effectively…

Is it possible that some fans spread the word organically after they initially found your product through FB?

Yes, maybe a tiny proportion, but to nowhere near the extent of what we saw. We are 100% confident in our assessment.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#414

Post by tehjoker »

bryan_w wrote: post #408
tehjoker wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads synthesize desire and cause people to be unhappy when the ads work. They encourage expending money that could have been saved, or taking on debt. They also create a funding situation where media producers are beholden to corporations. The implementation of ads is also wildly invasive, creepy, and propagandistic. However, focusing on implementation allows ad salesmen to lessen the sharpness of the criticism by sup…

Ads aren't inherently trying to make people unhappy (at least the good ones). Ads in the best case, are just informing a person about the existence of a thing. There have been many ads that I've found useful, not because of some evil mind games, but rather because i didn't know of a company providing such a service. I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with expending money for things that are valuable. Th…

The idea of an ad is that it says you don't have this thing. Your life will be so much better if only you had this thing. In some cases, that makes sense, but mostly it serves to reset people's expectations and become dissatisfied with what they have.

I think in many cases we should be aiming to do that for social fundamentals that would make all of us live richer and happier lives like healthcare and education, but it has a lot of negative consequences in consumer products which are more individualistic, competitive, and status oriented.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#415

Post by scarface74 »

cheriot wrote: post #399
scarface74 wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By 2009, Apple and Amazon already had more credit cards on file than any other company in the US if not the world. In Apple’s case because of iTunes, before the App Store and Amazon because Amazon. Why would you use FB for payments when you were probably either shopping on Amazon, Apple or EBay using PayPal?

In this path, people would be interacting with games/content in Facebook "apps" that are effectively mobile web pages. Facebook would have control inside their garden. As soon as any Facebook app convinced a user to pay, all other facebook apps would have a seamless checkout. Getting user financials isn't easy but we've seen the rise of Venmo, Robinhood, and Neobanks since then so it's doable.

By 2009, mobile was clearly the future. But the phones were underpowered and didn’t run web pages well. Even today, most of the world is browsing the internet on low end phones where the web provides a sub par experience.

Desktop penetration is lower outside of the US. Aren’t Internet cafes still a thing in much of the world because people don’t have computers at home?

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#416

Post by tiborsaas »

FearlessNebula wrote: post #403
tiborsaas wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can be manipulated by ads to be a terrorist I guess you have greater problems than tracking. In this case I'd say it's better for the public if these people are keep getting tracked.

Not sure where you grabbed terrorism from…

"radicalizing people and manipulating their viewpoints"

it doesn't matter though

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#417

Post by slenk »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #402

Looks like I jumped on the iPhone bandwagon just in time to cost facebook some money! (got my iphone ~1.5 yrs ago). What I don't get is why iphone needs to scan your phone at all. I mean they literally have a treasure trove of information of most of their users, why do they need to sell that? Why don't they just act use the megatons of info they already have on you from scanning your page and your messages to other u…

What about just not using Facebook...

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#418

Post by geoduck14 »

samwillis wrote: post #36
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook was only able to attribute about 50% of the sales to the ads, it should have been close to 100%. Word-of-mouth exists. It's possible Facebook wasn't making it up. Did you use a Facebook-specific link in the ads?

> Word-of-mouth exists True. However in this case we are confident, based on our own internal tracking and metrics, that this is correct.

>True. However in this case we are confident, based on our own internal tracking and metrics, that this is correct.

I'm really curious what you sell now. Can you tell us?

If not, can the rest of HN create fun speculations?

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#419

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

ksec wrote: post #389
user_7832 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The problem was never about the ads. It was about the fact that ads were forced, privacy-invasive (due to customization) and generally were terrible overall (think malware/crypto mining risks, terrible UX - think annoyingly flashy gifs, or those gigantic banners in the middle of a scenic drive), not to mention poorly regulated, leading to lots of "double your money/phallus in 3 days!" type of scams. There…

>I disagree. I dont think we disagree. Like I wrote in another post, most on HN couldn't understand the difference between placement ad on Google Search Engine and Google Ads Network. And suggested we should ban all "tracking ads". And later all ads. I explicitly ask them and suggest what you just wrote. That there could be good ads, and they, by majority disagree. This isn't just on HN, it is pretty much across the…

> This single comment contains many of the contrarian view against HN. It is nice we have these real world stories on HN to balance the ideological fight against ads, where All Ads are evil.

I still don't understand your point. The only reason Facebook's ability to properly attribute went down drastically is specifically because of the iOS privacy changes that require user opt in to track across different sites.

Fine, I don't doubt there were other HN commenters who were arguing different meanings of "tracking", but that's all a moot point. In this instance, we know exactly why Facebook's ad effectiveness went down - it went down because they could no longer track all your interactions across the majority of the web. Tough shit.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#420

Post by nonameiguess »

chillage wrote: post #175
Nextgrid wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good riddance? People will keep finding & buying things they need. If nobody’s buying anything from these businesses without invasive advertising & tracking then maybe whatever goods they were selling aren’t actually necessary? Of course there is nuance and edge cases to this, but in general I wouldn’t be surprised if society and the planet was better off once we stop producing useless garbage.

I don't think you've ever started a company with a new product. What if you make the world's best cheese grater. Nobody knows about it. You don't have connections to supermarkets. Smaller stores don't want to carry your niche item. You have $5000 budget to get your cheese grater out. How do you let people know about it? Online targetted advertising is basically the current established way to find those people who act…

What the heck is the world's best cheese grater? Some products are effectively "finished" and the best there is already exists and we don't need your new business.

Traditionally, cookware and kitchenware makers targeted restaurant buyers. If you think you have a great product, go to a restaurant conference. Everyone there has publicly expressed an interest in what you're selling without requiring a global corporate panopticon.

Post reply on HN