29 ms·

Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions

365 points by oneeyedpigeon 9y ago

nathanaldensr 9y ago
I think I speak for many when I say: "Cry me a river."
- tootie 9y ago
  No ad revenue, no free content. Get ready for paywalls everywhere.
  - JadeNB 9y ago
    > No ad revenue, no free content. Get ready for paywalls everywhere. Well, paywalls lots of places. There'll be less incentive for clickfarming sites, and some-to-many-to-all of the big sites will probably go for-pay, but lots of smaller sites will still provide content because people like to communicate with the world. It doesn't sound like a bad thing to me—especially if we're being told that the trade-off is paying for content, versus giving up rights to our privacy.
  - chimmy_chonga 9y ago
    They can still make money off ad revenue, they'll just have to think of a way to do it without compromising the user's privacy.
    - wadkar 9y ago
      Good point, the ads could be content driven rather than user profile driven.
      - openasocket 9y ago
        I really really think this is the way to go. When I'm on programming websites I want ads from cloud providers, and when I'm wood working websites I want ads for belt sanders. I feel like it makes more sense to display ads that match up with the content of the web page anyway, it means the viewer might be in a more receptive mood for that type of product. Not to mention it avoids the entire issue of user privacy and the difficulty of tracking users. It's also how all advertising has been done since the beginning of time, and I don't see why the Internet has to be such a special case.
        mark-r 9y ago
        The internet was a special case simply because it made it possible to do a better job of predicting your interests. At that point it became an arms race because you didn't want to spend on ads that were less effective than your competitor's. If we went back to content-based advertising those ad dollars wouldn't disappear, the distribution would just change.
      - ThorAndZeus 9y ago
        Very good point indeed. And that is how the publishing industry used to do with segmented magazines. Each publication built their own reader's profile and ad agencies would chose a publication over another based on who they would like to target. That is a much more ethical approach, in my opinion.
        grigjd3 9y ago
        This still happens with online ads, but supply quality matters. Location of an ad, quality of the domain (ESPN is very good value). But roughly 100 junk auctions come in (no bidder) for every ok auction (single bid reduces to floor) and just a tenth of that represents a good location (bids drive the price above the floor). So yes, people still hit up espn's college football pages with truck ads and the Washington post got targeted for ads by the Bahraini embassy trying to drum up support during their spat with Saudi Arabia.
    - JadeNB 9y ago
      > They can still make money off ad revenue, they'll just have to think of a way to do it without compromising the user's privacy. Look, let's not get drastic. Obviously the first step is to whine about it, and behave as if the user's respect for privacy is tantamount to theft. Ooh, maybe try getting some laws passed criminalising ad blocking! (I am not sure whether that is implausibly ridiculous or a simple description of facts.)
    - ucaetano 9y ago
      Sure, but they would only make a fraction of what they make today, most creators would go out of business and most free services would be shut down.
      - nradov 9y ago
        That would be an acceptable outcome.
        ucaetano 9y ago
        Reduced economic activity, increased unemployment and poverty is for you an acceptable outcome so that you personally don't have to see ads? Wow...
        AlexandrB 9y ago
        > Reduced economic activity, increased unemployment and poverty "Won't someone PLEASE think of the children!!!!" There are already non-ad-supported funding alternatives for small creators (like Patreon). Maybe the loss of an ad-supported web would finally create sufficient interest in development of micropayment and microfunding services to help the rest. Edit: and maybe we can finally rid the web of clickbait and Taboola-style garbage content.
        ucaetano 9y ago
        It wouldn't work. Ads work because you're trading something that is worth more to the publisher than to you. Let's imagine a utility currency called bananas. A piece of your attention is worth 0 bananas to you. But it is worth 10 bananas to a publisher. The cost of creating and serving you a piece of content is 5 bananas to the publisher, and the value of it to you is 2 bananas. If there were no ads, you'd be willing to pay 2 bananas to the publisher, which would not cover the cost. Therefore, the publisher and content creators would go out of business. You wouldn't be willing to pay the full cost (5 bananas), because the content isn't worth that much to you. Outome: You: 0 bananas Publisher: 0 bananas By seeing the ad, you generate 10 bananas of value to the publisher and content creator, while you get 2 bananas of value by receiving the content. Outcome: You: 2 bananas Publisher: 10 bananas Direct funding will never fully replace ad revenue.
  - wadkar 9y ago
    Will paywalls assure privacy? Will paying for content guarantee no tracking JavaScript (I’m looking at you Google Analytics). How many would be willing to pay for a simple non-js HTML that’s just plain content?
    - lern_too_spel 9y ago
      With a paywall, the news site gets you to log in, which gives them a first party cookie and a way to track you cross-device that breaks ITP — if you pay for news, you likely read it every day. They're not going to overlook that additional source of income just because you pay them, just like print newspapers didn't keep ads out of subscribers' newspapers.
  - letsgetphysITal 9y ago
    I'm fine with advertising; I see it every day on TV, in magazines, as I walk down the street. What the ad networks want, though, is pervasive, persistent, personally identifiable cross-domain tracking across the entire WWW. Obnoxious and unskippable autoplaying videos. Obnoxious, garish popups. 1/5 of the on screen real estate to be advertising often only loosely related to the content, more often than not totally disinteresting to the reader, and potentially serving up malware via their active content. No. Apple is doing the right thing, and the networks brought it on themselves. I have ZERO sympathy, and anyone who relies on their parasitic behaviour to exist doesn't really offer any value worth paying for anyway. I bet content becomes meaningful enough to be worth paying for, as the rest will die.
    - clarkenheim 9y ago
      I don't necessarily think this is true. Advertisers want to be able to attribute revenue to the types of ads that they show, that way they can spend less money on advertising and focus it on the channels which actually work for them. Cookies are the best way of attributing online ads to online sales. TL;DR they want effective attribution, not to wreck your browsing experience.
      - jtbayly 9y ago
        Sure. They want effective attribution, because that leads to more effective ads. But they are also perfectly willing to do any and all of those other things to get "effective ads." Those other things mean that the next big data hack/leak won't be your SSN & DOB, but your SSN, DOB, and porn preference.
    - geocar 9y ago
      > What the ad networks want... What advertisers want is a real, credible KPI. When it's television, and you can show evidence that 2m people watch this program, so sponsoring gets you 2m of your target audience (or whatever you want to argue). With online, there are few web pages that get 2m people to read them in a day... and surely there's some effect from all those other sites out there. Some of them are even niche, so they might be a hard audience to get... Ad networks offer "all those other sites", and since you can't verify that the 50 people who went to that web page aren't included in the 20 people who read that other web page without "cross-domain tracking" you can't piggy-back on that argument being made in Television. Then you've got the second-screen phenomenon: Few people had two televisions in the same room, but almost everyone has at least two screens. Did I get this part of my target audience on their phone or on the desktop. Choices are, buy everyone twice (halving the advertising budget), or be a little more efficient: Ad networks know what they'd prefer, so they want that tracking to personally identify you now. These ad networks are the ones convincing advertisers they need a super mega cookie to track everything. And so on.
  - oneeyedpigeon 9y ago
    Quite aside from other arguments, there was plenty of free content before advertisers caught onto the www, and there's still quite a bit to be found.
  - jumpman500 9y ago
    I would be happy to deal with more paywalls. Anytime there is an ad free version of an app I'll buy it. I've even started paying for most of the newspapers I regular. I think we could see a huge improvement in online content quality if people started paying for stuff they like with real money, rather than paying by being distracted by ads.
    - epicide 9y ago
      Exactly. There is a huge jump in quality of content when you are trying to get users to pay for your work rather than just trying to just get enough people to click on it. It requires you to actually deliver on your promise. Sustained interaction and user satisfaction require more thought process than just slapping a clickbait title on something. In reality, clickbait titles work all too well. Will we lose some good businesses and content creators? Most definitely, but the good (and lucky) ones will adapt and it sets a MUCH better model for future creators.
