[HN Gopher] iOS 14 tracking changes sees big ad spending drop, t...
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iOS 14 tracking changes sees big ad spending drop, tumbling prices
Author : CharlesW
Score : 196 points
Date : 2021-05-31 14:55 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.imore.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.imore.com)
| bigyikes wrote:
| This will bring only good things to the ecosystem. Your app can't
| support itself without tracking, and your users don't want to
| pay? Maybe your app doesn't provide as much value as you think.
| Advertising is a race to the bottom, so kudos to Apple for
| raising the bar for everybody.
| wccrawford wrote:
| Another comment here suggested that non-free social media would
| see rich people getting wider distribution.
|
| And I think that's exactly what would happen.
|
| Freemium dating sites let you use the most basic features for
| free, but to actually reach more than a few potential dates,
| you have to pay.
|
| Freemium social media might also do the same. For free, maybe
| you get sent to just a few of your closest friends. For money,
| you can be sent to all your friends _and_ random strangers.
|
| And perhaps you have access to flashier messages and better
| icons. Perhaps meme/picture posting is limited for free.
|
| It's easy to think that the users would just go elsewhere, but
| if Facebook can't afford to operate without tricks like that,
| smaller sites have even less chance.
|
| And once that door is opened, it quickly gets wider and wider.
| Look at DLC and IAP in games now. It used to be non-existent.
| And then "horse armor" appeared and sold like hotcakes, despite
| all the protests. From there, we ended up with gacha games that
| absolutely _abuse_ people with certain mental instabilities,
| often when they have money to burn, but often even when they
| don 't.
|
| As much as I hate ads, I'd hate to see social media get
| _worse_.
| criddell wrote:
| For many of us, the ads aren't necessarily the problem, its
| the surveillance.
| manquer wrote:
| LinkedIn has this setup for years . It has not impacted
| anyone all that much.
|
| Only professional influencer would _need_ to pay in this kind
| of model that doesn 't seem all that bad to me.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Or better. You could take the CS:GO model and only sell
| skins. Seriously skins can sell for a fortune and they do
| absolutely nothing.
| krrrh wrote:
| > if Facebook can't afford to operate without tricks like
| that, smaller sites have even less chance.
|
| It could be the opposite.
|
| The ambitions of social media operators need to be downsized.
| One of the most salient data points is that WhatsApp served a
| half billion users with 50 employees when they were acquired
| by Facebook. And reportedly they were profitable at that
| point by charging $1 per user per year after the first year.
| By 2018 Signal had already made a substantial entry into the
| messaging market with [only 2.3 FTE engineers on
| average](https://signal.org/blog/signal-foundation/) (I'm not
| sure on the current headcount but I'm guessing it's still on
| the order of magnitude of the WhatsApp numbers), and it is
| self-sustaining based largely on a $50m endowment provided by
| one individual (Brian Acton, not ironically the co-founder of
| WhatsApp).
|
| It's totally conceivable that for the type of social media
| that people prefer (no algorithm in the timeline, no
| tracking, etc.) a very small organization could provide it.
|
| Could the Signal foundation develop a competitor to Twitter
| or Facebook, or could the social features and groups in apps
| like Signal or Telegram (also a relatively small team)
| continue to chip away at the jobs that people hire Facebook
| for? I don't see a strong argument against this.
|
| Andrew Carnegie decided to put libraries in cities all across
| America because he thought he could make a major contribution
| to the needs of the day through improving access to literacy
| and self-education to those who otherwise couldn't afford it.
| From what I can tell [Brian
| Acton](https://www.forbesindia.com/article/special/i-am-the-
| david-g...) is doing the same by ensuring that private
| communication is free and available to even the least amongst
| us. Why would we assume that we'll see less and not more of
| this sort of thing?
|
| > Acton: In some ways, I'm the David going against the
| Goliath that I created. I think that I stand on my principles
| the most, having been in the industry and seeing how the
| industry has developed around advertising and behaviour-
| tracking and user-tracking, I'm here to stand on my
| principles and present alternatives. I'm not going to just
| say the world should be a different place. I'm actually going
| to try and build the world a better place and that's why I
| wake up every morning. That's why I go to work every morning
| and that's why I don't sit on a beach and sip cocktails.
| xwdv wrote:
| Stop conflating someone paying for digital goods as being a
| "rich person".
