8 ms·

Can Apple change ads?

101 points by prostoalex 5y ago

thomascgalvin 5y ago
I think the real question is, can ads change in response to Apple? Because Apple has already implemented do-not-track, and from what I read, CPM is cratering. That leaves the ad industry with three options: 1. Adapt to the new, anonymous normal. Targeted ads will no longer be a thing, so ads will have to be based on the content viewed, not the viewer. 2. Invent a new way to track users. I suspect many are hard at work on this already, and is definitely Google's plan. In Google's case, the tracking will look more like aggregate data than a fingerprint, but the end result is still targeted advertising. 3. Go out of business.
- hpoe 5y ago
  Honestly I don't understand why 1 is so bad? Does anyone have hard data that all of this tracking and user profiling is actually resulting in increased ad revenue? I for one have never liked personalized ads as it is almost always is something I don't want, already have, or just bought. It seems if you show me ads optimized to the content I am viewing it would turn out better. After all I will probably only want to purchase one chainsaw in my life, but if I am looking at how to cut down a tree it would make sense to show me chainsaw ads for that tiny sliver of time, then never again. Why did it get this way?
  - asutekku 5y ago
    For us advertising a product with targeted ads definitely performs better than non-targeted ads. Also remember that most stuff being advertised is consumable so you will most likely at some point buy it again.
  - ipsi 5y ago
    > it is almost always is something I don't want, already have, or just bought. The explanation I have heard for the "just bought" scenario (I heard it on the internet, so grain of salt and so on) is that they're looking to catch people who purchased the item but have returned it, and are now in the market for a different version of the same item (e.g., you returned the chainsaw because it was too small, and now want a bigger one). Which makes sense, but whether there are enough people in that scenario to be worth the cost...
    - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
      That seems unlikely, when you consider the advertising market and how it works. Fundamentally, the providers (i.e. the chainsaw store) don't tell the advertising platforms when a person buys a chainsaw (and often they can't tell themselves). So, what ends up happening is the situation that many people complain about is that the provider shared a list of people who looked at chainsaws, and then the advertising platform shows them ads until they run out of money/find more profitable ads to sell. From the perspective of the ad platform, it doesn't matter that you already bought it. From the perspective of the provider, this is acceptable waste.
  - kn8 5y ago
    It might be that personalised ads are only marginally better (if at all), but the perception of the advertisers and publishers is that it’s very important, thus creating a (fakeish) moat for Google, as it’s more difficult to execute. Or maybe that’s really not that important, as the biggest moat remains Google being number one web destination.
- ddxv 5y ago
  Do not track is marketing jargon. Apps can still continue to track users individually. What was lost was cross app tracking which was used for most mobile app ads.
- blahburn 5y ago
  2 is already happening. Facebook is pushing hard to get full data from partners to optimize ad tracking. Just look at the maximum data option for the Shopify integration now: "The Maximum setting shares your customer's personal information to match users on Facebook's network. The information collected using this setting includes your customer's name, location, email address, and phone number, as well as their browsing behavior in your online store." https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/promoting-marketing/analyze-marketing/facebook-data-sharing https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/promoting-marketing/analy...
- op03 5y ago
  4. Braindead Apple users press the allow tracking button.
  - ratww 5y ago
    It's not too many: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-05-10-13-percent-of-ios-users-opting-into-tracking-worldwide https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-05-10-13-percent...
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      It would be interesting to see what would happen if Apple presented a similar big blue button allowing you to install third-party IPAs from the internet. User choice is what matters, right?
- NicoJuicy 5y ago
  4. Force social logins for apps and use that as tracking identifier. No longer anonymous ads ( Or people could just pay for the app as alternative. But that won't happen)
lastofthemojito 5y ago