  - romanovcode 9y ago
    I rather pay for quality and then get free shit.
  - epicide 9y ago
    I would rather have content creators competing for my money and my satisfaction rather than JUST my initial interest and attention.
  - ThorAndZeus 9y ago
    I much rather pay (I already do) for quality, non-bullshit, level headed content than consume lots of meaningless articles that server as click bait.
  - scarface74 9y ago
    I pay for Netflix, Hulu's ad free tier, and CBS's ad free tier. I would pay for content on the web I find compelling. But these days I get most of my content from podcasts. Their ads are more relevant, less intrusive and I can press a button on my headphones or in my car to do a 30 second skip. But usually I'll listen to an ad read by a new sponsor. It's a win-win. The cpm's for podcast are much better than for the web or even YouTube.
  - colmvp 9y ago
    Fine by me. I pay for various subscriptions ranging from Spotify, to creators on Patreon, to streamers on Twitch.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Fine by me, the guy at the newspaper stand doesn't give me the magazines and books for free.
  - ashark 9y ago
    Considering we're in an unprecedented content boom, this would harm me not at all and might even help. The free content might go back to being good stuff from enthusiasts rather than SEO-gaming junk. Signal-to-noise might improve. Interoperable standards for services like messaging might start to matter again.
  - diffeomorphism 9y ago
    Who suggested anything about "no ad revenue"? Currently invasive advertising is better payed. However, there is no reason to believe that prices will stay the same if all advertisers are forced to satisfy some reasonable privacy standards. That is what is being suggested, not abolishing all forms of advertisement.
  - syrrim 9y ago
    You're on a free website that has no (explicit) ads right now.
    - logfromblammo 9y ago
      Rather than pay someone else to rent their user-tracking advertising system, YC built a platform where their target audience comes to them--sometimes compulsively. The influencers and evangelists among us can then multiply awareness to different audiences on their own platforms. Whenever they want to advertise a YC business, they can just pin a story to the front page for a few hours. It's smart, subtle, seamlessly non-intrusive, and one of the better advertising experiences (relative to other ad-delivery systems), in my opinion. If you haven't noticed, you need to tune your detector a bit closer to the noise floor.
  - naravara 9y ago
    >No ad revenue, no free content. Get ready for paywalls everywhere. I'm fine with that. Let the media get its money by providing content that I like and want to pay for instead of by trying to game social media clicks. Most of the "content" online is the reading equivalent of junk-food anyway. Besides, there is a version of an ad supported economy that is actually respectful towards your users. You just do sponsored posts and unobtrusive banners. That's fine for small time outfits. The big barrier with paying for content isn't that I can't part with the change to read an article that piques my interest. It's that I don't want to hand over payment information to any random website. Both for security reasons and because it's a giant hassle. Fix that problem and you're good.
  - mveew2 9y ago
    No free content, no buzzfeed / huffington post / breitbart garbage. Sounds good to me! If your content is so shitty that nobody would pay to view it, then it's worthless.
  - larkeith 9y ago
    Twenty years of nearly ad-free internet prove this sentiment utterly inaccurate.
  - tannhaeuser 9y ago
    To hell with "free" content if the price to pay is erosion of privacy or outright mass surveillance, concentration in the hands of very few, manipulative click- and flamebait and addictive consumption of digital media to the detriment of quality journalists/authors and other creatives.
  - duckfruit 9y ago
    Free content, sure. But also ads for penile enhancements and dialog boxes that go "Congratulations! You've won $100,000 in Amazon gift cards! Click here quick [obvious phishing link] to claim your prize!". Scams, pure and simple. Not claiming that tracking prevention is going to solve these problems, but any move that at least attempts to reign in the worst excesses of a scummy industry is a step in the right direction IMHO. Anil Dash had a good thread about this recently, and he puts it much better than I: https://twitter.com/anildash/status/949476770922844161 https://twitter.com/anildash/status/949476770922844161
  - nathanaldensr 9y ago
    I don't need to get ready; most content on the WWW is trash, anyway.
  - brisance 9y ago
    Have you not experienced the internet in the 90s? There were little to no ads, content was free. Signal-to-noise ratio was through the roof.
    - username223 9y ago
      Ah, for the days when "internet celebrities" had day jobs... These days, sadly, they mostly just "productize content and brand engagement for maximum revenue stream conversion."
Apreche 9y ago
It's a shame their revenue only got cut by 1/5 and not 1/1.
- ucaetano 9y ago
  Yeah, that would be great, almost all free content and most free services on the web would disappear! Talk about a lose-lose situation.
  - sp332 9y ago
    If you don't like a service enough to pay for it, do you really like it that much?
    - ucaetano 9y ago
      Why does it matter how much I like a service? Also, not everyone has enough money to pay for a service, the rest of 7B people of the world isn't as rich as hacker news readers.
      - sp332 9y ago
        Sure, a sponsorship or freemium model would cover that though. After all if the users don't have that much money to begin with, advertisers are already wasting their money. And if you don't care about a service, why care if it goes away?
        ucaetano 9y ago
        > Sure, a sponsorship or freemium model would cover that though. No, it wouldn't. It would only cover a small fraction of creators, and definitely not enough with money. Your attention is worth far more than the cost of the content/service to the advertisers. And the service is worth to you far more than your attention. It is a trade where value is generated to both sides: you provide your attention, which is worth almost nothing to you, and receive a service in return. > And if you don't care about a service, why care if it goes away? Caring and liking are different. I hate my ISP, but it would be even worse if it went away.
michaelbuckbee 9y ago
I think you have to keep in mind that this isn't particularly benevolence, but ecosystem pruning. Apple would prefer that everything be conducted in apps on mobile where they can take a 30% cut of initial sale and IAP revenue and not on the open web where most of these ads take place.
- prepend 9y ago
  I like how you accurately frame this not as benevolence but just as Apple applying their goals that are different from advertisers. But I’m happy with this as I think Apple’s goals are more in alignment with my own as a user. I don’t expect Apple to support me altruistically, but currently their model of charging a lot for hardware so user data across the web is not necessary for them is one that allows for high levels of user privacy.
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    > But I’m happy with this as I think Apple’s goals are more in alignment with my own as a user. Except that Apple having a monopoly on the interactions means they would extract monopolistic rents from the value chain, which will be paid, yep, by you. Apple wants to kill the open web, and charge everyone 30% or topline to access their "users". The best way to do it is to hit the web on the pocket: ad revenues.
    - ThorAndZeus 9y ago
      But it also comes down to trust. I would rather "trust" (in a sense that Apple's business model does not explicitly benefits from selling my user data) than any other business. And yes, I would much rather pay for any service than have it for "free".
      - musage 9y ago
        To me "trust" is an absolute thing; it comes in degrees, but the anchor is absolute, and in you. "rather trust" in contrast is relative and something entirely different. Yeah, sometimes we have to bite bullets or choose poisons, but I'd still set apart from things I really like and want to see prosper in the world. For me, not collecting data warrants trust, not whatever mental gymnastics involving "collecting data, but". If that data is vital for companies or applications beyond a certain scale, then I don't trust companies or applications beyond a certain scale, and would prefer to see them all pruned by consumers using their brains to vote with their wallets. Some behemoths so desperately want a world in which they're vital, to me that's a world doomed to die in important ways. That's not aimed at Apple, but among tech companies, they don't even make my list of considerations for top N thousand I like or trust. Not to mention companies and organizations in general. But more importantly it's not like I have to chose whom of a bunch of shady fucks I trust most. If I don't trust any of them, that's fine with me, too. As for business, I like the people at my local bakery. I trust them with bread, I guess, and I know when they smile they mean it. Those people have stature to me, and the bigger a company is, the more pervasive marketing is in it, the more it resembles a lot of tiny people playing big person. I don't trust that, and I laugh when those then put out marketing to make themselves seem 0.1% as cool as random individual people are to me, to whom the thought of being cool doesn't even occur. True, Apple might be less of a POS than its direct siblings, but that's still a rounding error in the grand scheme of things. I'd say we'll outright settle for one or several of them and the precedents they set at our own peril. Sorry for the rant, please don't take this as some sort of violent disagreement with you, I was really just ranting. But it does sicken me how far we fell.
