Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by _bxg1 » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 11:25 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #42

_bxg1 wrote: post #37

Let us not forget that Apple isn't doing this out of altruism, but 50% because it hurts their competitors and 50% because it makes their users happy. That said, being 50% motivated by making their users happy is more than can be said about Google or Facebook. Edit: To be clear, I am an Apple customer and it's mainly on privacy grounds. I just like to keep realistic expectations about their present and future behavior…

> Apple isn't doing this out of altruism Of course not - who said they were?

These days they try hard to sell themselves as "the good guys of tech". Tim Cook grand-stands about privacy rights, etc. It's easy to forget that it's all just business, so it's good to be reminded.

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

#62

Post by driverdan » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 11:25 PM UTC

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,…

> Yes, it is in fact working and breaks targeting and retargeting. But what is the outcome of that?

Improved privacy. The rest of what you said is irrelevant.

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

#63

Post by manigandham » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 11:26 PM UTC

mffnbs wrote: post #54

dxemy wrote: post #15

You can read the article for free if you make up an email. It does not ask for confirmation.

I was enjoying the irony of reading the article on safari only to have it cut off so they can ask me for my personal information to track me.

It's a paywalled site. They're not tracking you other than to ask you to pay for the content. This will only become more common as sites shift from ad revenue to subscriptions.

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

#64

Post by inetknght » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 11:26 PM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #25

inetknght wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Domains have nothing to do with the businesses and vendors behind them. The vast majority of publishers don't have the resources to run their own adtech infrastructure. 1st-party serving won't change anything with regards to chain of custody in ad content but the new regulations should at least make the chain shorter and more restricted in abilities.

> Domains have nothing to do with the businesses and vendors behind them.

TLS certificate says different. If malware comes from a TLS signed domain, then the owner of that domain is at-fault. Getting reparations from that domain is of course a different matter. But this should simplify the blame game.

> The vast majority of publishers don't have the resources to run their own adtech infrastructure.

I strongly disagree. Where there's a will, there's a way. And Google has the will.

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

#65

Post by echelon » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 11:27 PM UTC

I'd like to see a p2p mesh network where articles stripped of ads are upvoted, annotated, and shared. Something like outline, but truly distributed. The markup doesn't allow for embedded javascript or cookies.

If it were to get popular, a microtransaction system could be built on top to pay the authors. In fact, payment could serve as one kind of ranking heuristic.

Store articles in a blockchain and garbage collect them from your node when they're no longer being actively read. Content will of course always be available as long as some node has the full history. This has the added benefit of making future updates or redaction without explicit change logs impossible.

You could even distribute comments the same way. All participants have keys, everything gets signed, natural interest graphs form...

This type of application of bkockchain tech seems more immediately useful than currency and brings us back into alignment with the old web paradigm. Distributed, experimental, hobbyist, not commercial.

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

#66

Post by mobjack » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 11:28 PM UTC

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.)

Fingerprinting is much harder in reality than Panopticlick makes you believe.

For example, if you update your browser or add a new plugin, you can look like a new person so it makes it harder to find a match. A cookie would not change through that event.

Enough people have the same fingerprint that it limits its effectiveness. Maybe you can only reliably identify 40% of your user base that way.

It is like using your IP address as an identifier. For some people it can be 100% accurate, but others switch networks or share an IP with multiple other people which limits its usefulness.

What ends up happening is that companies will correlate IP address with other fingerprint information to get a probabilistic match but that is complex and still has flaws.

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

#67

Post by threeseed » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 11:29 PM UTC

tartoran wrote: post #39

Is this Apple's subtle revenge for Google's Android ripping off the early Iphone?

More likely that Apple employees simply hate their data being shared with every advertiser like the rest of us do.

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

#68

Post by manigandham » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 11:30 PM UTC

inetknght wrote: post #64

manigandham wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Domains have nothing to do with the businesses and vendors behind them. The vast majority of publishers don't have the resources to run their own adtech infrastructure. 1st-party serving won't change anything with regards to chain of custody in ad content but the new regulations should at least make the chain shorter and more restricted in abilities.

> Domains have nothing to do with the businesses and vendors behind them. TLS certificate says different. If malware comes from a TLS signed domain, then the owner of that domain is at-fault. Getting reparations from that domain is of course a different matter. But this should simplify the blame game. > The vast majority of publishers don't have the resources to run their own adtech infrastructure. I strongly disagre…

No. TLS certificates have nothing to do with domain ownership or the businesses providing services behind them. Anyone can buy and transfer certificates. Besides there are actual business contracts in place so there's no need for such tenuous connections over domain names in the first place.

As for your disagreement, what's your basis for claiming that publishers can build, operate, and scale their own adtech infrastructure and salesforce?

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

#69

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 11:33 PM UTC

inetknght wrote: post #64

manigandham wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Domains have nothing to do with the businesses and vendors behind them. The vast majority of publishers don't have the resources to run their own adtech infrastructure. 1st-party serving won't change anything with regards to chain of custody in ad content but the new regulations should at least make the chain shorter and more restricted in abilities.

> Domains have nothing to do with the businesses and vendors behind them. TLS certificate says different. If malware comes from a TLS signed domain, then the owner of that domain is at-fault. Getting reparations from that domain is of course a different matter. But this should simplify the blame game. > The vast majority of publishers don't have the resources to run their own adtech infrastructure. I strongly disagre…

[deleted]

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

#70

Post by Terretta » Mon, Dec 09, 2019, 11:33 PM UTC

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,…

Your proposed tradeoff space are not the only two options.

As a ‘third way’, you can match ads to real content, and have audience interests and advertiser interests aligned.

Folks who try this, find it works, in some cases only a percentage point or two worse than high end retargeting, and in most cases, better than retargeting when sold by third party or retargeting across run of site.

EDIT: CPC (cost-per-click) and CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) are both fine when matching ads and content. For instance, the ‘affiliate link’ business is predicated on the idea that inline clicks on products mentioned in content are so valuable as to be individually worth a piece of the actual sale.