|
| If you're serious about dating, you could afford to spend $10
| a month. Most people can make $10 in less than an hour of
| work. You could probably afford $40 dollars a month easily.
| Don't worry, your actual dates will probably cost you more
| than that and often you'll get nothing in return...
|
| People have been sucking on the teet of free social media for
| so long that the thought of even paying a couple dollars for
| something makes them feel they are buying a luxury good, when
| you are literally just giving up some pocket change.
|
| Meanwhile, they buy $5 lattes and $10 burgers a few times a
| week and pay god knows how much for a myriad of streaming
| services, without a second thought.
| [deleted]
| slver wrote:
| It's very convenient to conclude "bad things happen to you?
| maybe you're a shitty person", but that's not how reality
| works.
|
| Users may not want to pay for myriad of reasons, like unfair
| competition, or competition of lower quality where the user
| can't clearly determine the quality they receive,
| preconditioning and other existing biases, and so on.
|
| How do you think our media found themselves in a continued
| decline over the last few decades? They were paid, but they had
| to focus on online presence and ads as low-quality blogs and
| fake news replaced them. People don't want to pay for quality
| journalism, because they can't tell the difference. This
| doesn't mean quality journalism doesn't provide value.
|
| Furthermore, ads by themselves are not a bad service in our
| world. It's basically a business saying "hey I'm here, I have
| this to offer, if you want it". Is that such a bad concept? Of
| course there are scams, and so on. But that's not INHERENT to
| ads right? It's one thing to fight for higher quality ads,
| another to hate ads entirely.
| willis936 wrote:
| >"hey I'm here, I have this to offer, if you want it"
|
| This is a lie to children. It's like saying the decision to
| drop nuclear bombs in WWII was made to bring Japan to
| surrender and not a show of force to Russia. It's simply a
| false dichotomy.
|
| Ads exist to maximize profit and its done by pushing
| individual rights back. Nobody voted to give up privacy to
| the government or private sector.
|
| The answer to your burning question is simple: people don't
| give a shit about your product or your ad. Sheep are shaped
| by what they see. You're paying for a stake in the perverse
| attention economy.
| [deleted]
| alkonaut wrote:
| > "hey I'm here, I have this to offer, if you want it"
|
| As always there is a loud but tiny minority that thinks all
| ads are bad. Most of us (I assume) think ads are mostly fine
| but tracking is bad.
| himujjal wrote:
| exactly. duckduckgo has ads that don't track you. its okay.
| i see them whenever i search and sometimes maybe click on
| them to see what exactly is going on. Thing is they don't
| track and I am okay with it.
| permo-w wrote:
| I think that mostly ads are bad, but sometimes they're
| fine. There are plenty of other cases of them being a
| negative for society, and, to me, a few where they're good
| nchrys wrote:
| I am really puzzled by the negative sentiment around adtech on
| Hacker News, especially since I would guess that a lot of people
| here have a salary that depends directly or indirectly on
| advertising. "Tracking" gets a lot of bad press, so much so that
| I sometimes wonder if this is not organized by the tech giants
| (Apple, Google, Facebook) who have access to their own first
| party and who thus have much less to lose when cross site
| tracking disappears. Adtech providers only have access to
| products you buy/see, for a limited time and without any personal
| data, meanwhile Google and Facebook know everything about you,
| your friends, your center of interests the places you go to,
| along with your name but somehow everyone seems hell-bent on
| abolishing 3rd-party cookies. Apple's own apps are not subject to
| this change, and as noted by other commenters this will probably
| shift budgets to subscription of which Apple takes its cut. All
| this will further the supremacy of walled-gardens and big tech,
| at the expense of smaller independent players.
|
| I'll be honest, there _is_ a creepy feeling when being tracked
| cross-site, and adtech providers have collectively failed at
| providing explanations, and a transparent account of how this
| works and why this is useful. They have also relied on
| fingerprinting, which has hurt the credibility of the field. The
| issue is that the replacement that are currently in the works
| (https://github.com/WICG/floc and
| https://github.com/WICG/turtledove/blob/main/FLEDGE.md) are
| extremely complex, will still dramatically impact adtech
| performance and only improve privacy for a very contrived
| definition of the concept which incidentally benefits once again
| big tech vendors...
