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> But it crushed [snip] 1000s of small businesses in the process. There's a lot of comments here suggesting this is a narrative from FB/Snap, but it really isn

> But it crushed [snip] 1000s of small businesses in the process. There's a lot of comments here suggesting this is a narrative from FB/Snap, but it really isn't. I was previously able to target adverts directly to the tiny audience of potential users of my product, and the return on those adverts was nearly 10x. Overnight it entirely evaporated as a source of new customers and I don't know how I'd build a niche business again without it. Advertising gets a bad rap, but I like to believe I am providing value to my customers and they wouldn't have found my product otherwise. Who was hurt?

BiteCode_dev 4y ago
Most of the products I like, I didn't discover through ads. I'm ok with your business failing if it can't work without ads. The problem here is that ads are not banned, but that they are now the exclusivity of Apple.
- cwkoss 4y ago
  I'll bet $5 the 'niche business' is drop shipping, and the ads are targeting customers already looking for the product who would have found it for cheaper if not for the ad.
  - plantain 4y ago
    You owe me 5$.
    - mikeiz404 4y ago
      If you don’t mind sharing… - What was/is your business? - Which customers were you going after? - What other marketing / advertising approaches did you try? Edit: I’m guessing weather forecasting (https://skysight.io/ https://skysight.io/) is the business.
      - plantain 4y ago
        Specialist subscription weather forecasting. I don't really want to make myself into a case study here - just sharing my experience that the Apple-induced small-business-advertising-pinch is very real.
        mikeiz404 4y ago
        Thanks for the info. No worries; I appreciate the perspective you added.
- piyush_soni 4y ago
  >> Most of the products I like, I didn't discover through ads. That's what you're made to think. :)
adamsmith143 4y ago
Operating a business with a single point of failure is never wise.
- justapassenger 4y ago
  You never operated any business right?
- tobyjsullivan 4y ago
  Operating a business with a single point of failure is a risk to be considered in the risk:reward analysis. For many businesses, it is a reasonable risk that enables unique solutions. It's important to observe that the parent didn't suggest regretting building that business even though the customer-acquisition channel evaporated. They merely said that option is no longer viable for future businesses.
  - adamsmith143 4y ago
    > Operating a business with a single point of failure is a risk to be considered in the risk:reward analysis. For many businesses, it is a reasonable risk that enables unique solutions. Then they didn't compute the risk correctly. A risk that some other entity could at any moment turn off your entire sales funnel which would, with nearly 100% certainty, ruin your business ought to be one no one should take. I'm not going to cry for those people that did.
praestigiare 4y ago
The people who have obviously made their preferences clear that they prefer not to be profiled and tracked that way, because the possibility is still there for those who consent to tracking.
- justapassenger 4y ago
  It’s merely a corporate story (from both sides) that people made informed choice about that. It’s full of BS everywhere. Apple fighting for privacy is BS (look at China). Ads networks not affecting privacy is BS. Reducing effectiveness of ads not affecting small business is BS. Moving monopoly in ads market from one group of companies to others being good for people is BS. People understanding impact of all of that on their privacy, small businesses, cost of digital apps, etc is BS. Both sides spend many millions of dollars to try to swing public and regulatory view of the problem.
  - praestigiare 4y ago
    Apple does not need to be a white knight who does no wrong anywhere for me to make the informed choice that I prefer their policies in my current country at the current time, nor for me to choose not to be tracked. I don't think anyone claimed that reducing ad targeting did not affect small businesses. What they claimed was that small businesses do not have a right to target ads against user preferences.
  - plantain 4y ago
    I like this phrasing - I don't think users made an informed choice to be tracked, or an informed choice not to be. They were victims both times of big tech power plays.
Jcowell 4y ago
> Advertising gets a bad rap, but I like to believe I am providing value to my customers and they wouldn't have found my product otherwise. Who was hurt? Probably. But if the means in which you can connect with those customers requires a surveillance apparatus that infringes on the privacy of the unconsented than perhaps the question that should be asked is does your business have a greater right to exists than the privacy of those customers (I’m guessing the reason you can’t reach them anymore is because they decided to no longer be tracked.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  It's a moot-point. Switching away from AdSense isn't going to protect you from surveillance, it's just going to change the pool of customers buying your information. All your iCloud data is a few clicks away for most NSA employees, and I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that they also have root capabilities on your iPhone. No matter how you slice it, Apple isn't going to give you privacy. The data you hold near-and-dear is already in adversarial hands. The game is lost before you even put your chips on the table, that's the consequence of agreeing with TOSes for more than a decade. Nobody wants to admit it, but privacy is literally unattainable in a digital era. What Apple sells is security. They do a fairly good job with security, and their whitepapers are almost industry-leading. Their commitment to privacy is entirely lip service though, and the volume of their marketing seems to indicate the emptiness of that promise.