AdmiralAsshat 9y ago
They said the same thing when browsers started blocking pop-ups. The advertising industry will survive.
- sabman83 9y ago
  It will survive but what it needs is to re-think how they show ads and make them less intrusive. So this is a good thing.
paulus_magnus2 9y ago
Can someone from the AD industry list a few (3 or more) legitimate uses for ‘pervasive’ tracking.
- ucaetano 9y ago
  Improving ad targeting and therefore reducing non-productive ads, generating more revenue for creators. The better ads are, the more revenue they will generate for content creators.
  - sp332 9y ago
    That's true to a point. If ad targeting gets too good, users "find this creepy" and start using more ad blocking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Targeted_advertising#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Targeted_advertising#Controver...
- Avamander 9y ago
  Not from ad industry, I'm just seriously curious who visits my site.
  - user5994461 9y ago
    You don't need cross site and cross browser trackings to see the visits on your site.
samsonradu 9y ago
Pop the champagne bottle on this news. The ad industry has been consistently sucking money out of smaller content producers and consolidated behemoths like FB and Google. Apple being the only browser player who can afford to do such a move, how is this not good news? Edit Waiting for Microsoft to move next
- clarkenheim 9y ago
  The features in Safari only harms the smaller companies who's domain is not in the visited sites list. the behemoths like Google who always have a first party cookie dont have a problem with the feature and therefore get even more control over online advertising.
  - samsonradu 9y ago
    I agree that it harms smaller companies (though some are not that small), but I see this as a big step in the right direction. I think the big players can only be stopped by legal means anyway.
    - ThorAndZeus 9y ago
      I agree this is definitely a step in the right direction. At very least it (hopefully) makes the public at large aware of the issue.
  - scarface74 9y ago
    Not if people install a content blocker in Safari. Especially since the same blockers also work in the newer WKWebView that's embedded into apps.
    - goalieca 9y ago
      Highly recommend installing Firefox focus. It will integrate its blockers into safari.
    - eridius 9y ago
zouhair 9y ago
What would happen if ads were illegal?
- ucaetano 9y ago
  The vast majority of content providers would go out of business, and product discovery would largely disappear.
  - nradov 9y ago
    There are many channels for product discovery other than advertising. Like do you ever talk to your friends?
  - chopin 9y ago
    For the first one, that might be a net win. For the second one, it would be more inconvenient. But there has been an era before the internet and I was doing just fine then.
    - ucaetano 9y ago
      > For the first one, that might be a net win. Yeah, I'm sure that reducing economic output and driving a lot of creators out of business reducing in increased unemployment and poverty will be a net win for everyone! Wow, can't believe what I'm actually reading... > But there has been an era before the internet and I was doing just fine then. With ads.
- epicide 9y ago
  What counts as an ad and what does not? There are obvious differences, but it is sometimes more subtle.
- vijayr 9y ago
  Here is an experiment that seems to have gone well (banning outdoor advertising) https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secrets-sao-paulo-uncovered-outdoor-advertising-ban/ https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secret...
retSava 9y ago
Fun anecdote: my friends christmas gift for his wife was revealed pre-christmas. He bought a trip to London and a particular theater visit that had some special significance to her. But, he was doing all the planning on their shared computer so it started showing ads for this, so she added A, B, and C and in the end wasn't very surprised on christmas eve (still happy though).
- scarface74 9y ago
  So private browsing isn't just for porn?
  - ascagnel_ 9y ago
    That wouldn't matter -- there are ways to fingerprint a browser/PC across sessions and into private browsing modes. https://medium.com/@ravielakshmanan/web-browser-uniqueness-and-fingerprinting-7eac3c381805 https://medium.com/@ravielakshmanan/web-browser-uniqueness-a...
    - user5994461 9y ago
      Last I recall, it requires javascript or flash to generate unique fingerprints reliably. Noscript or umatrix should protect you.
hardwaresofton 9y ago
I wonder if it's possible to make an opt-in ad network that could take the place of what existed before. Is there any way ad-supported monetization strategies and the free/open web can co-exist? While the current system is indeed terrible (buggy, overbearing ads taking valuable bandwidth and screen space, pervasive tracking, etc) is what we want really an arms race between ad companies and the rest of the internet? As much as I dislike overbearing ads and marketing, a "free" web should enable enable monetization strategies I like as well as ones I don't like. Could an opt-in ad network work? Let's say you like the work of some content creator -- is there no ad network currently that you can go into, register preferences, allow/add the cookie (maybe download a browser plugin that inserts it for you on registered sites), and enable you to pay the content creator by way of watching an ad from time to time? Even something that did a monthly fee (like twitch) for just any kind of content? Surely this exists already and I just haven't heard of it yet -- the only thing similar I can think of is Flattr/Patreon.
golergka 9y ago
Once again, free market solves the problem more efficiently than any regulation would: Apple sees that users needs privacy, uses it's position to capitalize on that, everybody's happy and users who don't care about it that much (like me) are free to choose other phone manufacturers and pay less.
supreme_sublime 9y ago
I think (well, hope) that internet content creators will start to figure out different monetization strategies. Do online ads even show any kind of ROI? I suppose they must, but I'm curious what kind of numbers they actually get. It seems a lot of the tracking that is happening is in an effort for ad network companies to show their value. I'm hoping that eventually advertisers will realize that it isn't really worth their money to continue throwing money into the black hole that is internet ads.
holydude 9y ago
I am very much against regulations a la what EU is doing but at the same time I acknowledge that monopolies are evil and bad. There is a reason countries have antimonopoly laws and it puzzles me why we do not have a solution yet to fight against the global monopolies like Google. I mean this is something that obviously free market cannot solve on its own.
staunch 9y ago
Designing your company so that you share your customer's incentives is a major source of Apple's success. Facebook, Google, and Microsoft don't seem to even grasp the concept.
- mikestew 9y ago
  More and more I'm reminded of the scene from the movie The Big Short: "I'll do the deal, but I need one thing from you: tell me how you're going to fuck me." I just plain dumped FB, but every time I have an interaction with Google, Microsoft, and many others, that scene comes to mind. Only unlike the movie, I'm never going to get that answer; it's up to me to just guess, and my guesses are not flattering to the company. Whereas when I spend money with Apple, AFAICT it's a simple, "give us some money, and we'll give you software, a service, or a physical object that we and you hope will solve a problem for you. Then we're done." Sure, Apple costs extra, but I'm willing to pay extra as long as our transactions stay the way they are.
  - jjeaff 9y ago
    Purposely slowing down your Apple devices so that you need to buy a newest one every season doesn't strike you as a way apple is screwing you?
    - abc_lisper 9y ago
      With Android we don't even know why the phone slows down. Do we? Apple has since apologized for it and you can be reasonably sure it won't happen again. Even so, the damage done to you is known and contained, where as with others, only God knows.
      - floatingatoll 9y ago
        Apple has apologized for failing to communicate the slowdown clearly in device UX and in KB articles. Apple has not apologized for the solution itself, and will continue to slow devices if necessary to protect them from unsafe battery operations on dying batteries. This is excellent IMO, because it combines technical competence (device at 15% battery must operate until 0%, no matter what the cost to performance) with communication competence (should have posted KB article, added phone UX, we’re sorry, here’s a $50 apology discount). I wish more companies would follow this approach.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
innocentoldguy 9y ago
Fuck advertisers. The last thing in the world I want to do is pay thousands of dollars for a device/OS/other product, only to have the company not only sell me out to advertisers, but also turn around and waste my time peddling me shit I don't want.
lifeisunfair 9y ago
Costs them? I don't think that's the right expression. More like cuts their income/profits.