Kind of a tangent, but was this bit about iPods being a bigger business than the Mac ever true? > Once upon a time, Apple was the iPod company. iPods were a much bigger business than the Mac, and they also made Apple a dominant force in the music industry. I Googled "peak iPod" and saw Q4 2007 listed as the peak for iPod sales. Apple's Q4 2007 results list $1.619 billion in iPod revenue and $3.103 billion in Mac revenue. There is another $601 million in "other music related products and services" but added to the iPod revenue that still doesn't equal the amount of money the Mac was bringing in (and the Mac was likely responsible for almost all of Apple's peripheral, software and service revenue).
- dwighttk 5y ago
  2006 iPods and Macs were both around 40% of Apple revenue 2007 iPhone launched and absorbed a bunch of iPod sales so I think your search was giving you just past the peak.
- CrazyStat 5y ago
  Q4 2007 (real calendar) is actually Q1 2008 (October-December 2007) by Apple's fiscal calendar. They reported $3.997 billion in iPod revenue that quarter, compared to about $3.5 billion for Macs. iPods always did well in the 1st quarter as that captured all the Christmas gift sales.
  - nolok 5y ago
    Which means that annually, Macs were still ahead by a large amount at iPod peak
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      Sure, but you'd see more people out-and-about with an iPod than you would with a Macbook. The iPod was the beginning of Apple's legacy as a status symbol.
    - dwighttk 5y ago
      that is post peak... iPhone was released 2007
amelius 5y ago
It depends. Even if they do, if Apple's revenue levels off and shareholders still demand growth, then the whole advertisement story might repeat itself.
- swiley 5y ago
  There's that rule about headlines with questions in them.
helsinkiandrew 5y ago
I'm not sure that an Apple targeted ad platform would be seen as very different from Facebook's targeted ad platform by consumers. It's true that Apple have a better track record of keeping data private, and there's been no Cambridge Analytics style atrocities. But providing tracking ads of any kind (whether bundled by cohorts or what ever privacy enabling methodology could be added) could tarnish their reputation. Just because a business can destroy another huge companies business model it doesn't mean that replicating it is a good idea.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  > Just because a business can destroy another huge companies business model it doesn't mean that replicating it is a good idea. That's the big takeaway here. As far as I can tell, Apple really stands to gain nothing by blocking trackers when it's one of the smallest concerns I have with regards to modern digital privacy. Snowden didn't warn people about ads, he warned people about massive surveillance campaigns operating just out of view of the public. The largest modern privacy concern is being dependent on any one private party. Relinquishing all control of your data, software and hardware to the largest company in the world is a security concern. Whether it's a sacrifice you're willing to make or not is a different story.
  - defaultname 5y ago
    "The largest modern privacy concern is being dependent on any one private party." How does that follow at all? It doesn't. Further, Snowden pointed out government abuse surreptitiously gathering user data. In the wake of that the government has a much, much harder time doing so covertly, so in many cases they engage in the same data broker activities that everyone else does. They don't have tap underseas cables anymore -- they can just buy the data wholesale from a wide variety of sources.
  - Angostura 5y ago
    > Snowden didn't warn people about ads, he warned people about massive surveillance campaigns operating just out of view of the public. Snowden's areas of expertise wasn't ads. He warned about that which he had direct experience of - he didn't warn about global warming either.
ddxv 5y ago
Apple is fooling everyone into thinking they are providing privacy when all they've done is restrict cross app tracking. Facebook, Google etc can still track anything you do in those apps at the user level which is tied back to a real name most likely. They're losing insight into what you did post click into other apps, but it doesn't change the basic information they track about you in their own applications.
- judge2020 5y ago
  Obviously - that's why the prompt says "Allow <app> to track your activity across other companies' apps and websites?" instead of "Ensure privacy within this app".
- geewee 5y ago
  This is still a huge deal though. Facebook and google scour so much data through stuff like facebook pixels and google analytics - there's no need to give them anymore than what they already have.
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    What's the point though? They can still continue to collect data on you based on your Chrome history, the Tweets you like, the articles your read, and everywhere else you interact with their discrete services. Apple is swatting privacy flies when Google and Facebook are holding a knife to your throat. Furthermore, it's not like Apple themselves don't provide targeted ads[0]. All they're doing now is inroading the ad system through their own proprietary API so they can get a cut. What was wrong with the previous one, you may ask? It wasn't making them enough mone- erm... it wasn't secure enough! GUID fingerprinting isn't vague enough! [0] https://searchads.apple.com/advanced/ https://searchads.apple.com/advanced/