  - bjtitus 4y ago
    What part of opt-in advertising IDs is only lip service to privacy? Seems entirely about privacy and very little about security. Similarly, iCloud Private Relay is completely privacy focused and isn't really about security at all. Both of these things provide real value to consumers and dramatically limit data collection as evidenced by reports from Facebook and many others in recent quarters. NSA data collection isn't anywhere close to equivalent to private companies storing it. The NSA programs could be shut down if the political will existed. Private companies with all of this data have absolutely zero oversight under US law at the moment.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
reaperducer 4y ago
Who was hurt? Someone too lazy to buy ads directly. If you know your audience, then you already know the places where you should advertise. Contact them directly. I've placed ads directly with dozens and dozens of web sites, podcasts, vloggers, and others. Very often they're more than happy to take your money because they get to keep all of it, instead of a tiny percentage sent back to them by Google, Facebook, etc. Business is hard. Welcome to business.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > If you know your audience, then you already know the places where you should advertise. And if your audience is a very odd niche, and you can't find where they congregate, go old school and make a place for them to congregate. If you can't figure out how to market your wiener dog slide without facebook, create a weiner dog site with information about weiner dog health, pictures of weiner dogs, stories about weiner dogs, a weiner dog forum (or at least a link to a weiner dog forum you have created on reddit.) Slap your brand all over everything. Distribute other weiner dog products along with your weiner dog slide. If you couldn't find anywhere on the internet that weiner dog owners congregate (and you really made an effort), eventually after you do this every weiner dog owner will know about you either directly or through word of mouth.
  - Cederfjard 4y ago
    That’s way more difficult than just asking Facebook who already knows, though. You could go out of business before you manage to build that audience, if you ever would have. I’m not saying that makes Facebook’s invasion of their users’ privacy alright (I personally haven’t pondered it enough to have a well-thought-out opinion), but I really disagree with the grandparent comment that the only businesses that suffered negatively from Apple’s move did so because they were lazy.
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      >That’s way more difficult than just asking Facebook who already knows, though. You could go out of business before you manage to build that audience, if you ever would have. Cry me a river. If your business can only be sustained by a 3rd party implementing a massive, global, impossible to avoid and opt out of tracking and surveillance apparatus, I genuinely don't care if it fails. Weiner dog slides aren't that important.
ska 4y ago
I suspect you are being disingenuous here, and you know the issue was not the nominal harm your niche business caused by advertising, but rather the perceived danger of the entire infrastructure created that made this possible for you. This is a classic issue of technological capability vs societal interest (i.e. we can do it, but should we?), and there are rarely easy solutions. Some of the trade offs may just mean that some business models aren't as viable - this in principle seems reasonable to vast majority of people. The good news is that if your business model has any non-superficial value there are bound to be other ways to reach people and make a go of it, if so desired.
- ska 4y ago
  votes suggest this came across snarky, wasn't intended. I was serious about the last part , if there is real value there almost has to be other, even better ways to reach people.
ksec 4y ago
For the past 5-6 years, 95%+ of HN comments believe Ads are completely useless. And small business making money with ads, ( Facebook or not ) are Facebook or Social Media's narratives. Had your account not been one from 2011, you would have been labeled as shill for Social Media.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  To me the problem is that the only upside to targeted advertising seems to be "discover this niche product from a small business that can only exist because it's now cheap to advertise directly to the community it serves", but the targeted ads I get are all mega brands trying to convince me that their product is better than the competition by making me laugh or shocked. Where are all the niche products I was promised?
  - therealdrag0 4y ago
    Where are you getting ads? I have YouTube premium so I don’t see yt ads which are more mainstream iirc. But I’m Facebook newsfeed I get a ton of off non-mainstream ads. Maybe your profile is super vague so only big companies bother to pay for your eyes.
scarface74 4y ago
The same way that it was traditionally done - trade shows, advertising on sites and in podcasts that cater to your target audience, search ads, etc.