tomc1985 9y ago
Good. We need an ad apocalypse
kstrauser 9y ago
> “We also want to work across the industry (ideally including Apple) longer-term to address more robust, cross-device advertising targeting and measurement capabilities that are also consumer friendly.” Just to be clear: you want that. Whatever lies you tell yourself to get to sleep at night, no one outside your parasitic industry wants this. I, for one, absolutely 100% do not want you to target and measure me robustly across devices.
- chrisseaton 9y ago
  > Just to be clear: you want that. Well yeah, they said 'we ... want'. How much clearer do you think they could have stated that? They never said you or anyone else wanted it.
  - rob_b 9y ago
    I believe the goal was to identify the disconnect between what they envision and what the targeted users actually want. I’m in agreement that this is not something that I would want and am glad that the difficulties exist to being with.
  - _sdegutis 9y ago
    Can't speak for GP, but what I took from the quote and GP's response was that the advertising industry is kind of in a monopoly position of being able to screw all consumers over with nobody to reign them in, and now that someone is finally standing up to them and making it every so slightly more inconvenient for them, they're throwing a hissy fit, and that their statement kind of shows that they're well aware of all this and are pretty fine with it actually, and not even really trying to hide it.
    - Freestyler_3 9y ago
      "Criteo, which took advantage of that loophole" You see, even when they get presented with rules, they try to work around them.
  - ajkjk 9y ago
m3kw9 9y ago
It costs them nothing, because there was never any data Apple was sharing. They should look at the differential privacy data Apple was talking about, and maybe that will be better than nothing.
lanevorockz 9y ago
Why would The Guardian be against privacy?
dogweather 9y ago
I like ads that are targeted to my interests. Far, far better to see ads for SaaS tools on Facebook than the standard generic or offensive crap. I help Facebook every chance I get, via the UI to signal when I like an ad vs. when I don't. Same with Carbon ads. If all Internet advertising looked like that I wouldn't care at all.
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  I dislike targeted ads as they are most likely to influence my behavior.
un_montagnard 9y ago
I'm wondering how long we'll have to wait before iAd 2.0 is launched as the only ad service offering tracking on Apple devices.
londons_explore 9y ago
I used to work for an ad company, and a frequent thing missed in these articles is that the ad company isn't the only one who looses out. Ad companies take some percentage of revenue as a fee. If they're loosing out, then three other people are also loosing out: * The advertiser, who no longer gets their ad in front of the right audience. Now they're stuck advertising their potentially excellent product to people who have no use/desire for it. Selling their product now costs more, and it might make an otherwise profitable product not work out. * The content producer. The person who made that webpage/video/funny meme. They only did it for ad revenue. Now that revenue is reduced, they'll have to make do with a shittier camera or will have to get a side job. * You. You now have to put up with more lower value ads. They tend to be less useful to you (you might think normal ads aren't useful, but these are even more annoying and even less useful). That on top of the shittier content and fewer worse products available to buy from the above two reasons.
- electrograv 9y ago
  > You. You now have to put up with more lower value ads. Not if I block all ads :D This news may be tragedy to the ad companies that profit off of blatant and forceful violation of users' privacy, but it is truly wonderful news worthy of celebration to the average web browser. It sounds like you're saying that when users demand privacy, ad companies will punish them with more a obnoxious ad experience. Can you not see how this is literally an "abusive relationship" between the user and the advertisers?
- inetknght 9y ago
  > They only did it for ad revenue Most only did it for revenue and ad revenue just happens to be the easiest for many. I, for one, have never built a website for the ad money. I get my money through value-add services such as showing what I can do, by showing what I have done; providing software and services to other people so that they can also create their own things and provide help and input. > You now have to put up with more lower value ads No I don't; I use adblockers, like everyone I know. Everyone as in not just developers or tech weenies. Everyone as in normal people with social lives or claim they don't worry about privacy because they have nothing to hide. People don't want their bandwidth (precious bandwidth these days) wasted, they don't want their battery wasted, they don't want their privacy violated. Let's build and promote platforms that empower content developers to get paid for their work through means other than advertisements. Patreon is a great example of that (and I wish I knew of other similar services).
nullroute 9y ago
I'm quite happy with Apple; they are providing a needed service. Ads are one of the top vectors for malware and have been for years. I have a right to not be tracked, my data sold for money (and I get no profit), and generally my privacy invaded. I don't allow it and have not since I was able to understand the threat and mitigate. I run a Pi-hole on my home network and I also run one at work, as I work for a small business. Works like a charm. I also use uBlock Origin, Decentraleyes, Privacy Badger, No Coin and a couple of others on every machine I control. I disallow my browser from sharing data like fonts installed, visited history, etc. I disallow HTTP/S referrer, geo location, network prefetch, and more. I use a proxy server and sometimes a VPN. I prevent WebRTC from leaking my private address schema. What ads? I also run only unix-like operating systems running fully open source software. You can even take advantage of a Pi-hole by passing your phones traffic through your home network even when you're away. Defense in depth to avoid the dreck.
egypturnash 9y ago
Good.
gnicholas 9y ago
> Criteo, one of the largest in the industry, says that the Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) feature for Safari, which holds 15% of the global browser market, is likely to cut its 2018 revenue by more than a fifth compared to projections made before ITP was announced. If Safari is 15% of the browser market, how is this causing a 20% drop in revenue?
- tomjakubowski 9y ago
  Maybe Safari users, in aggregate, are more valuable than the average browser user is to advertisers, on account of Apple device owners leaning wealthier.
  - MichaelMcG 9y ago
    This is exactly the case, while building out our mobile marketing strategies for higher end luxury brands, iPhone/Apple users have a much higher average HHI across the networks and are often worth the "premium" rates. NBCu getting a hold of the Apple inventory was one of the smartest things they have done to offset consumer viewing habits (within key demographics) shifting away from linear towards OTT and Mobile devices.
geuis 9y ago
I find some irony that my content blocker app blocks the guardian’s article about ads.
rhizome 9y ago
I think a more-accurate title would be "Ad companies can make millions with web bugs."
pasbesoin 9y ago
Good
asasidh 9y ago
No one owes these ad companies their business model. They took advantage of the inherent insecure nature of internet and preyed on users all the time.
Torn 9y ago
We really need a new model for the ad economy. Brendan Eich is making some promising steps in the direction with Basic Attention Token (BAT)
Animats 9y ago
What can we do that would cost ad companies billions?
- blub 9y ago
  Stop working for unethical companies like Google, Facebook, Criteo and the thousands others that make money by spying on people. Or at least stop defending those practices, like a certain ucaetano does in this thread. I'm looking into what can be done politically though. Talking on forums doesn't get very far...
- Jerry2 9y ago
  Install AdNauseam: https://adnauseam.io https://adnauseam.io
MaysonL 9y ago
"Advertising technology firm Criteo, one of the largest in the industry, says that the Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) feature for Safari, which holds 15% of the global browser market, is likely to cut its 2018 revenue by more than a fifth compared to projections made before ITP was announced." Wow! A feature which doesn't block ads, in 15% of the browsers, is going to cut over 20% of this poor company's revenue.
hackbinary 9y ago
>> Internet advertising firms are losing hundreds of millions of dollars following the introduction of a new ... Was this number calculated by the same people that calculated that media and software companies loose billions due to piracy?
makecheck 9y ago
These features cannot “cost” ad companies something, any more than my higher fence “costs” thieves in lost opportunities. Ad companies survived with basic magazine-style ads. The only reason they complain now is that they are being forced to shift from “absurd money grab” to “ordinary company profit” for the first time in years. And there are small violins everywhere playing for these whiners.
krutzger 9y ago
I helped a friend set up his new Samsung phone and was surprised to see the browser nagging us about a installing adblockers and anti-trackers. Looks like Samsung too is taking privacy seriously. Happy to see things are improving, it was a wild west for a while...