|
| As to the effectiveness of advertising, removing tracking _will_
| have a huge impact. And this affects all players in the value
| chain, not only adtech providers but also publishers and more
| importantly advertisers which will see their return on ad spent
| severely impacted. There is a real of loss "social welfare" (I
| mean in a game-theoretic sense, but also for real if you believe
| in capitalism) if tracking is disabled. The freakonomics article
| gets cited a lot but the industry as a whole is moving forward
| with a greater emphasis on proving incremental sales. Advanced
| clients (who can spend billions per year) have real statisticians
| doing permanent randomized control trials proving that every
| dollar spent _is_ providing incremental sales. I work for an
| adtech company and we have automatic RCTs for every single
| client, and guess what, advertising works for most clients. This
| is on top of fact that we are measuring the effectiveness of
| dollars spent on us, _in addition_ to the dollars spent on
| competitors /other channels on which we have no control of
| course. The fact that Uber could see no impact when going from
| 150m to 50m is a testament to the incompetency of their CMO,
| which could not be bothered to actually measure and pilot the
| campaigns correctly, not the effectiveness of adtech as a whole.
| Thoughts are my own not my employer's.
| doobeeus wrote:
| Well said. What if Apple's popup said "personalization" instead
| of "tracking"? Advertising works well for most of us, most of
| the time. Ironically, Apple is spending significant sums on
| advertising that touts how they are crippling advertising to
| protect your privacy.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| There's a sense in which free ad-supported apps are
| "redistributive". Whether you're rich or poor, Facebook costs the
| same and the experience and features you have access to are
| identical. Effectively, the rich users are subsidizing the app
| for the poor users (the rich users' eyeballs being worth much
| more). I personally view that as a strong upside compared to paid
| models.
|
| I'm not sure where I'm going with this. What does paid social
| media look like? Perhaps more like traditional media: only deep
| pockets will have access to "virality" and wide distribution. I
| could certainly see a market for that with the Instagram crowd.
| brundolf wrote:
| Maybe some room in the market will be made for federated and/or
| nonprofit social-media?
| phh wrote:
| I totally agree with you. I wouldn't necessarily say that rich
| people subsidize poor ones, other one we wouldn't see Facebook
| racing for Brazil and Google racing for India. But yes, one
| major property of ads is how it adapts to the user's revenue.
|
| I believe that anyone who wants to take on ads, need to
| understand this first. And to accomplish an ad-free realk, one
| needs to somehow have people pay differently based on their
| incomes. And I can't see any way without tracking on how to do
| that.
|
| One company who managed to do that, to some extent, is Netflix.
| Their price range from 3$/month (lowest tier in India) to
| 20$/month (highest tier in France), for pretty much the same
| service. It's still only one order of magnitude of adaptation.
| While ads scale from pretty much 0 (poor people who can
| "mis"spend only 5$/month), to I think maybe 100$ for some
| clicks.
|
| Basically, from my point of view, ads are a way to raise money
| based on what people can give, while removing the free-rider
| problem that doing it directly would raise. Can we make a
| useful crypto money that fixes this? (you're allowed to a big
| computation budget, since ads have a very expensive global
| budget)
| supernovae wrote:
| It's been years since there was organic viral videos... that
| ship sailed - we're at the point of pay for play, sex or
| extremely high risk/danger/endangerment content for eyeballs..
| hedora wrote:
| In the past, we had paid social media (kind of) with services
| like CompuServe, AOL, etc.
|
| People tended to self-segment by demographics. Also, there was
| more than one network to choose from, since things were
| segmented by which internet connection you had. (This was also
| the heyday of BBS's and Usenet, which probably wasn't a
| coincidence.)
|
| Maybe having N vertically integrated communities with different
| norms is better than what facebook, twitter, etc built via
| their horizontally-integrated services.
| specialist wrote:
| Most (all?) prior mediums were initially pay to play. Print,
| radio, telegraph, TV, cable, fax, ATMs.
|
| Then there's some kind of phase change. Like maybe when costs
| reduce enough for Metcalfe's Law to kick-in.
|
| [I don't quite recall what some other theorists have said.
| Shirky's observations about cost of coordination. McLuhan's
| distinctions between passive and active engagement (aka push
| vs pull).]
|
| Apple's privacy power play may be the first time someone
| manages to put the toothpaste back into the tube, for an
| entire medium and by extension ecosystem.
