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The difference is that Big Tobacco was regulated by the government. Apple is a competitor to Facebook. Apples ads are not effected by this[0]. [0]https://mobil

by t8y 5y ago

The difference is that Big Tobacco was regulated by the government. Apple is a competitor to Facebook. Apples ads are not effected by this[0]. [0]https://mobiledevmemo.com/apple-privileges-its-own-ad-network-whats-its-privacy-end-game/ https://mobiledevmemo.com/apple-privileges-its-own-ad-networ...

trasz 5y ago
The problem is with tracking, not ads.
- swagatkonchada 5y ago
  ads don't work without tracking. that's the whole point
  - danbruc 5y ago
    So all the ads in newspapers and on television and in sports venues and public spaces and...don't work? Or did you just mean ads are less cost effective without tracking-based targeting?
    - dylan604 5y ago
      sell the ads in newspapers? is this the 1950s? j/k Seriously though, what newspaper(s) would you honestly be willing to spend ad dollars with (and for what products) thinking that this would be a good investment? Geritol? Now, if your suggestion is buying newspaper ads would then get ads in their digital versions as well, then maybe. However, seems to me that most viewers of news sites are from link aggregators more than just readers of a website. Not sure how that would affect ad placement.
      - scarface74 5y ago
        Ad supported TV broadcasts are a thing and are podcasts that don’t dynamically insert ads.
        dylan604 5y ago
        I asked about newspapers, and you responded with TV. Huh?
        scarface74 5y ago
        Fair enough. But you do notice that newspapers are still the most popular way for CPG goods like P&G to advertise where they don’t have to target or track.
        dylan604 5y ago
        Eventually, that demographic will age out so to speak, and then what. What are the numbers of new younger subscribers? This is why newspapers are folding/selling.
        kornhole 5y ago
        TV and podcasts are moving towards surveillance based advertising too. Look at the rise of smart TV's, cable, and streaming services that require identification and location as well as the various ad supported podcast players. Your are correct if you are using over the air TV or Kodi and if you use FOSS podcast players such as Antennapod or Podverse.
        dylan604 5y ago
        >TV and podcasts are moving towards surveillance based advertising too. Everything is moving this way. It's only a natural desire for those spending money on advertsing to want to know if the money is being spent effectively, or if they'd be just as well off lighting cigars with $100 bills. The lure of targeting, tracking (ad effectiveness, not people per se), etc is just too inticing for those non-techies that haven't pulled back the curtain to see that the all powerful wizard isn't wearing any clothes (to mix metaphors). Those of a certain age that depended on Nielsen ratings and what not buying TV/Radio ad time were always very interested in knowing how effective the ad buy really was. Then, the digital ads folks come along telling them they can hit exactly the demo they want to target and then show click through rates, etc. It's like a dream come true with a cherry on top under a rainbow with the leprechaun delivering a pot of gold riding on the unicorn's back. They all bit hard hook,line,and sinker.
    - mrhands556 5y ago
      Ads are much more valuable and higher click through vs impression if they’re personalized. Small businesses are willing to give more money per ad campaign if they know they’ll get clickthru on a specific target market. These same small businesses don’t have the money to run long ad campaigns which would result in less clicks.
  - ComodoHacker 5y ago
    Ads work without tracking, just less efficiently. On the other hand, misinformation and propaganda also work without tracking, just less efficiently. Wi'll have to strike a balance somewhere.
    - benreesman 5y ago
      I have always been a bit skeptical of off-site data producing serious lift in VCG auction clearing prices for in-feed units, but I’m also pretty out of date.
  - evgen 5y ago
    Some people claim, without much proof, that ads without tracking are less effective. We don't care and would prefer to see their business model fail than to maintain the status quo. That is the point here.
    - sdoering 5y ago
      Weren't there even studies showing, that context based advertising is on par with personalized (based on tracking your every move) advertising? I strongly suspect that might be the case. I also believe that social networks could - in theory - create effective advertising possibilities without the need to target user properties. Take my experience with Instagram. When I am looking at mostly typography related posts, it tends to work well if they show me paid ads for interesting fonts. But when they show these to me, when I am looking at gardening content, I tend to be irritated and ignore them. I know - I am talking anecdata here - but maybe there could be a way to not target users, but target topics and hit the users that move through these topics (so to speak). One problem, though, I see with this approach is when you want to create a longing in somebody who never before had the idea that he/she would like to have a cool new font (to stay with my example). Or the next "hot" stuff from some global brand (or what they believe that i should want to feel cool). But as said - I can't find the studies I seem to remember right now on the effectiveness of context based advertising compared to personalized advertising. So I am not sure if this was just my imagination.
    - native_samples 5y ago
      Who is "we"? The vast majority of people love ad supported services. They prefer free/low cost to expensive and express this preference regularly. They don't think advertising is evil, and in fact many people voluntarily wear adverts on their own clothes. Online advertising pays for a massive amount of stuff. If it dies, then the outcome is not "everything stays the same but somehow better". The outcome is that a lot of services we take for granted go away and either don't come back at all, or come back far worse because their market is now much smaller and only rich people pay for it. To put this in perspective, when I worked at Google they had a prototype internal service that let you "buy" your way out of seeing ads by bidding against yourself in the auction. The idea was to allow people to pay for an ad-free internet, but without making users freeloaders on the services they used (that's ad blocking and exists already). I thought, what a great idea. I'll sign up. Result: to get rid of a just a fraction of all the ads I was seeing online (my guess, ~20% of ads I saw were served by Google) would have costed $200-$300 per month. After seeing the scale at which advertisers were subsidizing my online experience, I lost interest, as did everyone else. Paying 4x as much as my entire normal internet bill just to see fewer ads, not even get ridding of all of them, just wasn't worth it. The reality is that the public aren't demanding restrictions on online advertising. They don't care. They like free stuff and they've got nothing against advertisers. This is a war being waged for political and commercial reasons, dressed up as consumer protection, and if/when it actually starts to bite in visible ways, a whole lot of people are going to be mighty shocked at how upset the public will get.