365 points by oneeyedpigeon 9y ago

nathanaldensr 9y ago

I think I speak for many when I say: "Cry me a river."

tootie 9y ago
No ad revenue, no free content. Get ready for paywalls everywhere.
- JadeNB 9y ago
  > No ad revenue, no free content. Get ready for paywalls everywhere. Well, paywalls lots of places. There'll be less incentive for clickfarming sites, and some-to-many-to-all of the big sites will probably go for-pay, but lots of smaller sites will still provide content because people like to communicate with the world. It doesn't sound like a bad thing to me—especially if we're being told that the trade-off is paying for content, versus giving up rights to our privacy.
- chimmy_chonga 9y ago
  They can still make money off ad revenue, they'll just have to think of a way to do it without compromising the user's privacy.
  - wadkar 9y ago
    Good point, the ads could be content driven rather than user profile driven.
    - openasocket 9y ago
      I really really think this is the way to go. When I'm on programming websites I want ads from cloud providers, and when I'm wood working websites I want ads for belt sanders. I feel like it makes more sense to display ads that match up with the content of the web page anyway, it means the viewer might be in a more receptive mood for that type of product. Not to mention it avoids the entire issue of user privacy and the difficulty of tracking users. It's also how all advertising has been done since the beginning of time, and I don't see why the Internet has to be such a special case.
      - mark-r 9y ago
        The internet was a special case simply because it made it possible to do a better job of predicting your interests. At that point it became an arms race because you didn't want to spend on ads that were less effective than your competitor's. If we went back to content-based advertising those ad dollars wouldn't disappear, the distribution would just change.
    - ThorAndZeus 9y ago
      Very good point indeed. And that is how the publishing industry used to do with segmented magazines. Each publication built their own reader's profile and ad agencies would chose a publication over another based on who they would like to target. That is a much more ethical approach, in my opinion.
      - grigjd3 9y ago
        This still happens with online ads, but supply quality matters. Location of an ad, quality of the domain (ESPN is very good value). But roughly 100 junk auctions come in (no bidder) for every ok auction (single bid reduces to floor) and just a tenth of that represents a good location (bids drive the price above the floor). So yes, people still hit up espn's college football pages with truck ads and the Washington post got targeted for ads by the Bahraini embassy trying to drum up support during their spat with Saudi Arabia.
  - JadeNB 9y ago
    > They can still make money off ad revenue, they'll just have to think of a way to do it without compromising the user's privacy. Look, let's not get drastic. Obviously the first step is to whine about it, and behave as if the user's respect for privacy is tantamount to theft. Ooh, maybe try getting some laws passed criminalising ad blocking! (I am not sure whether that is implausibly ridiculous or a simple description of facts.)
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    Sure, but they would only make a fraction of what they make today, most creators would go out of business and most free services would be shut down.
    - nradov 9y ago
      That would be an acceptable outcome.
      - ucaetano 9y ago
        Reduced economic activity, increased unemployment and poverty is for you an acceptable outcome so that you personally don't have to see ads? Wow...
        AlexandrB 9y ago
        > Reduced economic activity, increased unemployment and poverty "Won't someone PLEASE think of the children!!!!" There are already non-ad-supported funding alternatives for small creators (like Patreon). Maybe the loss of an ad-supported web would finally create sufficient interest in development of micropayment and microfunding services to help the rest. Edit: and maybe we can finally rid the web of clickbait and Taboola-style garbage content.
        ucaetano 9y ago
        It wouldn't work. Ads work because you're trading something that is worth more to the publisher than to you. Let's imagine a utility currency called bananas. A piece of your attention is worth 0 bananas to you. But it is worth 10 bananas to a publisher. The cost of creating and serving you a piece of content is 5 bananas to the publisher, and the value of it to you is 2 bananas. If there were no ads, you'd be willing to pay 2 bananas to the publisher, which would not cover the cost. Therefore, the publisher and content creators would go out of business. You wouldn't be willing to pay the full cost (5 bananas), because the content isn't worth that much to you. Outome: You: 0 bananas Publisher: 0 bananas By seeing the ad, you generate 10 bananas of value to the publisher and content creator, while you get 2 bananas of value by receiving the content. Outcome: You: 2 bananas Publisher: 10 bananas Direct funding will never fully replace ad revenue.
- wadkar 9y ago
  Will paywalls assure privacy? Will paying for content guarantee no tracking JavaScript (I’m looking at you Google Analytics). How many would be willing to pay for a simple non-js HTML that’s just plain content?
  - lern_too_spel 9y ago
    With a paywall, the news site gets you to log in, which gives them a first party cookie and a way to track you cross-device that breaks ITP — if you pay for news, you likely read it every day. They're not going to overlook that additional source of income just because you pay them, just like print newspapers didn't keep ads out of subscribers' newspapers.
- letsgetphysITal 9y ago
  I'm fine with advertising; I see it every day on TV, in magazines, as I walk down the street. What the ad networks want, though, is pervasive, persistent, personally identifiable cross-domain tracking across the entire WWW. Obnoxious and unskippable autoplaying videos. Obnoxious, garish popups. 1/5 of the on screen real estate to be advertising often only loosely related to the content, more often than not totally disinteresting to the reader, and potentially serving up malware via their active content. No. Apple is doing the right thing, and the networks brought it on themselves. I have ZERO sympathy, and anyone who relies on their parasitic behaviour to exist doesn't really offer any value worth paying for anyway. I bet content becomes meaningful enough to be worth paying for, as the rest will die.
  - clarkenheim 9y ago
    I don't necessarily think this is true. Advertisers want to be able to attribute revenue to the types of ads that they show, that way they can spend less money on advertising and focus it on the channels which actually work for them. Cookies are the best way of attributing online ads to online sales. TL;DR they want effective attribution, not to wreck your browsing experience.
    - jtbayly 9y ago
      Sure. They want effective attribution, because that leads to more effective ads. But they are also perfectly willing to do any and all of those other things to get "effective ads." Those other things mean that the next big data hack/leak won't be your SSN & DOB, but your SSN, DOB, and porn preference.
  - geocar 9y ago
    > What the ad networks want... What advertisers want is a real, credible KPI. When it's television, and you can show evidence that 2m people watch this program, so sponsoring gets you 2m of your target audience (or whatever you want to argue). With online, there are few web pages that get 2m people to read them in a day... and surely there's some effect from all those other sites out there. Some of them are even niche, so they might be a hard audience to get... Ad networks offer "all those other sites", and since you can't verify that the 50 people who went to that web page aren't included in the 20 people who read that other web page without "cross-domain tracking" you can't piggy-back on that argument being made in Television. Then you've got the second-screen phenomenon: Few people had two televisions in the same room, but almost everyone has at least two screens. Did I get this part of my target audience on their phone or on the desktop. Choices are, buy everyone twice (halving the advertising budget), or be a little more efficient: Ad networks know what they'd prefer, so they want that tracking to personally identify you now. These ad networks are the ones convincing advertisers they need a super mega cookie to track everything. And so on.
- oneeyedpigeon 9y ago
  Quite aside from other arguments, there was plenty of free content before advertisers caught onto the www, and there's still quite a bit to be found.
- jumpman500 9y ago
  I would be happy to deal with more paywalls. Anytime there is an ad free version of an app I'll buy it. I've even started paying for most of the newspapers I regular. I think we could see a huge improvement in online content quality if people started paying for stuff they like with real money, rather than paying by being distracted by ads.
  - epicide 9y ago
    Exactly. There is a huge jump in quality of content when you are trying to get users to pay for your work rather than just trying to just get enough people to click on it. It requires you to actually deliver on your promise. Sustained interaction and user satisfaction require more thought process than just slapping a clickbait title on something. In reality, clickbait titles work all too well. Will we lose some good businesses and content creators? Most definitely, but the good (and lucky) ones will adapt and it sets a MUCH better model for future creators.
- romanovcode 9y ago
  I rather pay for quality and then get free shit.
- epicide 9y ago
  I would rather have content creators competing for my money and my satisfaction rather than JUST my initial interest and attention.
- ThorAndZeus 9y ago
  I much rather pay (I already do) for quality, non-bullshit, level headed content than consume lots of meaningless articles that server as click bait.
- scarface74 9y ago
  I pay for Netflix, Hulu's ad free tier, and CBS's ad free tier. I would pay for content on the web I find compelling. But these days I get most of my content from podcasts. Their ads are more relevant, less intrusive and I can press a button on my headphones or in my car to do a 30 second skip. But usually I'll listen to an ad read by a new sponsor. It's a win-win. The cpm's for podcast are much better than for the web or even YouTube.
- colmvp 9y ago
  Fine by me. I pay for various subscriptions ranging from Spotify, to creators on Patreon, to streamers on Twitch.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Fine by me, the guy at the newspaper stand doesn't give me the magazines and books for free.
- ashark 9y ago
  Considering we're in an unprecedented content boom, this would harm me not at all and might even help. The free content might go back to being good stuff from enthusiasts rather than SEO-gaming junk. Signal-to-noise might improve. Interoperable standards for services like messaging might start to matter again.
- diffeomorphism 9y ago
  Who suggested anything about "no ad revenue"? Currently invasive advertising is better payed. However, there is no reason to believe that prices will stay the same if all advertisers are forced to satisfy some reasonable privacy standards. That is what is being suggested, not abolishing all forms of advertisement.
- syrrim 9y ago
  You're on a free website that has no (explicit) ads right now.
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    Rather than pay someone else to rent their user-tracking advertising system, YC built a platform where their target audience comes to them--sometimes compulsively. The influencers and evangelists among us can then multiply awareness to different audiences on their own platforms. Whenever they want to advertise a YC business, they can just pin a story to the front page for a few hours. It's smart, subtle, seamlessly non-intrusive, and one of the better advertising experiences (relative to other ad-delivery systems), in my opinion. If you haven't noticed, you need to tune your detector a bit closer to the noise floor.
- naravara 9y ago
  >No ad revenue, no free content. Get ready for paywalls everywhere. I'm fine with that. Let the media get its money by providing content that I like and want to pay for instead of by trying to game social media clicks. Most of the "content" online is the reading equivalent of junk-food anyway. Besides, there is a version of an ad supported economy that is actually respectful towards your users. You just do sponsored posts and unobtrusive banners. That's fine for small time outfits. The big barrier with paying for content isn't that I can't part with the change to read an article that piques my interest. It's that I don't want to hand over payment information to any random website. Both for security reasons and because it's a giant hassle. Fix that problem and you're good.
- mveew2 9y ago
  No free content, no buzzfeed / huffington post / breitbart garbage. Sounds good to me! If your content is so shitty that nobody would pay to view it, then it's worthless.
- larkeith 9y ago
  Twenty years of nearly ad-free internet prove this sentiment utterly inaccurate.
- tannhaeuser 9y ago
  To hell with "free" content if the price to pay is erosion of privacy or outright mass surveillance, concentration in the hands of very few, manipulative click- and flamebait and addictive consumption of digital media to the detriment of quality journalists/authors and other creatives.
- duckfruit 9y ago
  Free content, sure. But also ads for penile enhancements and dialog boxes that go "Congratulations! You've won $100,000 in Amazon gift cards! Click here quick [obvious phishing link] to claim your prize!". Scams, pure and simple. Not claiming that tracking prevention is going to solve these problems, but any move that at least attempts to reign in the worst excesses of a scummy industry is a step in the right direction IMHO. Anil Dash had a good thread about this recently, and he puts it much better than I: https://twitter.com/anildash/status/949476770922844161 https://twitter.com/anildash/status/949476770922844161
- nathanaldensr 9y ago
  I don't need to get ready; most content on the WWW is trash, anyway.
- brisance 9y ago
  Have you not experienced the internet in the 90s? There were little to no ads, content was free. Signal-to-noise ratio was through the roof.
  - username223 9y ago
    Ah, for the days when "internet celebrities" had day jobs... These days, sadly, they mostly just "productize content and brand engagement for maximum revenue stream conversion."