    - pdimitar 5y ago
      > What's the point though? I am not inside any of these corps but I started using a PiHole at home for 7 months now. Plus I installed ad/tracking blockers on all of family's devices, and installed every possible privacy addon on their web browsers. The result? In the rare cases when I had to open up the machine and so the PiHole was down, we've all seen the most random ads you can imagine -- and super generic. They knew my mother's phone was of an elderly woman so they pushed ads of all sorts of knee protectors and sore throat pills... ironically she has zero problems with both! Same for me. Apparently being 40+ I now need to buy one car each week and dream of going to "beach retreats full of young women" (that was literally the text of 10+ ads I've seen). Little do they know I am very happily married. Examples abound. It's kind of hilarious. Back to your point, and with us being techies, I think we are under no illusion that the corps still know quite a few things about us. But I am here to tell you that if you try well enough they'll eventually lose the big picture of you and will only have a few separate quanta of data about you which they aren't sure what to do with -- at least when it comes to targeted advertising.
smoldesu 5y ago
Remember that Apple's end goal is to ultimately reroute users through their own devices and experiences, where they can ultimately take a cut of the profits. Nobody is truly benevolent to the user in this case, it's just a matter of Apple's dystopian capitalist future versus Google's dystopian capitalist future. The tiebreaker for me is which company is willing to be more open, and accept users who want to extend their products. At the end of the day, that's Google, Microsoft and (to a lesser degree) Amazon, who have at least put in the effort of giving developers documentation and API access. I can't support Apple's crusade to change ads if they just want to take me out of one Matrix battery pod and into another, Space Grey one.
whoisjuan 5y ago
Clearly advertisement is a massive untapped market for Apple. They have all the pieces to create a money printing machine. They can push contextual ads in so many surfaces: Safari's Typeahead, Maps, App Store, Wallet/Apple Card, Apple TV+, etc... But the reality is that they can't create a narrative around privacy focused ads without betraying their general privacy narrative. Privacy and Ads are antagonistic concepts. Serving effective digital ads depends entirely on knowing certains characteristics and demographics of the end consumer. Facebook and Google are better equiped to create a narrative that reconciles ad serving and privacy because their core services are "free". Apple simply can't because their core business is to sell expensive phones and computers. Perhaps customers wouldn't care about getting ads in their expensive iPhones, but once the cat is out, I find hard to imagine a situation where that idea wouldn't be deeply criticized and scrutinized.
- pell 5y ago
  >Privacy and Ads are antagonistic concepts. They didn't use to be. There might be room for competition by avoiding the modern day advertising shenanigans.
- npunt 5y ago
  There's a lot of sunlight between 'barely targeted brand ad' and 'i was just talking about this exact product yesterday and now its in an ad'. It's the latter that creeps people out, especially combined with a) data leaks, b) news coming out about how fine-grained the targeting systems are, and c) a system that constantly nags you to share personal information (FB). Nobody balks at ads in magazines or TV or frankly half of the youtube ads out there (other than we'd like less). I don't think the narrative is at stake if the ads team is kept on a short leash, which they likely will be, and I'm guessing there'll be clear preferences to control this. Agree completely Apple's potential ad surface area is big.
musicale 5y ago
Apple is presumably accelerating the shift to server-side cookies, tracking, and data aggregation.
anti-nazi 5y ago
re-inventing advertising in 2021 makes you a fucking moron
photoGrant 5y ago
I also disagree. Apple have an absolutely over the top, under-appreciated, cautiously obsessive approach to controlling the domain of your experience, 100%. Advertising on your platform is selling a message other than your own, selling a product outside of your control and creating a user experience you might not necessarily be improving. Apple are a BRAND. They sell a PRODUCT. They deliver on their PLATFORM. It's like asking why Nike don't allow third party's to put adverts on the sneakers they sell. I don't think they've struggled with monetising advertising. Clearly there is no struggle financially and advertising is mostly a game of throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping the odd message sticks. Apple as a company don't need those odds. Yet, at least.