  - benreesman 5y ago
    It’s been my experience that historical user CTR and historical ad CTR can already produce a really high performing P(click|impression) classifier.
  - scarface74 5y ago
    I’ve found some very relevant services based on host read advertising on podcasts.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  Actually - I would argue the other way around. Selling user data (for ads) IS the problem. No one would collect and store massive amounts of data if not to make a profit selling it. They would only collect things that are useful in improving the product. That kind of tracking IS valuable.
  - benreesman 5y ago
    The last thing I want to do is to start a flame war, but I know a lot about this field and it’s been my observation that it’s both important and kind of opaque. I would be happy to answer questions (within some fairly broad guidelines of proprietary information) in as much detail as anyone would like. Everything from the technology to the organizational imperatives to the competitive landscape is actually quite complex and nuanced. I have no ambition of informing folks’ moral judgements (I have my own), but on average it’s probably better if moral judgements are informed by detailed understanding.
  - nightgarden 5y ago
    > They would only collect things that are useful in improving the product. But if your product is serving ads then collecting data for ads is improving your product
  - scarface74 5y ago
    Neither Facebook nor Google “sells user data”. Why would they? There is value in having sole access to the data. They sell access to you based on the data they collect. In this case, I would say FB is more in the side of the angels than Google. People knowingly give FB information about them
mrweasel 5y ago
Apple might actually be helping Facebook. It the industry doesn't regulate itself then the governments will at some point and that's going to be much worse. The GDPR is governments (the EU) regulating an industry that has failed to regulate itself the last 20 years and most would argue that the GDPR is much stricter than it needs to be.
- pwdisswordfish9 5y ago
  > much worse For the ‘industry’, that is.
echelon 5y ago
I'm no fan of Facebook, but Apple is literally showing the world that their platform can sink trillion dollar businesses with simple policy changes. When you're "America's Computer" with a 51+% entrenchment, you shouldn't be able to govern commerce. You're a common carrier at that point. The DOJ better be watching. This behavior makes 90's Microsoft look absolutely tame by comparison. Apple is the new Standard Oil.
- scarface74 5y ago
  Apple is giving the user the choice to be tracked. How will the argument work in court for FB to say that users shouldn’t be given the choice?
- scarface74 5y ago
  So exactly what is the complaint? That Apple have users the choice whether or not to be tracked?
- benreesman 5y ago
  In fairness all the FAANGs are crazy big and powerful by historical anti-trust standards.
  - cute_boi 5y ago
    Obviously, when people in power like pelosi holds stock of Apple and Alphabet in the name of free market, is there any incentives to regulate them? I would say FAANG got popular and powerful because regulating them is direct conflict of interest for many politicians.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      It couldn’t possibly be because they create products that people wanted?
      - echelon 5y ago
        Nobody wants to build for iPhone or pay 30% to Apple. We build for it because that's where Americans choose to be, and if you want your software business to reach audiences, that's where you have to follow. It frankly sucks. I don't like the fact that my code is up for review. I don't have the nanny state overseeing my web deploys. I don't like the fact that the feedback is uneven and arbitrary. I don't like being forced to give up my own choices for login and contact, essentially ceding my customers to Apple. I don't like paying thirty percent for being forced to build for a platform I don't even want to be on but have to. There should have been an open standard for native apps distributed over web. It should have been cross platform, like HTML, so we don't have to build twice or use stupid hacks to share code. Apple builds hardware people like, but they're monsters.
isodev 5y ago
"regulate" doesn't sound like the correct word in this instance. It's making the process more transparent - all Apple did was ensure users could choose what Facebook does with their data. Apple's ad system is subject to the same rules. The link you are posting is outdated - since last year's iOS 14.5 the SKAdNetwork has been extended to provide the full API.
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  > Apple's ad system is subject to the same rules. This does not appear to be true, given that they were asked this question by the FT and refused to answer. See: https://www.ft.com/content/074b881f-a931-4986-888e-2ac53e286b9d https://www.ft.com/content/074b881f-a931-4986-888e-2ac53e286... Money quote (which to be fair, was not too an FT journalist): “Apple was unable to validate for us that Apple’s solutions are compliant with Apple’s policy,” he said. “Despite multiple requests and trying to get them to confirm that their products are compliant with their own solutions, we were unable to get there.”
Tagbert 5y ago
Those Apple ads are just search placement ads inside their App Store. A much smaller scale and limited scope than Facebook or Google ads.
- SergeAx 5y ago
  Oh, you just wait! I am sure that Apple will eventually build its own ad empire. It is too sweet peece of pie to be left on the table. Also, Apple badly needs to justify it's market cap with some revenue.
  - tobylane 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd They had this mobile advertising platform then closed it, or reduced it to the ads GP mentioned.
ARandomerDude 5y ago
I was very confused until I realized you meant "affected."