Apreche 9y ago

It's a shame their revenue only got cut by 1/5 and not 1/1.

ucaetano 9y ago
Yeah, that would be great, almost all free content and most free services on the web would disappear! Talk about a lose-lose situation.
- sp332 9y ago
  If you don't like a service enough to pay for it, do you really like it that much?
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    Why does it matter how much I like a service? Also, not everyone has enough money to pay for a service, the rest of 7B people of the world isn't as rich as hacker news readers.
    - sp332 9y ago
      Sure, a sponsorship or freemium model would cover that though. After all if the users don't have that much money to begin with, advertisers are already wasting their money. And if you don't care about a service, why care if it goes away?
      - ucaetano 9y ago
        > Sure, a sponsorship or freemium model would cover that though. No, it wouldn't. It would only cover a small fraction of creators, and definitely not enough with money. Your attention is worth far more than the cost of the content/service to the advertisers. And the service is worth to you far more than your attention. It is a trade where value is generated to both sides: you provide your attention, which is worth almost nothing to you, and receive a service in return. > And if you don't care about a service, why care if it goes away? Caring and liking are different. I hate my ISP, but it would be even worse if it went away.

michaelbuckbee 9y ago

I think you have to keep in mind that this isn't particularly benevolence, but ecosystem pruning. Apple would prefer that everything be conducted in apps on mobile where they can take a 30% cut of initial sale and IAP revenue and not on the open web where most of these ads take place.

prepend 9y ago
I like how you accurately frame this not as benevolence but just as Apple applying their goals that are different from advertisers. But I’m happy with this as I think Apple’s goals are more in alignment with my own as a user. I don’t expect Apple to support me altruistically, but currently their model of charging a lot for hardware so user data across the web is not necessary for them is one that allows for high levels of user privacy.
- ucaetano 9y ago
  > But I’m happy with this as I think Apple’s goals are more in alignment with my own as a user. Except that Apple having a monopoly on the interactions means they would extract monopolistic rents from the value chain, which will be paid, yep, by you. Apple wants to kill the open web, and charge everyone 30% or topline to access their "users". The best way to do it is to hit the web on the pocket: ad revenues.
  - ThorAndZeus 9y ago
    But it also comes down to trust. I would rather "trust" (in a sense that Apple's business model does not explicitly benefits from selling my user data) than any other business. And yes, I would much rather pay for any service than have it for "free".
    - musage 9y ago
      To me "trust" is an absolute thing; it comes in degrees, but the anchor is absolute, and in you. "rather trust" in contrast is relative and something entirely different. Yeah, sometimes we have to bite bullets or choose poisons, but I'd still set apart from things I really like and want to see prosper in the world. For me, not collecting data warrants trust, not whatever mental gymnastics involving "collecting data, but". If that data is vital for companies or applications beyond a certain scale, then I don't trust companies or applications beyond a certain scale, and would prefer to see them all pruned by consumers using their brains to vote with their wallets. Some behemoths so desperately want a world in which they're vital, to me that's a world doomed to die in important ways. That's not aimed at Apple, but among tech companies, they don't even make my list of considerations for top N thousand I like or trust. Not to mention companies and organizations in general. But more importantly it's not like I have to chose whom of a bunch of shady fucks I trust most. If I don't trust any of them, that's fine with me, too. As for business, I like the people at my local bakery. I trust them with bread, I guess, and I know when they smile they mean it. Those people have stature to me, and the bigger a company is, the more pervasive marketing is in it, the more it resembles a lot of tiny people playing big person. I don't trust that, and I laugh when those then put out marketing to make themselves seem 0.1% as cool as random individual people are to me, to whom the thought of being cool doesn't even occur. True, Apple might be less of a POS than its direct siblings, but that's still a rounding error in the grand scheme of things. I'd say we'll outright settle for one or several of them and the precedents they set at our own peril. Sorry for the rant, please don't take this as some sort of violent disagreement with you, I was really just ranting. But it does sicken me how far we fell.