BiteCode_dev 4y ago

Most of the products I like, I didn't discover through ads. I'm ok with your business failing if it can't work without ads. The problem here is that ads are not banned, but that they are now the exclusivity of Apple.

cwkoss 4y ago
I'll bet $5 the 'niche business' is drop shipping, and the ads are targeting customers already looking for the product who would have found it for cheaper if not for the ad.
- plantain 4y ago
  You owe me 5$.
  - mikeiz404 4y ago
    If you don’t mind sharing… - What was/is your business? - Which customers were you going after? - What other marketing / advertising approaches did you try? Edit: I’m guessing weather forecasting (https://skysight.io/ https://skysight.io/) is the business.
    - plantain 4y ago
      Specialist subscription weather forecasting. I don't really want to make myself into a case study here - just sharing my experience that the Apple-induced small-business-advertising-pinch is very real.
      - mikeiz404 4y ago
        Thanks for the info. No worries; I appreciate the perspective you added.
piyush_soni 4y ago
>> Most of the products I like, I didn't discover through ads. That's what you're made to think. :)

adamsmith143 4y ago

Operating a business with a single point of failure is never wise.

justapassenger 4y ago
You never operated any business right?
tobyjsullivan 4y ago
Operating a business with a single point of failure is a risk to be considered in the risk:reward analysis. For many businesses, it is a reasonable risk that enables unique solutions. It's important to observe that the parent didn't suggest regretting building that business even though the customer-acquisition channel evaporated. They merely said that option is no longer viable for future businesses.
- adamsmith143 4y ago
  > Operating a business with a single point of failure is a risk to be considered in the risk:reward analysis. For many businesses, it is a reasonable risk that enables unique solutions. Then they didn't compute the risk correctly. A risk that some other entity could at any moment turn off your entire sales funnel which would, with nearly 100% certainty, ruin your business ought to be one no one should take. I'm not going to cry for those people that did.

praestigiare 4y ago

The people who have obviously made their preferences clear that they prefer not to be profiled and tracked that way, because the possibility is still there for those who consent to tracking.

justapassenger 4y ago
It’s merely a corporate story (from both sides) that people made informed choice about that. It’s full of BS everywhere. Apple fighting for privacy is BS (look at China). Ads networks not affecting privacy is BS. Reducing effectiveness of ads not affecting small business is BS. Moving monopoly in ads market from one group of companies to others being good for people is BS. People understanding impact of all of that on their privacy, small businesses, cost of digital apps, etc is BS. Both sides spend many millions of dollars to try to swing public and regulatory view of the problem.
- praestigiare 4y ago
  Apple does not need to be a white knight who does no wrong anywhere for me to make the informed choice that I prefer their policies in my current country at the current time, nor for me to choose not to be tracked. I don't think anyone claimed that reducing ad targeting did not affect small businesses. What they claimed was that small businesses do not have a right to target ads against user preferences.
- plantain 4y ago
  I like this phrasing - I don't think users made an informed choice to be tracked, or an informed choice not to be. They were victims both times of big tech power plays.

Jcowell 4y ago

> Advertising gets a bad rap, but I like to believe I am providing value to my customers and they wouldn't have found my product otherwise. Who was hurt? Probably. But if the means in which you can connect with those customers requires a surveillance apparatus that infringes on the privacy of the unconsented than perhaps the question that should be asked is does your business have a greater right to exists than the privacy of those customers (I’m guessing the reason you can’t reach them anymore is because they decided to no longer be tracked.