by t8y 5y ago

trasz 5y ago

The problem is with tracking, not ads.

swagatkonchada 5y ago
ads don't work without tracking. that's the whole point
- danbruc 5y ago
  So all the ads in newspapers and on television and in sports venues and public spaces and...don't work? Or did you just mean ads are less cost effective without tracking-based targeting?
  - dylan604 5y ago
    sell the ads in newspapers? is this the 1950s? j/k Seriously though, what newspaper(s) would you honestly be willing to spend ad dollars with (and for what products) thinking that this would be a good investment? Geritol? Now, if your suggestion is buying newspaper ads would then get ads in their digital versions as well, then maybe. However, seems to me that most viewers of news sites are from link aggregators more than just readers of a website. Not sure how that would affect ad placement.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      Ad supported TV broadcasts are a thing and are podcasts that don’t dynamically insert ads.
      - dylan604 5y ago
        I asked about newspapers, and you responded with TV. Huh?
        scarface74 5y ago
        Fair enough. But you do notice that newspapers are still the most popular way for CPG goods like P&G to advertise where they don’t have to target or track.
        dylan604 5y ago
        Eventually, that demographic will age out so to speak, and then what. What are the numbers of new younger subscribers? This is why newspapers are folding/selling.
      - kornhole 5y ago
        TV and podcasts are moving towards surveillance based advertising too. Look at the rise of smart TV's, cable, and streaming services that require identification and location as well as the various ad supported podcast players. Your are correct if you are using over the air TV or Kodi and if you use FOSS podcast players such as Antennapod or Podverse.
        dylan604 5y ago
        >TV and podcasts are moving towards surveillance based advertising too. Everything is moving this way. It's only a natural desire for those spending money on advertsing to want to know if the money is being spent effectively, or if they'd be just as well off lighting cigars with $100 bills. The lure of targeting, tracking (ad effectiveness, not people per se), etc is just too inticing for those non-techies that haven't pulled back the curtain to see that the all powerful wizard isn't wearing any clothes (to mix metaphors). Those of a certain age that depended on Nielsen ratings and what not buying TV/Radio ad time were always very interested in knowing how effective the ad buy really was. Then, the digital ads folks come along telling them they can hit exactly the demo they want to target and then show click through rates, etc. It's like a dream come true with a cherry on top under a rainbow with the leprechaun delivering a pot of gold riding on the unicorn's back. They all bit hard hook,line,and sinker.
  - mrhands556 5y ago
    Ads are much more valuable and higher click through vs impression if they’re personalized. Small businesses are willing to give more money per ad campaign if they know they’ll get clickthru on a specific target market. These same small businesses don’t have the money to run long ad campaigns which would result in less clicks.
- ComodoHacker 5y ago
  Ads work without tracking, just less efficiently. On the other hand, misinformation and propaganda also work without tracking, just less efficiently. Wi'll have to strike a balance somewhere.
  - benreesman 5y ago
    I have always been a bit skeptical of off-site data producing serious lift in VCG auction clearing prices for in-feed units, but I’m also pretty out of date.
- evgen 5y ago
  Some people claim, without much proof, that ads without tracking are less effective. We don't care and would prefer to see their business model fail than to maintain the status quo. That is the point here.
  - sdoering 5y ago