|
| Some mediums, like rail and phones, manage to remain pay to
| play. Maybe there's something to be learned by compare and
| contrast.
| lanstin wrote:
| Newspaper advertising never had an incentive to attack
| newspaper readers.
| majewsky wrote:
| > Newspaper advertising never had _the means_ to attack
| newspaper readers.
|
| FTFY - They totally would have done it if it had been
| possible and profitable.
| banach wrote:
| These are not the only alternatives. Messaging apps allow
| people to stay in touch with each other without any of the
| timeline corporate surveillance society nonsense.
| arkadiyt wrote:
| DuckDuckGo has advertisements and is profitable. Nothing about
| the free-ad model for apps requires tracking users.
| adrr wrote:
| Search ads you don't need user targeting. You target on the
| search term and most likely it will be relevant for the user.
| Only standard display ads need targeting to be able to show
| relevant ads to the user.
| criddell wrote:
| There's always the context of the page on which the ad will
| appear. If I search for "teach your kid how to read", the
| search engine can display ads based on the query and the
| destination page seems like it should show the exact same
| types of ads.
| lanstin wrote:
| Content based ads still seem valuable. If I am on Don's how
| to fix something pages, then add for something fixing tools
| seem possible to sell without involving my data
| have_faith wrote:
| > the rich users are subsidizing the app for the poor users
|
| That would only hold if the majority of paid ad placements on a
| social media site targeted rich people. As is evident by the
| ads that appear surrounding elections, the ads targeting
| average people to dump their savings into crypto and all of the
| gambling (might as well be gambling...) gaming ads that doesn't
| seem like a safe assumption to make although I have no data to
| support either assumption.
| howinteresting wrote:
| It is well established that the ARPU from richer demographics
| (income levels, countries etc) is much higher than that from
| poorer ones. The redistributive effect is real, though
| perhaps there may be other ways (e.g. reparations) that have
| less harmful side effects.
| msoad wrote:
| This is something I thought about too. The dilemma for Facebook
| and Twitter to offer paid service is interesting
|
| Wealthy eyeballs worth more (a lot). Wealthy people most likely
| to pay to not see ads. A super high price to justify not
| showing ads to wealthy people will make the whole offering
| moot.
|
| I don't have the numbers but if it's anything like the rest of
| the economy, top 10% is probably spending something like 60% of
| total spent. So removing the top 10% from the targetable
| population for ads can be a huge hit to ad revenues.
| tfang17 wrote:
| New change has been a huge pain for developers. Apple makes these
| new privacy announcements and takes all the credit, but pushes
| work to iOS devs to actually implement.
| iLikeFreeData wrote:
| Ads arent going away, at best you are going to get generic ads
| that are not relevant. At worse Apple is ramping up their own
| tracking/ad service.
| AgentOrange1234 wrote:
| It seems somehow just right that an article about this has a
| super annoying video playing above the content, scrolling with
| you as you read.
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| This is awesome news. We need the web to not be reliant on ads
| and also build the expectation amongst users that they need to
| pay for articles/services etc. just like how they would in the
| real world. This is the first step in doing both
| baby wrote:
| Can't wait for gmaps, gmail, facebook, twitter, hackernews,
| reddit to have paywalls
| beagle3 wrote:
| OpenStreetMaps doesn't have paywalls. In sone things it is
| worse, in my day to day use it is better, the only thing I
| use gmaps/Waze/Amaps is for live traffic.
|
| HN has neither paywalls nor ads.
|
| Fastmail has a paywall compared to gmail - and I gladly pay
| it. There's no ad supported option ttbomk.
|
| The only two that don't have a real alternative are the
| metcalfed Twitter and FB (and the live traffic feature in
| maps)
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| Twitter will have pay for option soon.
|
| Google Workspace under enterprise agreement is also far
| better for privacy if people like Gmail.
| majewsky wrote:
| > Can't wait for [...] gmail [...] to have paywalls
|
| With my mail service, I pay 1EUR per month for my mailbox (on
| a pre-paid model where I deposit 20EUR at a time into my
| account and get reminded when the balance runs low). That's a
| price that I gladly pay for the benefit of knowing that I'm
| actually the customer.