smoldesu 4y ago
It's a moot-point. Switching away from AdSense isn't going to protect you from surveillance, it's just going to change the pool of customers buying your information. All your iCloud data is a few clicks away for most NSA employees, and I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that they also have root capabilities on your iPhone. No matter how you slice it, Apple isn't going to give you privacy. The data you hold near-and-dear is already in adversarial hands. The game is lost before you even put your chips on the table, that's the consequence of agreeing with TOSes for more than a decade. Nobody wants to admit it, but privacy is literally unattainable in a digital era. What Apple sells is security. They do a fairly good job with security, and their whitepapers are almost industry-leading. Their commitment to privacy is entirely lip service though, and the volume of their marketing seems to indicate the emptiness of that promise.
- bjtitus 4y ago
  What part of opt-in advertising IDs is only lip service to privacy? Seems entirely about privacy and very little about security. Similarly, iCloud Private Relay is completely privacy focused and isn't really about security at all. Both of these things provide real value to consumers and dramatically limit data collection as evidenced by reports from Facebook and many others in recent quarters. NSA data collection isn't anywhere close to equivalent to private companies storing it. The NSA programs could be shut down if the political will existed. Private companies with all of this data have absolutely zero oversight under US law at the moment.
- Nextgrid 4y ago

reaperducer 4y ago

Who was hurt? Someone too lazy to buy ads directly. If you know your audience, then you already know the places where you should advertise. Contact them directly. I've placed ads directly with dozens and dozens of web sites, podcasts, vloggers, and others. Very often they're more than happy to take your money because they get to keep all of it, instead of a tiny percentage sent back to them by Google, Facebook, etc. Business is hard. Welcome to business.

pessimizer 4y ago
> If you know your audience, then you already know the places where you should advertise. And if your audience is a very odd niche, and you can't find where they congregate, go old school and make a place for them to congregate. If you can't figure out how to market your wiener dog slide without facebook, create a weiner dog site with information about weiner dog health, pictures of weiner dogs, stories about weiner dogs, a weiner dog forum (or at least a link to a weiner dog forum you have created on reddit.) Slap your brand all over everything. Distribute other weiner dog products along with your weiner dog slide. If you couldn't find anywhere on the internet that weiner dog owners congregate (and you really made an effort), eventually after you do this every weiner dog owner will know about you either directly or through word of mouth.
- Cederfjard 4y ago
  That’s way more difficult than just asking Facebook who already knows, though. You could go out of business before you manage to build that audience, if you ever would have. I’m not saying that makes Facebook’s invasion of their users’ privacy alright (I personally haven’t pondered it enough to have a well-thought-out opinion), but I really disagree with the grandparent comment that the only businesses that suffered negatively from Apple’s move did so because they were lazy.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    >That’s way more difficult than just asking Facebook who already knows, though. You could go out of business before you manage to build that audience, if you ever would have. Cry me a river. If your business can only be sustained by a 3rd party implementing a massive, global, impossible to avoid and opt out of tracking and surveillance apparatus, I genuinely don't care if it fails. Weiner dog slides aren't that important.

ska 4y ago

I suspect you are being disingenuous here, and you know the issue was not the nominal harm your niche business caused by advertising, but rather the perceived danger of the entire infrastructure created that made this possible for you. This is a classic issue of technological capability vs societal interest (i.e. we can do it, but should we?), and there are rarely easy solutions. Some of the trade offs may just mean that some business models aren't as viable - this in principle seems reasonable to vast majority of people. The good news is that if your business model has any non-superficial value there are bound to be other ways to reach people and make a go of it, if so desired.

ska 4y ago
votes suggest this came across snarky, wasn't intended. I was serious about the last part , if there is real value there almost has to be other, even better ways to reach people.

ksec 4y ago

For the past 5-6 years, 95%+ of HN comments believe Ads are completely useless. And small business making money with ads, ( Facebook or not ) are Facebook or Social Media's narratives. Had your account not been one from 2011, you would have been labeled as shill for Social Media.

colinmhayes 4y ago
To me the problem is that the only upside to targeted advertising seems to be "discover this niche product from a small business that can only exist because it's now cheap to advertise directly to the community it serves", but the targeted ads I get are all mega brands trying to convince me that their product is better than the competition by making me laugh or shocked. Where are all the niche products I was promised?
- therealdrag0 4y ago
  Where are you getting ads? I have YouTube premium so I don’t see yt ads which are more mainstream iirc. But I’m Facebook newsfeed I get a ton of off non-mainstream ads. Maybe your profile is super vague so only big companies bother to pay for your eyes.

scarface74 4y ago

The same way that it was traditionally done - trade shows, advertising on sites and in podcasts that cater to your target audience, search ads, etc.