AdmiralAsshat 9y ago

They said the same thing when browsers started blocking pop-ups. The advertising industry will survive.

sabman83 9y ago
It will survive but what it needs is to re-think how they show ads and make them less intrusive. So this is a good thing.

paulus_magnus2 9y ago

Can someone from the AD industry list a few (3 or more) legitimate uses for ‘pervasive’ tracking.

ucaetano 9y ago
Improving ad targeting and therefore reducing non-productive ads, generating more revenue for creators. The better ads are, the more revenue they will generate for content creators.
- sp332 9y ago
  That's true to a point. If ad targeting gets too good, users "find this creepy" and start using more ad blocking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Targeted_advertising#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Targeted_advertising#Controver...
Avamander 9y ago
Not from ad industry, I'm just seriously curious who visits my site.
- user5994461 9y ago
  You don't need cross site and cross browser trackings to see the visits on your site.

samsonradu 9y ago

Pop the champagne bottle on this news. The ad industry has been consistently sucking money out of smaller content producers and consolidated behemoths like FB and Google. Apple being the only browser player who can afford to do such a move, how is this not good news? Edit Waiting for Microsoft to move next

clarkenheim 9y ago
The features in Safari only harms the smaller companies who's domain is not in the visited sites list. the behemoths like Google who always have a first party cookie dont have a problem with the feature and therefore get even more control over online advertising.
- samsonradu 9y ago
  I agree that it harms smaller companies (though some are not that small), but I see this as a big step in the right direction. I think the big players can only be stopped by legal means anyway.
  - ThorAndZeus 9y ago
    I agree this is definitely a step in the right direction. At very least it (hopefully) makes the public at large aware of the issue.
- scarface74 9y ago
  Not if people install a content blocker in Safari. Especially since the same blockers also work in the newer WKWebView that's embedded into apps.
  - goalieca 9y ago
    Highly recommend installing Firefox focus. It will integrate its blockers into safari.
  - eridius 9y ago

zouhair 9y ago

What would happen if ads were illegal?

ucaetano 9y ago
The vast majority of content providers would go out of business, and product discovery would largely disappear.
- nradov 9y ago
  There are many channels for product discovery other than advertising. Like do you ever talk to your friends?
- chopin 9y ago
  For the first one, that might be a net win. For the second one, it would be more inconvenient. But there has been an era before the internet and I was doing just fine then.
  - ucaetano 9y ago
    > For the first one, that might be a net win. Yeah, I'm sure that reducing economic output and driving a lot of creators out of business reducing in increased unemployment and poverty will be a net win for everyone! Wow, can't believe what I'm actually reading... > But there has been an era before the internet and I was doing just fine then. With ads.
epicide 9y ago
What counts as an ad and what does not? There are obvious differences, but it is sometimes more subtle.
vijayr 9y ago
Here is an experiment that seems to have gone well (banning outdoor advertising) https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secrets-sao-paulo-uncovered-outdoor-advertising-ban/ https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secret...

retSava 9y ago

Fun anecdote: my friends christmas gift for his wife was revealed pre-christmas. He bought a trip to London and a particular theater visit that had some special significance to her. But, he was doing all the planning on their shared computer so it started showing ads for this, so she added A, B, and C and in the end wasn't very surprised on christmas eve (still happy though).

scarface74 9y ago
So private browsing isn't just for porn?
- ascagnel_ 9y ago
  That wouldn't matter -- there are ways to fingerprint a browser/PC across sessions and into private browsing modes. https://medium.com/@ravielakshmanan/web-browser-uniqueness-and-fingerprinting-7eac3c381805 https://medium.com/@ravielakshmanan/web-browser-uniqueness-a...
  - user5994461 9y ago
    Last I recall, it requires javascript or flash to generate unique fingerprints reliably. Noscript or umatrix should protect you.

hardwaresofton 9y ago

I wonder if it's possible to make an opt-in ad network that could take the place of what existed before. Is there any way ad-supported monetization strategies and the free/open web can co-exist? While the current system is indeed terrible (buggy, overbearing ads taking valuable bandwidth and screen space, pervasive tracking, etc) is what we want really an arms race between ad companies and the rest of the internet? As much as I dislike overbearing ads and marketing, a "free" web should enable enable monetization strategies I like as well as ones I don't like. Could an opt-in ad network work? Let's say you like the work of some content creator -- is there no ad network currently that you can go into, register preferences, allow/add the cookie (maybe download a browser plugin that inserts it for you on registered sites), and enable you to pay the content creator by way of watching an ad from time to time? Even something that did a monthly fee (like twitch) for just any kind of content? Surely this exists already and I just haven't heard of it yet -- the only thing similar I can think of is Flattr/Patreon.

golergka 9y ago

Once again, free market solves the problem more efficiently than any regulation would: Apple sees that users needs privacy, uses it's position to capitalize on that, everybody's happy and users who don't care about it that much (like me) are free to choose other phone manufacturers and pay less.

supreme_sublime 9y ago

I think (well, hope) that internet content creators will start to figure out different monetization strategies. Do online ads even show any kind of ROI? I suppose they must, but I'm curious what kind of numbers they actually get. It seems a lot of the tracking that is happening is in an effort for ad network companies to show their value. I'm hoping that eventually advertisers will realize that it isn't really worth their money to continue throwing money into the black hole that is internet ads.

holydude 9y ago

I am very much against regulations a la what EU is doing but at the same time I acknowledge that monopolies are evil and bad. There is a reason countries have antimonopoly laws and it puzzles me why we do not have a solution yet to fight against the global monopolies like Google. I mean this is something that obviously free market cannot solve on its own.

staunch 9y ago

Designing your company so that you share your customer's incentives is a major source of Apple's success. Facebook, Google, and Microsoft don't seem to even grasp the concept.

mikestew 9y ago
More and more I'm reminded of the scene from the movie The Big Short: "I'll do the deal, but I need one thing from you: tell me how you're going to fuck me." I just plain dumped FB, but every time I have an interaction with Google, Microsoft, and many others, that scene comes to mind. Only unlike the movie, I'm never going to get that answer; it's up to me to just guess, and my guesses are not flattering to the company. Whereas when I spend money with Apple, AFAICT it's a simple, "give us some money, and we'll give you software, a service, or a physical object that we and you hope will solve a problem for you. Then we're done." Sure, Apple costs extra, but I'm willing to pay extra as long as our transactions stay the way they are.
- jjeaff 9y ago
  Purposely slowing down your Apple devices so that you need to buy a newest one every season doesn't strike you as a way apple is screwing you?
  - abc_lisper 9y ago
    With Android we don't even know why the phone slows down. Do we? Apple has since apologized for it and you can be reasonably sure it won't happen again. Even so, the damage done to you is known and contained, where as with others, only God knows.
    - floatingatoll 9y ago
      Apple has apologized for failing to communicate the slowdown clearly in device UX and in KB articles. Apple has not apologized for the solution itself, and will continue to slow devices if necessary to protect them from unsafe battery operations on dying batteries. This is excellent IMO, because it combines technical competence (device at 15% battery must operate until 0%, no matter what the cost to performance) with communication competence (should have posted KB article, added phone UX, we’re sorry, here’s a $50 apology discount). I wish more companies would follow this approach.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

innocentoldguy 9y ago

Fuck advertisers. The last thing in the world I want to do is pay thousands of dollars for a device/OS/other product, only to have the company not only sell me out to advertisers, but also turn around and waste my time peddling me shit I don't want.

lifeisunfair 9y ago

Costs them? I don't think that's the right expression. More like cuts their income/profits.