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| if you want privacy, you gotta pay. Thats how ads disappear.
| People have to charge for services and people have to pay to
| access them.
| Marsymars wrote:
| I would gladly pay monthly to receive Google Maps without
| ads.
| armagon wrote:
| "A new report says that iOS 14 tracking changes could cost the
| advertising revenue billions if an early trend in spending
| decline continues."
|
| Does it not follow then that advertisers are _saving_ billions of
| dollars?
|
| Now, admittedly, the advertisers aren't going to be getting now
| what they used to get, but this Freakonomics Podcast episode,
| "Does Advertising Actually Work? (Part 2: Digital) (Ep. 441)"
| https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-2/ makes me
| wonder how much it'll really impact the people who pay for
| advertising.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| > Does it not follow then that advertisers are saving billions
| of dollars?
|
| No -- if the targeting is less effective, the advertisers are
| not getting the same incremental value from the ads.
|
| The ads are cheap, but draw in less total revenue for the
| company, saving nothing. The bid prices are just lower on
| untargeted ad slots, adjusting to the lower CPM / lower lift.
|
| Edit: Truly, the best part of HN are the Dunning-Kruger
| programmers who once read a substack post about advertising,
| and now believe they have deep hidden insight that a hundred
| thousand marketing professionals, running marketing campaigns
| as their job, every day, have not figured out -- aha, internet
| advertising doesn't work!
| stingraycharles wrote:
| On the other hand, for the _publishers_ this may be a net
| win. I've always argued that very narrow targeting mostly
| benefits the advertisers, and the publishers are left with a
| very small audience that yields a lot, and a very large
| audience that is difficult to sell.
|
| Of course, this may not be the case for Facebook et al, but
| it's definitely the case for a lot of apps and websites that
| live off advertising. Now, without super narrow targeting,
| they are suddenly able to sell a lot more inventory.
| gleb wrote:
| Unlikely. You make more money by breaking a beef into
| multiple cuts for different customers than grinding the
| whole thing and selling burgers only.
| thebean11 wrote:
| Assuming you can find a buyer for enough of those
| individual cuts yes. If most of them have no buyers
| you're better off selling burgers which I think was the
| point.
| thehours wrote:
| Given how rampant ad fraud is in programmatic, I wonder how
| much revenue _actually_ drops for these companies, relative
| to the decreased ad spend.
|
| Uber's [1] experience is one example:
|
| "We turned off two thirds of our ad spend - $100m out of
| annual spend of $150m - and basically saw no change in our
| number of rider app installs. What we saw is a lot of
| installs we thought had come through paid channels suddenly
| came through organic."
|
| [1] https://mackgrenfell.com/blog/how-did-uber-waste-so-much-
| ad-...
| toast0 wrote:
| Even without ad fraud, you have things like user wants to
| install Uber, so searches for Uber in a web search. First
| link on the page is an ad to install Uber, maybe a couple
| more ads, then first organic search result is a link to the
| Uber home page, and maybe the second result is to install
| it. If the ad weren't there, the user would probably
| install organically, but since it's there and at the top of
| the page, it's likely to get clicked and cost money.
| xuki wrote:
| The ad in that case is to prevent Lyft from getting that
| ad spot. Fucked up, I know.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| The google shakedown- "It'd be terrible if ya know Lyft,
| got that top spot..."
| xxpor wrote:
| How is that fucked up? There's a certain number of slots,
| and _someone_ is going to fill them. It 's like in a
| grocery store. If Kellogg's doesn't offer Kroger a price
| they like, they'll just stock General Mills instead...
| that's just business.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > No -- if the targeting is less effective, the advertisers
| are not getting the same incremental value from the ads.
|
| I mean... No again. Kinda. Advertising isn't magically gonna
| make money appear in the pockets of your customers.
|
| Advertising influences how people distribute their income,
| influencing them this way or that (at least that's the goal).
|
| If advertising becomes worse for everyone, which it did,
| those weights are just scaled by a fixed amount, arriving at
| the same end result.
|
| The only winners are those who didn't advertise at all and
| only competed only on value. Those may see an uptick.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| Not sure; targeted ads can work pretty well for small niche
| businesses, getting the same amount of conversions through
| untargeted ads may not be feasible. I could imagine those
| getting hit harder by this change than, say, Uber, so
| probably not quite the same end result.
| chmod775 wrote:
| I could see that. But you can still effectively target
| niches with contextual ads.