    Weren't there even studies showing, that context based advertising is on par with personalized (based on tracking your every move) advertising? I strongly suspect that might be the case. I also believe that social networks could - in theory - create effective advertising possibilities without the need to target user properties. Take my experience with Instagram. When I am looking at mostly typography related posts, it tends to work well if they show me paid ads for interesting fonts. But when they show these to me, when I am looking at gardening content, I tend to be irritated and ignore them. I know - I am talking anecdata here - but maybe there could be a way to not target users, but target topics and hit the users that move through these topics (so to speak). One problem, though, I see with this approach is when you want to create a longing in somebody who never before had the idea that he/she would like to have a cool new font (to stay with my example). Or the next "hot" stuff from some global brand (or what they believe that i should want to feel cool). But as said - I can't find the studies I seem to remember right now on the effectiveness of context based advertising compared to personalized advertising. So I am not sure if this was just my imagination.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    Who is "we"? The vast majority of people love ad supported services. They prefer free/low cost to expensive and express this preference regularly. They don't think advertising is evil, and in fact many people voluntarily wear adverts on their own clothes. Online advertising pays for a massive amount of stuff. If it dies, then the outcome is not "everything stays the same but somehow better". The outcome is that a lot of services we take for granted go away and either don't come back at all, or come back far worse because their market is now much smaller and only rich people pay for it. To put this in perspective, when I worked at Google they had a prototype internal service that let you "buy" your way out of seeing ads by bidding against yourself in the auction. The idea was to allow people to pay for an ad-free internet, but without making users freeloaders on the services they used (that's ad blocking and exists already). I thought, what a great idea. I'll sign up. Result: to get rid of a just a fraction of all the ads I was seeing online (my guess, ~20% of ads I saw were served by Google) would have costed $200-$300 per month. After seeing the scale at which advertisers were subsidizing my online experience, I lost interest, as did everyone else. Paying 4x as much as my entire normal internet bill just to see fewer ads, not even get ridding of all of them, just wasn't worth it. The reality is that the public aren't demanding restrictions on online advertising. They don't care. They like free stuff and they've got nothing against advertisers. This is a war being waged for political and commercial reasons, dressed up as consumer protection, and if/when it actually starts to bite in visible ways, a whole lot of people are going to be mighty shocked at how upset the public will get.
- benreesman 5y ago
  It’s been my experience that historical user CTR and historical ad CTR can already produce a really high performing P(click|impression) classifier.
- scarface74 5y ago
  I’ve found some very relevant services based on host read advertising on podcasts.
onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
Actually - I would argue the other way around. Selling user data (for ads) IS the problem. No one would collect and store massive amounts of data if not to make a profit selling it. They would only collect things that are useful in improving the product. That kind of tracking IS valuable.
- benreesman 5y ago
  The last thing I want to do is to start a flame war, but I know a lot about this field and it’s been my observation that it’s both important and kind of opaque. I would be happy to answer questions (within some fairly broad guidelines of proprietary information) in as much detail as anyone would like. Everything from the technology to the organizational imperatives to the competitive landscape is actually quite complex and nuanced. I have no ambition of informing folks’ moral judgements (I have my own), but on average it’s probably better if moral judgements are informed by detailed understanding.
- nightgarden 5y ago
  > They would only collect things that are useful in improving the product. But if your product is serving ads then collecting data for ads is improving your product
- scarface74 5y ago
  Neither Facebook nor Google “sells user data”. Why would they? There is value in having sole access to the data. They sell access to you based on the data they collect. In this case, I would say FB is more in the side of the angels than Google. People knowingly give FB information about them

