Apple's sleeping advertising business • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple's sleeping advertising business

#71

Post by olliej » Mon, Oct 24, 2022, 3:36 AM UTC

jonplackett wrote: post #16

Apple adding ads to the AppStore was a terrible idea. Not because I hate seeing ads, but as a developer I hate it. I’ve made some apps that have had millions of downloads that I launched with no ad spend whatsoever, just good old fashioned viral growth. It got a tonne of copycats but that was OK because I just made the app better in response. Now, your app is competing against all the inevitable copycats - but those…

It’s so obnoxious - rather than fixing search or discovery they made a “buy the first few hits” service

Re: Apple's sleeping advertising business

#72

Post by ben75020 » Mon, Oct 24, 2022, 3:37 AM UTC

tpush wrote: post #27

hnbear wrote: post #8

That Apple could do it doesn’t mean they will, and the article doesn’t present much actual evidence it will. In Apple long-running saga with Ads it’s always seemed like Apple hates ads because it’s other companies content (and so priorities, aesthetic, and feel) jammed inside an Apple product. And Apple hates anything that ruins the Apple Experience :tm: Paying to be the first App Store entry is great, because it’s A…

Counterpoint: The Apple News app. Even of you're a paying ($10!) subscriber, the app is full of absolutely awful advertisement. The current culture of Apple produced this app; it wouldn't surprise me if other properties of Apple start to embed ads.

No post body was provided.

Re: Apple's sleeping advertising business

#73

Post by ben75020 » Mon, Oct 24, 2022, 3:39 AM UTC

jonplackett wrote: post #16

Apple adding ads to the AppStore was a terrible idea. Not because I hate seeing ads, but as a developer I hate it. I’ve made some apps that have had millions of downloads that I launched with no ad spend whatsoever, just good old fashioned viral growth. It got a tonne of copycats but that was OK because I just made the app better in response. Now, your app is competing against all the inevitable copycats - but those…

No post body was provided.

Re: Apple's sleeping advertising business

#74

Post by kornhole » Mon, Oct 24, 2022, 5:18 AM UTC

People trapped in Apple's ecosystem will put up with all of this. Only a small minority wiil be able to rewire. Apple played this very well.

Re: Apple's sleeping advertising business

#75

Post by poulsbohemian » Mon, Oct 24, 2022, 5:44 AM UTC

The biggest issue in advertising is local. Google seemed like it had this once upon a time, but they make it hard for small-time advertisers to use their tools and the ROI is very hard to quantify. Facebook is trash. It's like they hate both the public and their advertisers, and again, the ROI is very hard to quantify for the hoops they make you jump through. Twitter, Instagram, etc aren't really appropriate for many businesses. The implosion of local newspapers, yellow pages, etc that were traditional print media mean that there are loads of small businesses that are all but begging for someone to give them an easy way to swipe their credit cards and get in front of customers. Unclear that Apple has a path here.

Re: Apple's sleeping advertising business

#76

Post by ActorNightly » Mon, Oct 24, 2022, 7:40 AM UTC

g42gregory wrote: post #39

Apple products command significant premium over their competitors and the reason people are paying this premium is the clean(er) computing environment. If they start injecting ads everywhere, it would negate the reason to pay the premium for Apple products.

Not quite.

Apple products command a premium because of the Apple logo, and Apple creating the premium image through marketing.

From a functional perspective, some aspects are better, but many aspects are also worse.

Re: Apple's sleeping advertising business

#77

Post by Firmwarrior » Mon, Oct 24, 2022, 9:00 AM UTC

braingenious wrote: post #33

I think it’s a bit funny that the author seems completely convinced that Apple will certainly create their own search service. If I were Apple, I would happily keep accepting the billions of dollars from Google in exchange for a dearly setting that costs virtually no money to implement. Also as an aside, is it just me or is Apple News+ a downright dreadful offering? I’ll be browsing regular Apple News and it will dec…

Man, the news in general is just awful

I'm probably just reading the wrong news, but it all feels like pointless low-brow clickbait. I get all my tech news here and through random small blogs nowadays, and everything else is just worthless.

Like how nobody ever puts numbers into perspective. I'm always mad about how we get 100 preventable car accident deaths per day, and the other day I found out we still get vastly more deaths from smoking. Yet neither of those are in the news, instead it's all about homeless camps, racist hate crimes, etc. Nobody ever talks about Malaria at all. It's insane. Every time a car crashes and kills a toddler, they should plaster the kid's face all over the TV and social media and hold a multi week inquiry into how this happened and what we're going to do about it.

What's the point of reading the news if it doesn't teach me anything useful to my life or my voting habits?

Re: Apple's sleeping advertising business

#78

Post by tinus_hn » Mon, Oct 24, 2022, 10:29 AM UTC

tpush wrote: post #27

hnbear wrote: post #8

That Apple could do it doesn’t mean they will, and the article doesn’t present much actual evidence it will. In Apple long-running saga with Ads it’s always seemed like Apple hates ads because it’s other companies content (and so priorities, aesthetic, and feel) jammed inside an Apple product. And Apple hates anything that ruins the Apple Experience :tm: Paying to be the first App Store entry is great, because it’s A…

Counterpoint: The Apple News app. Even of you're a paying ($10!) subscriber, the app is full of absolutely awful advertisement. The current culture of Apple produced this app; it wouldn't surprise me if other properties of Apple start to embed ads.

It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the news partners are requiring them to include ads.

Re: Apple's sleeping advertising business

#79

Post by tinus_hn » Mon, Oct 24, 2022, 10:33 AM UTC

ActorNightly wrote: post #76

g42gregory wrote: post #39

Apple products command significant premium over their competitors and the reason people are paying this premium is the clean(er) computing environment. If they start injecting ads everywhere, it would negate the reason to pay the premium for Apple products.

Not quite. Apple products command a premium because of the Apple logo, and Apple creating the premium image through marketing. From a functional perspective, some aspects are better, but many aspects are also worse.

The phones really are pretty much the same price as a similarly specced Samsung, and the computers are more expensive but also last longer.

Re: Apple's sleeping advertising business

#80

Post by musicale » Thu, Oct 27, 2022, 12:32 AM UTC

jackjeff wrote: post #22

musicale wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also a lousy user experience since the bogus ad app shows up at the top of the page and eats up screen space, especially on a phone. > People are lazy and download the first result a lot of the time. If people need something right away, they're unlikely to want to spend time evaluating a bunch of alternatives.

It’s just made the App Store unusable. Even exact name search is fraught with peril. I just Google things instead now. I feel like this is what is going to happen for every product Apple will infest with ads.

> exact name search is fraught with peril

precisely

> I just Google things instead now.

Google search results seem to have the same problem where actual results get pushed below the fold by ads.