4 ms·

Why does then Apple have a Ad service?. Should they not be tracking nothing?

klodolph 5y ago
Different ad services provide different levels of targeting, based on the data that different platforms collect about consumers and what those platforms are willing to let you use for targeting.
jackson1442 5y ago
What ad service? App Store ads? Those are based only on the actual search term.
- dialtone 5y ago
  No they aren’t. Here https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertising/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertisin... have a nice read. But summary is they use a bunch of stuff about the device (past purchases, location, fingerprinting-like data such as carrier and so on) and your usage of a bunch of apps like apple news and stocks.
  - fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
    If you set brand image aside and just think about the huge amounts of money at stake, it becomes obvious that the whole app tracking transparency thing is just Apple taking over the ad market on iOS. They invented the term “cross app tracking” and defined it to not include their own conversion tracking through their various apps to purchases of their advertisers’ products via Apple Pay. Then they forced their ad-sales competitors to send all their conversion data to Apple, while providing separate APIs with richer data to their own advertisers.
    - jeromegv 5y ago
      Beside AppStore ads, how can I buy ads from Apple for the Apple ecosystem to replace Facebook ads?
      - fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
        Apple is also selling app install ads in the News and Stocks apps. Tens of billions of dollars are spent on app install ads on iOS each year, so this is a very lucrative market for Apple if they can corner it (and probably necessary if they are going to achieve expected Services revenue growth in the years to come). It remains to be seen whether they’ll take another crack at the rest of the ad market, after the failure of iAd. They seem to be laying the groundwork for it.
- moogly 5y ago
  https://mobiledevmemo.com/apple-privileges-its-own-ad-network-whats-its-privacy-end-game/ https://mobiledevmemo.com/apple-privileges-its-own-ad-networ...
simonh 5y ago
A company keeping records of it's own interactions with it's customers is fine, nobody is arguing against that. The problem is companies selling customer data to each other and snooping on customer activity outside the company's own web site or app. This is what is meant by tracking and Apple doesn't do this in their ad service. It seems like what Apple is doing is trying to cripple tracking for other ad services to make their own service more competitive.
- LexGray 5y ago
  Even when that company is responsible for more than half of the mobile software installs in the US? Amazon and Google have abused this data in the past to undercut the competition with their own better promoted offerings and make purchase decisions with data the competition just could not have access to.
- scatters 5y ago
  That's how you end up with a single megacorp that does everything.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- rickdeckard 5y ago
  >> ...snooping on customer activity outside the company's own web site or app. This is what is meant by tracking and Apple doesn't do this in their ad service. I'm sure Apple is going to offer exactly that, as the conversion-rate data of an Ad into an actual purchase elsewhere is where the big Ad-money is. Apple will just do all that without handing off any data to another party, providing only the persona of an end-user to the Ad-customer. Their dilemma is that doing this today at an "Apple-price" has limited competitive value to Advertisers. But if Apple cripples the competition to become the ONLY company able to provide such data, they suddenly become a mandatory supplier for every Ad-campaign in the world, as only Apple will be able to provide effective Ad-analytics on iOS. >> It seems like what Apple is doing is trying to cripple tracking for other ad services to make their own service more competitive. Exactly. Which should be a strong sign that regulation is urgently required, but somehow people still are stuck on the wrong narrative.
kergonath 5y ago
They should stop advertising, they created a conflict of interest for themselves. That said, they do not track across applications: they don’t need to.
nielsbot 5y ago
FWIW, iAd for third-party apps was shut down. They still sells adds for Apple News and the App Store. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd Selling search ads on the App Store kinda sucks--I wish they hadn't done that.

Different ad services provide different levels of targeting, based on the data that different platforms collect about consumers and what those platforms are willing to let you use for targeting.

jackson1442 5y ago

What ad service? App Store ads? Those are based only on the actual search term.

dialtone 5y ago
No they aren’t. Here https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertising/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertisin... have a nice read. But summary is they use a bunch of stuff about the device (past purchases, location, fingerprinting-like data such as carrier and so on) and your usage of a bunch of apps like apple news and stocks.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
  If you set brand image aside and just think about the huge amounts of money at stake, it becomes obvious that the whole app tracking transparency thing is just Apple taking over the ad market on iOS. They invented the term “cross app tracking” and defined it to not include their own conversion tracking through their various apps to purchases of their advertisers’ products via Apple Pay. Then they forced their ad-sales competitors to send all their conversion data to Apple, while providing separate APIs with richer data to their own advertisers.
  - jeromegv 5y ago
    Beside AppStore ads, how can I buy ads from Apple for the Apple ecosystem to replace Facebook ads?
    - fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
      Apple is also selling app install ads in the News and Stocks apps. Tens of billions of dollars are spent on app install ads on iOS each year, so this is a very lucrative market for Apple if they can corner it (and probably necessary if they are going to achieve expected Services revenue growth in the years to come). It remains to be seen whether they’ll take another crack at the rest of the ad market, after the failure of iAd. They seem to be laying the groundwork for it.
moogly 5y ago
https://mobiledevmemo.com/apple-privileges-its-own-ad-network-whats-its-privacy-end-game/ https://mobiledevmemo.com/apple-privileges-its-own-ad-networ...

simonh 5y ago

A company keeping records of it's own interactions with it's customers is fine, nobody is arguing against that. The problem is companies selling customer data to each other and snooping on customer activity outside the company's own web site or app. This is what is meant by tracking and Apple doesn't do this in their ad service. It seems like what Apple is doing is trying to cripple tracking for other ad services to make their own service more competitive.

LexGray 5y ago
Even when that company is responsible for more than half of the mobile software installs in the US? Amazon and Google have abused this data in the past to undercut the competition with their own better promoted offerings and make purchase decisions with data the competition just could not have access to.
scatters 5y ago
That's how you end up with a single megacorp that does everything.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
rickdeckard 5y ago
>> ...snooping on customer activity outside the company's own web site or app. This is what is meant by tracking and Apple doesn't do this in their ad service. I'm sure Apple is going to offer exactly that, as the conversion-rate data of an Ad into an actual purchase elsewhere is where the big Ad-money is. Apple will just do all that without handing off any data to another party, providing only the persona of an end-user to the Ad-customer. Their dilemma is that doing this today at an "Apple-price" has limited competitive value to Advertisers. But if Apple cripples the competition to become the ONLY company able to provide such data, they suddenly become a mandatory supplier for every Ad-campaign in the world, as only Apple will be able to provide effective Ad-analytics on iOS. >> It seems like what Apple is doing is trying to cripple tracking for other ad services to make their own service more competitive. Exactly. Which should be a strong sign that regulation is urgently required, but somehow people still are stuck on the wrong narrative.

kergonath 5y ago

They should stop advertising, they created a conflict of interest for themselves. That said, they do not track across applications: they don’t need to.

nielsbot 5y ago

FWIW, iAd for third-party apps was shut down. They still sells adds for Apple News and the App Store. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd Selling search ads on the App Store kinda sucks--I wish they hadn't done that.