tomc1985 9y ago

Good. We need an ad apocalypse

kstrauser 9y ago

> “We also want to work across the industry (ideally including Apple) longer-term to address more robust, cross-device advertising targeting and measurement capabilities that are also consumer friendly.” Just to be clear: you want that. Whatever lies you tell yourself to get to sleep at night, no one outside your parasitic industry wants this. I, for one, absolutely 100% do not want you to target and measure me robustly across devices.

chrisseaton 9y ago
> Just to be clear: you want that. Well yeah, they said 'we ... want'. How much clearer do you think they could have stated that? They never said you or anyone else wanted it.
- rob_b 9y ago
  I believe the goal was to identify the disconnect between what they envision and what the targeted users actually want. I’m in agreement that this is not something that I would want and am glad that the difficulties exist to being with.
- _sdegutis 9y ago
  Can't speak for GP, but what I took from the quote and GP's response was that the advertising industry is kind of in a monopoly position of being able to screw all consumers over with nobody to reign them in, and now that someone is finally standing up to them and making it every so slightly more inconvenient for them, they're throwing a hissy fit, and that their statement kind of shows that they're well aware of all this and are pretty fine with it actually, and not even really trying to hide it.
  - Freestyler_3 9y ago
    "Criteo, which took advantage of that loophole" You see, even when they get presented with rules, they try to work around them.
- ajkjk 9y ago

m3kw9 9y ago

It costs them nothing, because there was never any data Apple was sharing. They should look at the differential privacy data Apple was talking about, and maybe that will be better than nothing.

lanevorockz 9y ago

Why would The Guardian be against privacy?

dogweather 9y ago

I like ads that are targeted to my interests. Far, far better to see ads for SaaS tools on Facebook than the standard generic or offensive crap. I help Facebook every chance I get, via the UI to signal when I like an ad vs. when I don't. Same with Carbon ads. If all Internet advertising looked like that I wouldn't care at all.

tonyedgecombe 9y ago
I dislike targeted ads as they are most likely to influence my behavior.

un_montagnard 9y ago

I'm wondering how long we'll have to wait before iAd 2.0 is launched as the only ad service offering tracking on Apple devices.

londons_explore 9y ago

I used to work for an ad company, and a frequent thing missed in these articles is that the ad company isn't the only one who looses out. Ad companies take some percentage of revenue as a fee. If they're loosing out, then three other people are also loosing out: * The advertiser, who no longer gets their ad in front of the right audience. Now they're stuck advertising their potentially excellent product to people who have no use/desire for it. Selling their product now costs more, and it might make an otherwise profitable product not work out. * The content producer. The person who made that webpage/video/funny meme. They only did it for ad revenue. Now that revenue is reduced, they'll have to make do with a shittier camera or will have to get a side job. * You. You now have to put up with more lower value ads. They tend to be less useful to you (you might think normal ads aren't useful, but these are even more annoying and even less useful). That on top of the shittier content and fewer worse products available to buy from the above two reasons.

electrograv 9y ago
> You. You now have to put up with more lower value ads. Not if I block all ads :D This news may be tragedy to the ad companies that profit off of blatant and forceful violation of users' privacy, but it is truly wonderful news worthy of celebration to the average web browser. It sounds like you're saying that when users demand privacy, ad companies will punish them with more a obnoxious ad experience. Can you not see how this is literally an "abusive relationship" between the user and the advertisers?
inetknght 9y ago
> They only did it for ad revenue Most only did it for revenue and ad revenue just happens to be the easiest for many. I, for one, have never built a website for the ad money. I get my money through value-add services such as showing what I can do, by showing what I have done; providing software and services to other people so that they can also create their own things and provide help and input. > You now have to put up with more lower value ads No I don't; I use adblockers, like everyone I know. Everyone as in not just developers or tech weenies. Everyone as in normal people with social lives or claim they don't worry about privacy because they have nothing to hide. People don't want their bandwidth (precious bandwidth these days) wasted, they don't want their battery wasted, they don't want their privacy violated. Let's build and promote platforms that empower content developers to get paid for their work through means other than advertisements. Patreon is a great example of that (and I wish I knew of other similar services).

nullroute 9y ago

I'm quite happy with Apple; they are providing a needed service. Ads are one of the top vectors for malware and have been for years. I have a right to not be tracked, my data sold for money (and I get no profit), and generally my privacy invaded. I don't allow it and have not since I was able to understand the threat and mitigate. I run a Pi-hole on my home network and I also run one at work, as I work for a small business. Works like a charm. I also use uBlock Origin, Decentraleyes, Privacy Badger, No Coin and a couple of others on every machine I control. I disallow my browser from sharing data like fonts installed, visited history, etc. I disallow HTTP/S referrer, geo location, network prefetch, and more. I use a proxy server and sometimes a VPN. I prevent WebRTC from leaking my private address schema. What ads? I also run only unix-like operating systems running fully open source software. You can even take advantage of a Pi-hole by passing your phones traffic through your home network even when you're away. Defense in depth to avoid the dreck.

egypturnash 9y ago

Good.

gnicholas 9y ago

> Criteo, one of the largest in the industry, says that the Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) feature for Safari, which holds 15% of the global browser market, is likely to cut its 2018 revenue by more than a fifth compared to projections made before ITP was announced. If Safari is 15% of the browser market, how is this causing a 20% drop in revenue?

tomjakubowski 9y ago
Maybe Safari users, in aggregate, are more valuable than the average browser user is to advertisers, on account of Apple device owners leaning wealthier.
- MichaelMcG 9y ago
  This is exactly the case, while building out our mobile marketing strategies for higher end luxury brands, iPhone/Apple users have a much higher average HHI across the networks and are often worth the "premium" rates. NBCu getting a hold of the Apple inventory was one of the smartest things they have done to offset consumer viewing habits (within key demographics) shifting away from linear towards OTT and Mobile devices.

geuis 9y ago

I find some irony that my content blocker app blocks the guardian’s article about ads.

rhizome 9y ago

I think a more-accurate title would be "Ad companies can make millions with web bugs."

pasbesoin 9y ago

Good

asasidh 9y ago

No one owes these ad companies their business model. They took advantage of the inherent insecure nature of internet and preyed on users all the time.

Torn 9y ago

We really need a new model for the ad economy. Brendan Eich is making some promising steps in the direction with Basic Attention Token (BAT)

Animats 9y ago

What can we do that would cost ad companies billions?

blub 9y ago
Stop working for unethical companies like Google, Facebook, Criteo and the thousands others that make money by spying on people. Or at least stop defending those practices, like a certain ucaetano does in this thread. I'm looking into what can be done politically though. Talking on forums doesn't get very far...
Jerry2 9y ago
Install AdNauseam: https://adnauseam.io https://adnauseam.io

MaysonL 9y ago

"Advertising technology firm Criteo, one of the largest in the industry, says that the Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) feature for Safari, which holds 15% of the global browser market, is likely to cut its 2018 revenue by more than a fifth compared to projections made before ITP was announced." Wow! A feature which doesn't block ads, in 15% of the browsers, is going to cut over 20% of this poor company's revenue.

hackbinary 9y ago

>> Internet advertising firms are losing hundreds of millions of dollars following the introduction of a new ... Was this number calculated by the same people that calculated that media and software companies loose billions due to piracy?

makecheck 9y ago

These features cannot “cost” ad companies something, any more than my higher fence “costs” thieves in lost opportunities. Ad companies survived with basic magazine-style ads. The only reason they complain now is that they are being forced to shift from “absurd money grab” to “ordinary company profit” for the first time in years. And there are small violins everywhere playing for these whiners.

krutzger 9y ago

I helped a friend set up his new Samsung phone and was surprised to see the browser nagging us about a installing adblockers and anti-trackers. Looks like Samsung too is taking privacy seriously. Happy to see things are improving, it was a wild west for a while...