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> Apple engineers also said last week the company will bolster a free Apple-made tool that uses anonymous, aggregated data to measure whether advertising campai

> Apple engineers also said last week the company will bolster a free Apple-made tool that uses anonymous, aggregated data to measure whether advertising campaigns are working and that will not trigger the pop-up. > “Because it’s engineered to not track users, there’s no need to request permission to track,” Brandon Van Ryswyk, an Apple privacy engineer, said in a video session explaining the measurement tool to developers. There it is. Unless there’s a process that other companies can follow to certify that their solutions don’t track users and get same treatment, then in the end it’s about Apple trying to force themselves as player in the ads business. It’s well known playbook as they’re similarly forcing themselves into identity business, with new logging requirements.

fairenough42 6y ago
Are they moving into ads as the hardware business dries up for them? In my personal experience, many people don't replace their phones as often as they did, say, 10 years ago. A similar story played out earlier with laptops. There's no obvious new hardware category for Apple to pivot into so maybe software is their next play.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Not software but services.
- throwaway2048 6y ago
  saying their hardware business is "drying up" is some pretty extreme hyperbole
- copp 6y ago
  Yes they are. Ads in Apstore and News.
- scarface74 6y ago
  You have looked at their latest earnings haven’t you?
- yellow_postit 6y ago
  They tried before from 2010-2016 [1]. I do think this is their long term play — getting credit card transaction data and shutting others out. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd
  - scarface74 6y ago
    They don’t have any way to access credit card data unless you have an Apple credit card. Even then, I don’t think Goldman Sachs share the data with them.
- jodrellblank 6y ago
  >There's no obvious new hardware category for Apple to pivot into Was it obvious that AirPods would become a $4Bn revenue stream, or that Watch would take the lion’s share of the watch market despite having battery life of <1 day, or that Apple computer would move into regulator approved consumer heart monitoring? Rumours of Apple TV and Apple Car and an Apple AR gadget have been around a long time.
- spideymans 6y ago
  >There's no obvious new hardware category for Apple to pivot into so maybe software is their next play. Lets revisit this comment in a year or two when they release their AR and VR products.
- jackjeff 6y ago
  They’re selling watches, they just released the iPhone SE which competes with mid-range Android phones, and they have new revenues from their rent seeking activities on App Store and Apple Pay. In addition, their new line of Mac ARM will remove the Intel tax. I think they’ll do just fine without becoming another advertisement company.
valuearb 6y ago
Forcing themselves into the identity business? By giving it away for free? What kind of business it that? I guess it’s the same as trying to get in the ads business by making ads less valuable?
- harikb 6y ago
  We are way past the argument that “free” => “no value to business”
  - valuearb 6y ago
    Profits are value to business. Profits require revenues. We are well passed the second internet bubble where Instagram et al can get billion dollar valuations on market share alone. There needs to be a business plan to generate revenues and profits. So what us Apples business plan for identity? If it’s to add value to iOS and MacOS by providing convenient privacy secure logins to customers, I hardly see that as forcing themselves into the business.
    - jsnell 6y ago
      Lock-in. If you move off iOS but are using Apple as the identity provider for third party spots, how painful is migrating your accounts going to be? How well do you think Apple will support the use case of non-Apple device users signing in with Apple? Might as well buy another Apple device when the current one breaks. There's nothing wrong with Apple trying to increase the stickiness of their platforms, if there's a legit argument to be made that it also improves user experience. The part I find distasteful is the requirement for iOS apps to give preferential treatment to Apple. And honestly, if they were only doing doing this to improve UX, I don't think they would be this heavy handed. Somebody with decision making power wants to make sure that iOS users are selecting that option no matter what.
- dgellow 6y ago
  > I guess it’s the same as trying to get in the ads business by making ads less valuable? If that damage your competitors more than it damages you, might that be of some value? Not saying that’s Apple is doing, just pointing that could be a thing.
mlthoughts2018 6y ago
It’s funny too because any ad attribution methodology that’s not tracking users is going to suffer so much confounding to render it utterly useless. Of course it will show you Big Lift! but the reality is you could have negative lift and the attribution methodology won’t be capable of detecting it or accounting for necessary confounders to isolate the effect of the ad from other effects. In essence, if you’re not tracking user-level behavior, then you should not be caring about any statistical attribution methodology at all, just use something different entirely, based on simple aggregates or top line metrics like revenue without modeling return on ad spend at all. Anything that tries to do attribution on different cohorts, like demographic slices, etc., without controlling for individual level confounders, is complete misleading hot garbage. So these customers of Apple’s sexy new ad attribution are probably paying a big premium to get ripped off with useless data. Such a system categorically can’t exist (and shouldn’t be desired) in cases where you don’t want to permit individual level tracking.
- tareqak 6y ago
  If it is going to be utterly useless as easily as you claim, then it should be easy for the sixteen advertising agencies to prove that it will be utterly useless and that advertisers should push back against Apple and their new warning.
  - mlthoughts2018 6y ago
    You have an unfortunate view that the ad attribution business is predicated on rational choices by advertisers. It’s more similar to investment management business. You could likewise say it’ll be easy for competitors to prove a firm is having bad quarters of portfolio underperformance, yet firms with bad track records consistently keep getting new business. Why is that? The underlying business proposition is more like consulting and blame protection. You can always fire your ad attribution partner and claim their “number crunching” was bogus to save your own ass. You don’t pay them to give you actionable ad strategy or performance measurement, just like eg the investment board of a pension fund doesn’t hire an investment manager to actually get higher returns. You pay them to make it look like you, the board member or the ad account manager, did all you could and any failings are down to uncontrollable poor performance of your vendor, which you then look like the good guy for firing, or look like the visionary for jumping ship to sexy AI solutions then jumping ship back to “classic” solutions when the AI solutions predictably don’t work. You do this for a while collecting bonuses and protecting your job, at the massive expense of the pension fund or advertising campaigns you are supposed to oversee, then you quit or get fired and play musical chairs to fail up into the same role at the next place. In many companies that run advertising, the ultimate choice of what ad spend to pursue is an unbelievably political shitstorm. There are arguments for spending on generic brand awareness (which has no goals related to attribution at all) vs ambitious “creative” ads & extravagance like Super Bowl ads, vs scientific ad experiments on defined cohorts of users. Nobody knows about (or gives a shit about) actually tracking the performance of all this beyond doing a bunch of headless chicken scrambling around to make some spreadsheets and slide decks to keep a job or argue for a bonus. To the executives a layer up it’s either a big cocktail party of all the different styles of pursuing ads and business is good and they don’t really care, or else it’s a needless cost center when business is bad and they give grain offerings to the advertising gods to decide what to cut. But nobody is seriously pursuing quant advertising. That is all just fluff branding. And this play by Apple is more of the same, just branding for professional services through using their anti-competitive moats around iOS.
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
>free Apple-made tool I wouldn't be surprised if it requires macOS to work and a yearly paid license to use that free tool.
kodablah 6y ago
> It’s well known playbook The playbook is much more broad and is basically "we are privileged on our platform _and_ we unavoidably restrict the lesser privileged". Many don't like this (myself included) and many do. Simply put, where you reasonably can, choose the platform that has the restrictions you can accept or work around.
Despegar 6y ago
Apple is incentivizing ad networks to use SKAdNetwork [1], an API that lets you do attribution while preserving privacy. Guaranteeing that necessarily means they have to intermediate the relationship between users, apps and ad networks. They also proposed a similar API for the web [2]. [1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/skadnetwork https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/skadnetwo... [2] https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-attribution-for-the-web/ https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-att...