101 points by prostoalex 5y ago

I think the real question is, can ads change in response to Apple? Because Apple has already implemented do-not-track, and from what I read, CPM is cratering. That leaves the ad industry with three options: 1. Adapt to the new, anonymous normal. Targeted ads will no longer be a thing, so ads will have to be based on the content viewed, not the viewer. 2. Invent a new way to track users. I suspect many are hard at work on this already, and is definitely Google's plan. In Google's case, the tracking will look more like aggregate data than a fingerprint, but the end result is still targeted advertising. 3. Go out of business.

hpoe 5y ago
Honestly I don't understand why 1 is so bad? Does anyone have hard data that all of this tracking and user profiling is actually resulting in increased ad revenue? I for one have never liked personalized ads as it is almost always is something I don't want, already have, or just bought. It seems if you show me ads optimized to the content I am viewing it would turn out better. After all I will probably only want to purchase one chainsaw in my life, but if I am looking at how to cut down a tree it would make sense to show me chainsaw ads for that tiny sliver of time, then never again. Why did it get this way?
- asutekku 5y ago
  For us advertising a product with targeted ads definitely performs better than non-targeted ads. Also remember that most stuff being advertised is consumable so you will most likely at some point buy it again.
- ipsi 5y ago
  > it is almost always is something I don't want, already have, or just bought. The explanation I have heard for the "just bought" scenario (I heard it on the internet, so grain of salt and so on) is that they're looking to catch people who purchased the item but have returned it, and are now in the market for a different version of the same item (e.g., you returned the chainsaw because it was too small, and now want a bigger one). Which makes sense, but whether there are enough people in that scenario to be worth the cost...
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    That seems unlikely, when you consider the advertising market and how it works. Fundamentally, the providers (i.e. the chainsaw store) don't tell the advertising platforms when a person buys a chainsaw (and often they can't tell themselves). So, what ends up happening is the situation that many people complain about is that the provider shared a list of people who looked at chainsaws, and then the advertising platform shows them ads until they run out of money/find more profitable ads to sell. From the perspective of the ad platform, it doesn't matter that you already bought it. From the perspective of the provider, this is acceptable waste.
- kn8 5y ago
  It might be that personalised ads are only marginally better (if at all), but the perception of the advertisers and publishers is that it’s very important, thus creating a (fakeish) moat for Google, as it’s more difficult to execute. Or maybe that’s really not that important, as the biggest moat remains Google being number one web destination.
ddxv 5y ago
Do not track is marketing jargon. Apps can still continue to track users individually. What was lost was cross app tracking which was used for most mobile app ads.
blahburn 5y ago
2 is already happening. Facebook is pushing hard to get full data from partners to optimize ad tracking. Just look at the maximum data option for the Shopify integration now: "The Maximum setting shares your customer's personal information to match users on Facebook's network. The information collected using this setting includes your customer's name, location, email address, and phone number, as well as their browsing behavior in your online store." https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/promoting-marketing/analyze-marketing/facebook-data-sharing https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/promoting-marketing/analy...
op03 5y ago
4. Braindead Apple users press the allow tracking button.
- ratww 5y ago
  It's not too many: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-05-10-13-percent-of-ios-users-opting-into-tracking-worldwide https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-05-10-13-percent...
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    It would be interesting to see what would happen if Apple presented a similar big blue button allowing you to install third-party IPAs from the internet. User choice is what matters, right?
NicoJuicy 5y ago
4. Force social logins for apps and use that as tracking identifier. No longer anonymous ads ( Or people could just pay for the app as alternative. But that won't happen)

lastofthemojito 5y ago

Kind of a tangent, but was this bit about iPods being a bigger business than the Mac ever true? > Once upon a time, Apple was the iPod company. iPods were a much bigger business than the Mac, and they also made Apple a dominant force in the music industry. I Googled "peak iPod" and saw Q4 2007 listed as the peak for iPod sales. Apple's Q4 2007 results list $1.619 billion in iPod revenue and $3.103 billion in Mac revenue. There is another $601 million in "other music related products and services" but added to the iPod revenue that still doesn't equal the amount of money the Mac was bringing in (and the Mac was likely responsible for almost all of Apple's peripheral, software and service revenue).