mrweasel 5y ago

Apple might actually be helping Facebook. It the industry doesn't regulate itself then the governments will at some point and that's going to be much worse. The GDPR is governments (the EU) regulating an industry that has failed to regulate itself the last 20 years and most would argue that the GDPR is much stricter than it needs to be.

pwdisswordfish9 5y ago
> much worse For the ‘industry’, that is.

echelon 5y ago

I'm no fan of Facebook, but Apple is literally showing the world that their platform can sink trillion dollar businesses with simple policy changes. When you're "America's Computer" with a 51+% entrenchment, you shouldn't be able to govern commerce. You're a common carrier at that point. The DOJ better be watching. This behavior makes 90's Microsoft look absolutely tame by comparison. Apple is the new Standard Oil.

scarface74 5y ago
Apple is giving the user the choice to be tracked. How will the argument work in court for FB to say that users shouldn’t be given the choice?
scarface74 5y ago
So exactly what is the complaint? That Apple have users the choice whether or not to be tracked?
benreesman 5y ago
In fairness all the FAANGs are crazy big and powerful by historical anti-trust standards.
- cute_boi 5y ago
  Obviously, when people in power like pelosi holds stock of Apple and Alphabet in the name of free market, is there any incentives to regulate them? I would say FAANG got popular and powerful because regulating them is direct conflict of interest for many politicians.
  - scarface74 5y ago
    It couldn’t possibly be because they create products that people wanted?
    - echelon 5y ago
      Nobody wants to build for iPhone or pay 30% to Apple. We build for it because that's where Americans choose to be, and if you want your software business to reach audiences, that's where you have to follow. It frankly sucks. I don't like the fact that my code is up for review. I don't have the nanny state overseeing my web deploys. I don't like the fact that the feedback is uneven and arbitrary. I don't like being forced to give up my own choices for login and contact, essentially ceding my customers to Apple. I don't like paying thirty percent for being forced to build for a platform I don't even want to be on but have to. There should have been an open standard for native apps distributed over web. It should have been cross platform, like HTML, so we don't have to build twice or use stupid hacks to share code. Apple builds hardware people like, but they're monsters.

isodev 5y ago

"regulate" doesn't sound like the correct word in this instance. It's making the process more transparent - all Apple did was ensure users could choose what Facebook does with their data. Apple's ad system is subject to the same rules. The link you are posting is outdated - since last year's iOS 14.5 the SKAdNetwork has been extended to provide the full API.

disgruntledphd2 5y ago
> Apple's ad system is subject to the same rules. This does not appear to be true, given that they were asked this question by the FT and refused to answer. See: https://www.ft.com/content/074b881f-a931-4986-888e-2ac53e286b9d https://www.ft.com/content/074b881f-a931-4986-888e-2ac53e286... Money quote (which to be fair, was not too an FT journalist): “Apple was unable to validate for us that Apple’s solutions are compliant with Apple’s policy,” he said. “Despite multiple requests and trying to get them to confirm that their products are compliant with their own solutions, we were unable to get there.”

Tagbert 5y ago

Those Apple ads are just search placement ads inside their App Store. A much smaller scale and limited scope than Facebook or Google ads.

SergeAx 5y ago
Oh, you just wait! I am sure that Apple will eventually build its own ad empire. It is too sweet peece of pie to be left on the table. Also, Apple badly needs to justify it's market cap with some revenue.
- tobylane 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd They had this mobile advertising platform then closed it, or reduced it to the ads GP mentioned.

ARandomerDude 5y ago

I was very confused until I realized you meant "affected."