fairenough42 6y ago

Are they moving into ads as the hardware business dries up for them? In my personal experience, many people don't replace their phones as often as they did, say, 10 years ago. A similar story played out earlier with laptops. There's no obvious new hardware category for Apple to pivot into so maybe software is their next play.

saagarjha 6y ago
Not software but services.
throwaway2048 6y ago
saying their hardware business is "drying up" is some pretty extreme hyperbole
copp 6y ago
Yes they are. Ads in Apstore and News.
scarface74 6y ago
You have looked at their latest earnings haven’t you?
yellow_postit 6y ago
They tried before from 2010-2016 [1]. I do think this is their long term play — getting credit card transaction data and shutting others out. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd
- scarface74 6y ago
  They don’t have any way to access credit card data unless you have an Apple credit card. Even then, I don’t think Goldman Sachs share the data with them.
jodrellblank 6y ago
>There's no obvious new hardware category for Apple to pivot into Was it obvious that AirPods would become a $4Bn revenue stream, or that Watch would take the lion’s share of the watch market despite having battery life of <1 day, or that Apple computer would move into regulator approved consumer heart monitoring? Rumours of Apple TV and Apple Car and an Apple AR gadget have been around a long time.
spideymans 6y ago
>There's no obvious new hardware category for Apple to pivot into so maybe software is their next play. Lets revisit this comment in a year or two when they release their AR and VR products.
jackjeff 6y ago
They’re selling watches, they just released the iPhone SE which competes with mid-range Android phones, and they have new revenues from their rent seeking activities on App Store and Apple Pay. In addition, their new line of Mac ARM will remove the Intel tax. I think they’ll do just fine without becoming another advertisement company.

valuearb 6y ago

Forcing themselves into the identity business? By giving it away for free? What kind of business it that? I guess it’s the same as trying to get in the ads business by making ads less valuable?