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| Definitely. Is that something you can buy right now? I
| was under the impression there was little to nothing
| substantial in between untargeted and programmatic these
| days
| morelisp wrote:
| We've been slowly refactoring our products to offer more
| contextual possibilities (building more aggregations by
| domains, keywords, etc. instead of audiences). No one is
| interested in buying.
| tormeh wrote:
| I bet this is a result of customer self-selection. This
| is all a hunch, but I bet a shit-ton that the advertisers
| who actually care about good targeting only buy from a
| small number of leading providers (Facebook, Google,
| etc.) whose stats are not going to show up on HN.
| morelisp wrote:
| I am not involved at all in our sales department, and I
| have no interest in being identified, so I can't offer
| much more. We do have some very large customers, although
| we are not always a large account for them. But maybe you
| misunderstood - all our customers want "classical"
| audience targeting, to the point they're refusing
| contextual offerings even as GDPR regulations and
| technology changes make the audience-based products ever
| less efficient. If they want anything besides that, it's
| cohorts, which they don't really understand but see as a
| way to do targeting magically with storing cookies. If
| they want anything besides that, it's some BI assistance
| e.g. uplift models. Contextual is absolute last in line.
| tormeh wrote:
| Sounds like a principal-agent problem. The people
| actually buying the ads on behalf of the customer don't
| care about accuracy. Just train some model, no matter how
| shitty, and call it "best-effort". Boxes are checked and
| everyone's happy.
| mbesto wrote:
| > The only winners are those who didn't advertise at all
| and only competed only on value.
|
| I keep seeing this sentiment here on HN. What fantasy world
| do people live in where advertising _can 't_ exist and
| people can still find products/services?! It's existed for
| centuries, the medium just changes over time.
|
| The digital advertising world is far from perfect, but
| suggesting it should outright not exist because we have
| perfect information about goods and services is laughable.
| chmod775 wrote:
| That's not a sentiment, it's a logical conclusion when
| applying basic mathematics as outlined in my comment.
|
| In the remainder of your comment you are attacking a
| straw man. I'll leave you to it.
| FredPret wrote:
| Your original comment ignores the fact that with perfect
| ad targeting, there will be way more niche spending in
| your budget since small companies can create and market
| tightly targeted products cheaply. You'll be happier with
| this outcome.
|
| With totally untargeted advertising, the whole population
| will get an ad mix that reflects aggregate spending
| patterns. The niches will disappear. Only through massive
| upfront investment into a major marketing campaign will
| consumer spending shift to a new product. Only the
| blandest, most mainstream, least interesting among us
| will be happy with this outcome.
| beagle3 wrote:
| I don't know if there's some objective measure of
| "percentage of sensory perception occupied by ads" but I
| guess if there were it would be about 90% lower 50 years
| ago - and still people found things.
|
| It's not binary ads/no-ads, and not all are equal (e.g.
| product placement is often subtle and not in-your-face).
|
| It is not unthinkable that 95% of ad budget is wasted. (I
| am sure the majority of ad budget 50 years ago was too,
| even if it was just 70%)
| pmontra wrote:
| > 50 years ago - still people found things.
|
| Going back even more in time, we had word of mouth and
| domain experts to ask for advice. That works still now
| but it's pretty slow for somebody aiming at establishing
| a large scale business. Advertising money makes time run
| faster. I can understand why they want ads. On the other
| side I'm blocking all I can block and very rarely see an
| ad (not every month) and yet I find what I want to buy.
| danShumway wrote:
| Maybe you're right. But if less advertising means that less
| money is going into businesses, then ads don't make products
| free, because they increase consumer spending and decrease
| the efficiency of consumer spending. If what you're saying is
| true, then advertising has a tangible cost for consumers.
|
| There are three possible theories about how advertising
| works:
|
| A) Advertising increases consumer spending and makes
| consumers spend dollars less efficiently based on attributes
| like branding that are unrelated to quality. In which case,
| all of this "advertising makes apps free" talk has been
| really deceptive, because consumers who are viewing ads are
| spending more money for worse/inflated products to
| compensate.
|
| In this world, it's worth asking what the costs of
| advertising are and whether we want it to be the primary way
| of funding the Internet.