dwighttk 5y ago
2006 iPods and Macs were both around 40% of Apple revenue 2007 iPhone launched and absorbed a bunch of iPod sales so I think your search was giving you just past the peak.
CrazyStat 5y ago
Q4 2007 (real calendar) is actually Q1 2008 (October-December 2007) by Apple's fiscal calendar. They reported $3.997 billion in iPod revenue that quarter, compared to about $3.5 billion for Macs. iPods always did well in the 1st quarter as that captured all the Christmas gift sales.
- nolok 5y ago
  Which means that annually, Macs were still ahead by a large amount at iPod peak
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Sure, but you'd see more people out-and-about with an iPod than you would with a Macbook. The iPod was the beginning of Apple's legacy as a status symbol.
  - dwighttk 5y ago
    that is post peak... iPhone was released 2007

amelius 5y ago

It depends. Even if they do, if Apple's revenue levels off and shareholders still demand growth, then the whole advertisement story might repeat itself.

swiley 5y ago
There's that rule about headlines with questions in them.

helsinkiandrew 5y ago

I'm not sure that an Apple targeted ad platform would be seen as very different from Facebook's targeted ad platform by consumers. It's true that Apple have a better track record of keeping data private, and there's been no Cambridge Analytics style atrocities. But providing tracking ads of any kind (whether bundled by cohorts or what ever privacy enabling methodology could be added) could tarnish their reputation. Just because a business can destroy another huge companies business model it doesn't mean that replicating it is a good idea.

smoldesu 5y ago
> Just because a business can destroy another huge companies business model it doesn't mean that replicating it is a good idea. That's the big takeaway here. As far as I can tell, Apple really stands to gain nothing by blocking trackers when it's one of the smallest concerns I have with regards to modern digital privacy. Snowden didn't warn people about ads, he warned people about massive surveillance campaigns operating just out of view of the public. The largest modern privacy concern is being dependent on any one private party. Relinquishing all control of your data, software and hardware to the largest company in the world is a security concern. Whether it's a sacrifice you're willing to make or not is a different story.
- defaultname 5y ago
  "The largest modern privacy concern is being dependent on any one private party." How does that follow at all? It doesn't. Further, Snowden pointed out government abuse surreptitiously gathering user data. In the wake of that the government has a much, much harder time doing so covertly, so in many cases they engage in the same data broker activities that everyone else does. They don't have tap underseas cables anymore -- they can just buy the data wholesale from a wide variety of sources.
- Angostura 5y ago
  > Snowden didn't warn people about ads, he warned people about massive surveillance campaigns operating just out of view of the public. Snowden's areas of expertise wasn't ads. He warned about that which he had direct experience of - he didn't warn about global warming either.

ddxv 5y ago

Apple is fooling everyone into thinking they are providing privacy when all they've done is restrict cross app tracking. Facebook, Google etc can still track anything you do in those apps at the user level which is tied back to a real name most likely. They're losing insight into what you did post click into other apps, but it doesn't change the basic information they track about you in their own applications.