harikb 6y ago
We are way past the argument that “free” => “no value to business”
- valuearb 6y ago
  Profits are value to business. Profits require revenues. We are well passed the second internet bubble where Instagram et al can get billion dollar valuations on market share alone. There needs to be a business plan to generate revenues and profits. So what us Apples business plan for identity? If it’s to add value to iOS and MacOS by providing convenient privacy secure logins to customers, I hardly see that as forcing themselves into the business.
  - jsnell 6y ago
    Lock-in. If you move off iOS but are using Apple as the identity provider for third party spots, how painful is migrating your accounts going to be? How well do you think Apple will support the use case of non-Apple device users signing in with Apple? Might as well buy another Apple device when the current one breaks. There's nothing wrong with Apple trying to increase the stickiness of their platforms, if there's a legit argument to be made that it also improves user experience. The part I find distasteful is the requirement for iOS apps to give preferential treatment to Apple. And honestly, if they were only doing doing this to improve UX, I don't think they would be this heavy handed. Somebody with decision making power wants to make sure that iOS users are selecting that option no matter what.
dgellow 6y ago
> I guess it’s the same as trying to get in the ads business by making ads less valuable? If that damage your competitors more than it damages you, might that be of some value? Not saying that’s Apple is doing, just pointing that could be a thing.

mlthoughts2018 6y ago

It’s funny too because any ad attribution methodology that’s not tracking users is going to suffer so much confounding to render it utterly useless. Of course it will show you Big Lift! but the reality is you could have negative lift and the attribution methodology won’t be capable of detecting it or accounting for necessary confounders to isolate the effect of the ad from other effects. In essence, if you’re not tracking user-level behavior, then you should not be caring about any statistical attribution methodology at all, just use something different entirely, based on simple aggregates or top line metrics like revenue without modeling return on ad spend at all. Anything that tries to do attribution on different cohorts, like demographic slices, etc., without controlling for individual level confounders, is complete misleading hot garbage. So these customers of Apple’s sexy new ad attribution are probably paying a big premium to get ripped off with useless data. Such a system categorically can’t exist (and shouldn’t be desired) in cases where you don’t want to permit individual level tracking.

tareqak 6y ago
If it is going to be utterly useless as easily as you claim, then it should be easy for the sixteen advertising agencies to prove that it will be utterly useless and that advertisers should push back against Apple and their new warning.
- mlthoughts2018 6y ago
  You have an unfortunate view that the ad attribution business is predicated on rational choices by advertisers. It’s more similar to investment management business. You could likewise say it’ll be easy for competitors to prove a firm is having bad quarters of portfolio underperformance, yet firms with bad track records consistently keep getting new business. Why is that? The underlying business proposition is more like consulting and blame protection. You can always fire your ad attribution partner and claim their “number crunching” was bogus to save your own ass. You don’t pay them to give you actionable ad strategy or performance measurement, just like eg the investment board of a pension fund doesn’t hire an investment manager to actually get higher returns. You pay them to make it look like you, the board member or the ad account manager, did all you could and any failings are down to uncontrollable poor performance of your vendor, which you then look like the good guy for firing, or look like the visionary for jumping ship to sexy AI solutions then jumping ship back to “classic” solutions when the AI solutions predictably don’t work. You do this for a while collecting bonuses and protecting your job, at the massive expense of the pension fund or advertising campaigns you are supposed to oversee, then you quit or get fired and play musical chairs to fail up into the same role at the next place. In many companies that run advertising, the ultimate choice of what ad spend to pursue is an unbelievably political shitstorm. There are arguments for spending on generic brand awareness (which has no goals related to attribution at all) vs ambitious “creative” ads & extravagance like Super Bowl ads, vs scientific ad experiments on defined cohorts of users. Nobody knows about (or gives a shit about) actually tracking the performance of all this beyond doing a bunch of headless chicken scrambling around to make some spreadsheets and slide decks to keep a job or argue for a bonus. To the executives a layer up it’s either a big cocktail party of all the different styles of pursuing ads and business is good and they don’t really care, or else it’s a needless cost center when business is bad and they give grain offerings to the advertising gods to decide what to cut. But nobody is seriously pursuing quant advertising. That is all just fluff branding. And this play by Apple is more of the same, just branding for professional services through using their anti-competitive moats around iOS.

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

>free Apple-made tool I wouldn't be surprised if it requires macOS to work and a yearly paid license to use that free tool.

kodablah 6y ago

> It’s well known playbook The playbook is much more broad and is basically "we are privileged on our platform _and_ we unavoidably restrict the lesser privileged". Many don't like this (myself included) and many do. Simply put, where you reasonably can, choose the platform that has the restrictions you can accept or work around.

Despegar 6y ago

Apple is incentivizing ad networks to use SKAdNetwork [1], an API that lets you do attribution while preserving privacy. Guaranteeing that necessarily means they have to intermediate the relationship between users, apps and ad networks. They also proposed a similar API for the web [2]. [1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/skadnetwork https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/skadnetwo... [2] https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-attribution-for-the-web/ https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-att...