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Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

economist.com

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

#61

Post by throwaway4good »

samwillis wrote: post #34
00000000005 wrote: post #15

Facebook failed to pay the big money to Apple that they should have been paying for years. If Zuck had been handing Apple $5,000,000,000 per year as google does, then Apple would never have kneecapped Facebook. Larry and Sergei know how the protection racket works. You pay your dues to the local mob, you get to do business in their street corners. What do google pay Apple $5b for? Ummm… to be in the search of Safari.…

There is an enormous deference between Search Ads (such as those in Google search results) and display advertising such as Facebook and Googles Display Network. I assure you Google are paying Apple to be the default search engine exactly because it's basically a licence to print money . It has nothing to do with display ads. If Facebook had a search engine they would bid against Google for that role, but as it appear…

FB could surely muster the engineering resources to create a search engine that matches what Google has today.

I think OP is right, it is pride that is holding Zuck back.

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

#63

Post by ksec »

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.

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

#64

Post by 00000000005 »

ksec wrote: post #50
00000000005 wrote: post #15

Facebook failed to pay the big money to Apple that they should have been paying for years. If Zuck had been handing Apple $5,000,000,000 per year as google does, then Apple would never have kneecapped Facebook. Larry and Sergei know how the protection racket works. You pay your dues to the local mob, you get to do business in their street corners. What do google pay Apple $5b for? Ummm… to be in the search of Safari.…

It isn't $5B, it is $10B+. Google's TAC in 2021 was $13B.

OK so Google pays Apple around $13,000,000,000 per year.

How much does Facebook pay Apple?

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

#65

Post by zahma »

Apple knows where the future of technology is going, and Meta is getting in the way. Meta, appropriately renamed to reflect the trend toward augmented and virtual reality, would eventually become a threat to Apple’s walled garden business model. Apple gives lip service to privacy so long as it attracts users to their platform. However the moment we’re in is when the their invasion of privacy is meant to benefit their vision for keeping a customer totally content from home, to work, to play; they have a service for everything, and the data with which they have determined hidden markets, pain points, and markets of desire is coming at a cost for Facebook/Meta.

In the future, whether that’s 5, 10, or 20 years, the biggest companies will produce their own platforms of walled garden experiences. Meta isn’t there yet and has suffered a setback, but the reports that Meta is trying to poach Apple devs is telling about where this is all headed. The “metaverse” is nascent and mockable, but my kid will probably grow up in it just like I grew up on AIM, chat rooms, and texting.

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

#66

Post by politelemon »

wjnc wrote: post #40
00000000005 wrote: post #15

Facebook failed to pay the big money to Apple that they should have been paying for years. If Zuck had been handing Apple $5,000,000,000 per year as google does, then Apple would never have kneecapped Facebook. Larry and Sergei know how the protection racket works. You pay your dues to the local mob, you get to do business in their street corners. What do google pay Apple $5b for? Ummm… to be in the search of Safari.…

Since I detect sarcasm, I'm not sure how to respond. As someone who chooses Apple partly because of the comparative privacy versus Android I'm actually quite happy that they bargain with other parties? It reminiscent of the working of efficient markets. I have a choice. No privacy (Google, Facebook), or a tidbit (Apple, G/F via Apple) or a lot (custom ROM options, drop all G/F/A). For a tidbit of privacy I pay more,…

You don't have a choice with Apple, and that's at the crux of the definition of privacy. What you're doing is justifying a specific choice that you've made, by assuming good faith and bad faith with certain companies - take a few minutes to read up on recent news and you can easily see that they do make anti-privacy choices. Their aim is not user privacy, but user lock-in. But convincing us that it's in our best interest is what's called marketing. There is no 'bargaining' going on, there is no cafetaria, nor are your best interests in anyone's minds. It's simply a gray area in which your data is the currency.

Privacy is not achieved through brand loyalty, it can only be achieved through understanding what you've got and taking control of it. It dismays me to see attitudes like this so prevalent in today's privacy conversations, I feel it will be 10 years too late before we collectively realize what a mistake we're making.

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

#67

Post by samwillis »

Nextgrid wrote: post #43
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…

Out of curiosity, why can’t you just make the ad point to a custom URL (on which you can then set a cookie if you wanted) and do attribution that way?

That is almost exactly what UTM url parameters are [0]. We use these and via them our other tracking collaborates our theory on Facebooks tracking.

There is actually a real problem with tracking via cookies on Facebook ads when the destination is a website. The ad click will open in a Facebook "In App Browser", any cookie that you (or any analytical service) sets will be within that IAB. If the user then uses the "open in Safari/Chrome" option that tracking can be broken as there is no cookie. Ideally you want your visitor to either complete their transaction within the IAB or to use the "open in Safari" option immediately so that any tracking parameters are copied to the other browser allowing the cookie to be set.

In our case the majority of our customers will have a better experience outside of the IAB and so we have a popup that prompts them to use "open in Safari" before navigating away from the first page view. We actually implemented this after noticing a very high drop out rate for iOS Facebook IAB users during our checkout. What was happening is address/payment card autocomplete isn't available within the Facebook IAB and people were clicking "open in Safari" during the checkout in order to use it, they would then find themselves with an empty shopping cart, hence the drop out.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTM_parameters

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

#68

Post by streamofdigits »

Lio wrote: post #48
hollowdene wrote: post #39

There's a whole ecosystem of businesses that rely on Facebook that are going to start hurting a lot over the next few years. I used to work at a publisher where 80% of their website traffic came from Facebook. They haven't seen audience growth in years and their audience is skewing older and older, which is bad for their advertising business Businesses like that are going to get steadily squeezed both by Facebook's d…

Really what you're saying is that there's a whole ecosystem of businesses that depend on unavoidable surveillance. All Apple have done is allow users to say no. They haven't even stopped anyone opting into surveillance if they want to. It just turns out that, when given the choice, people don't like being snooped on.

this seems to be the main new data point that is now evident for all to see

I mean it is sort of obvious to anybody not captured and with basic morals but such is the allure of greed that for ages people were cynically and hypocritically pretending otherwise

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

#69

Post by throwaway4good »

trollied wrote: post #56
YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dang can you please enforce the rules more? In the last weeks hn is getting overrun with spammy troll accounts splattering conspiracy theories left and right.

Something isn't a conspiracy theory just because it's an opinion that you do not like. I personally found the OPs take interesting, though obviously written a little tongue-in-cheek.

The relationship between Google and Apple is outrageous, criminal even. Yet for some reason it hasn't dawned on the Economist. Maybe some clear spoken shitposts on a popular tech site is what it takes.

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

#70

Post by rob74 »

catach wrote: post #42
samwillis wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an enormous deference between Search Ads (such as those in Google search results) and display advertising such as Facebook and Googles Display Network. I assure you Google are paying Apple to be the default search engine exactly because it's basically a licence to print money . It has nothing to do with display ads. If Facebook had a search engine they would bid against Google for that role, but as it appear…

Have to wonder if that agreement would have survived a competitive Google Plus.

Well yeah, Google tried to build a social network (actually several) and failed; Facebook didn't try to build a search engine - that wouldn't fit into their business model of sucking you in and driving you to sign up to Facebook. I mean, after they bought Oculus, they even started requiring a FB account to use the device, but they couldn't have done that for a search engine, nobody would have used it. But lots of others did, and failed (or at least couldn't compete with Google).

So we can conclude that neither building a successful social network nor building a successful search engine is easy :)

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