judge2020 5y ago
Obviously - that's why the prompt says "Allow <app> to track your activity across other companies' apps and websites?" instead of "Ensure privacy within this app".
geewee 5y ago
This is still a huge deal though. Facebook and google scour so much data through stuff like facebook pixels and google analytics - there's no need to give them anymore than what they already have.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  What's the point though? They can still continue to collect data on you based on your Chrome history, the Tweets you like, the articles your read, and everywhere else you interact with their discrete services. Apple is swatting privacy flies when Google and Facebook are holding a knife to your throat. Furthermore, it's not like Apple themselves don't provide targeted ads[0]. All they're doing now is inroading the ad system through their own proprietary API so they can get a cut. What was wrong with the previous one, you may ask? It wasn't making them enough mone- erm... it wasn't secure enough! GUID fingerprinting isn't vague enough! [0] https://searchads.apple.com/advanced/ https://searchads.apple.com/advanced/
  - pdimitar 5y ago
    > What's the point though? I am not inside any of these corps but I started using a PiHole at home for 7 months now. Plus I installed ad/tracking blockers on all of family's devices, and installed every possible privacy addon on their web browsers. The result? In the rare cases when I had to open up the machine and so the PiHole was down, we've all seen the most random ads you can imagine -- and super generic. They knew my mother's phone was of an elderly woman so they pushed ads of all sorts of knee protectors and sore throat pills... ironically she has zero problems with both! Same for me. Apparently being 40+ I now need to buy one car each week and dream of going to "beach retreats full of young women" (that was literally the text of 10+ ads I've seen). Little do they know I am very happily married. Examples abound. It's kind of hilarious. Back to your point, and with us being techies, I think we are under no illusion that the corps still know quite a few things about us. But I am here to tell you that if you try well enough they'll eventually lose the big picture of you and will only have a few separate quanta of data about you which they aren't sure what to do with -- at least when it comes to targeted advertising.

smoldesu 5y ago

Remember that Apple's end goal is to ultimately reroute users through their own devices and experiences, where they can ultimately take a cut of the profits. Nobody is truly benevolent to the user in this case, it's just a matter of Apple's dystopian capitalist future versus Google's dystopian capitalist future. The tiebreaker for me is which company is willing to be more open, and accept users who want to extend their products. At the end of the day, that's Google, Microsoft and (to a lesser degree) Amazon, who have at least put in the effort of giving developers documentation and API access. I can't support Apple's crusade to change ads if they just want to take me out of one Matrix battery pod and into another, Space Grey one.

whoisjuan 5y ago

Clearly advertisement is a massive untapped market for Apple. They have all the pieces to create a money printing machine. They can push contextual ads in so many surfaces: Safari's Typeahead, Maps, App Store, Wallet/Apple Card, Apple TV+, etc... But the reality is that they can't create a narrative around privacy focused ads without betraying their general privacy narrative. Privacy and Ads are antagonistic concepts. Serving effective digital ads depends entirely on knowing certains characteristics and demographics of the end consumer. Facebook and Google are better equiped to create a narrative that reconciles ad serving and privacy because their core services are "free". Apple simply can't because their core business is to sell expensive phones and computers. Perhaps customers wouldn't care about getting ads in their expensive iPhones, but once the cat is out, I find hard to imagine a situation where that idea wouldn't be deeply criticized and scrutinized.

pell 5y ago
>Privacy and Ads are antagonistic concepts. They didn't use to be. There might be room for competition by avoiding the modern day advertising shenanigans.
npunt 5y ago
There's a lot of sunlight between 'barely targeted brand ad' and 'i was just talking about this exact product yesterday and now its in an ad'. It's the latter that creeps people out, especially combined with a) data leaks, b) news coming out about how fine-grained the targeting systems are, and c) a system that constantly nags you to share personal information (FB). Nobody balks at ads in magazines or TV or frankly half of the youtube ads out there (other than we'd like less). I don't think the narrative is at stake if the ads team is kept on a short leash, which they likely will be, and I'm guessing there'll be clear preferences to control this. Agree completely Apple's potential ad surface area is big.

musicale 5y ago

Apple is presumably accelerating the shift to server-side cookies, tracking, and data aggregation.

anti-nazi 5y ago

re-inventing advertising in 2021 makes you a fucking moron

photoGrant 5y ago

I also disagree. Apple have an absolutely over the top, under-appreciated, cautiously obsessive approach to controlling the domain of your experience, 100%. Advertising on your platform is selling a message other than your own, selling a product outside of your control and creating a user experience you might not necessarily be improving. Apple are a BRAND. They sell a PRODUCT. They deliver on their PLATFORM. It's like asking why Nike don't allow third party's to put adverts on the sneakers they sell. I don't think they've struggled with monetising advertising. Clearly there is no struggle financially and advertising is mostly a game of throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping the odd message sticks. Apple as a company don't need those odds. Yet, at least.