|
| OR
|
| B) Consumer spending/efficiency doesn't change, consumers are
| smart enough to buy the best product anyway, and the only
| thing that changes is which companies get that money and have
| brand recognition. In which case, it starts to become
| difficult to argue that consumers opting out of ads they
| don't want to see is particularly harmful. In the world where
| advertising is just making people aware of new information
| and helping them make informed purchasing choices, then it's
| probably a good thing that across the board everyone is being
| forced to cut down on the pointless noise that amounts to
| companies trying to scream over each other and increasingly
| hyper-target people in creepy ways.
|
| If advertising does not increase consumer spending, and if
| everyone is reducing spending and effectiveness by the same
| amount on iOS, then this should be good for advertisers --
| they'll spend less money on ads, and consumers will still
| spend the same amount of money themselves. The only reason
| that wouldn't be the case is if highly targeted ads actually
| changes consumer behavior and spending habits in meaningful
| ways -- but if we admit that, we need to admit that the
| advertising industry is a lot more problematic and a lot less
| "free" for consumers than it likes to claim.
|
| OR
|
| C) Advertising is a public good, and consumers actually want
| to know about these products, and ultimately people want
| targeted ads.
|
| But this is obviously not the case for the majority of
| advertising. If it was the case, than iOS's changes wouldn't
| be a big deal. If consumers want targeted ads, they have the
| option to keep allowing them in iOS. The whole reason we're
| in this situation is because consumers have overwhelmingly
| demonstrated that they do not want targeted ads.
|
| So at best, the advertising industry can position itself as a
| kind of metaphorical "vegetable", claiming that everyone
| hates them but ultimately the world would be better if more
| things were commercialized. But it's just not a realistic
| theory, the data is pretty clear that consumers don't like
| ads and it's very hard to argue that unrestrained
| commercialism and forced targeting is good for society. There
| are more efficient ways we could be doing this if our goal
| was really just to make it easier for people to compare
| products and learn about new solutions to their problems.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| It annoys me beyond belief that every single digital ads HN
| thread this is the most upvoted hot take and it rarely comes
| from someone working in buy side let alone ads in general.
|
| Good or bad or neutral, FB's targeting specifically works
| amazingly well and better than anything else for many buyers.
| Especially for direct response ads.
|
| If you can't make money selling your product from digital ads,
| you're not saving dollars you're losing revenue. This is true
| especially for 'internet only' upstart products, for example
| everyone who gets stuck in for instance a $60 athletic short ad
| loop as an example!! Sometimes you hear examples here about a
| new product or kickstarter who pre-this type of digital would
| probably not be able to launch or it would be much harder.
|
| Brand advertising is different and targeting can definitely
| argue doesn't matter as much.
|
| But these changes has already changed how we spend money, and
| we're tiny in the grand scheme.
|
| The other point that always gets thrown out: It's also
| incredibly simple to measure effectiveness or lift.
|
| Staying with FB as an example, if you are selling a product it
| can be as simple as using a unique link for your FB ads. ROI =
| Purchases with that link / FB spend. FB also has a large set of
| conversion tracking JS and offline like loading your retail
| conversions to the platform to match.
|
| But given the new rules FB is now 'modeling' ROAS and it has
| decreased accuracy for us from something like previously
| capturing 80-95% of conversions to sometimes less than half.
| This makes a big difference in auto-optimizing on their end and
| thus our ROAS.
|
| And again sure, it gets complicated and definitely more snake
| oil to buy some 3rd party ad tech which claims to model across
| all your channels online and off. A lot of times that's gamed
| or just a bunch of BS.
|
| But another way to measure is say you're a larger brand buying
| TV, digital, OOH etc the works. You can simply control by
| making only one single change segregated to a control and
| treatment geo/group before and after, measure delta.
| clairity wrote:
| in my experience, fb ads are a mixed bag. they tend to give
| you the illusion of control without the commensurate results,
| converting at a noticeably lower rate. sometimes prices are
| low enough to compensate for the lower conversion, but not
| usually.
|
| though it might be changing with the normalization of the fb
| marketplace, folks aren't usually looking for the things that
| require advertising inducement on facebook, so there's a
| significant intent/context mismatch.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| If Facebook ads are so good, why is it that I basically only
| get shitty, general ads?
|
| I am a single geek with disposable income, why is my feed not
| filled with ads for cool tech products? I just checked and
| the only Facebook ad was for cancer awareness.
| xxpor wrote:
| Are you actually allowing the tracking?
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I am an Android user. I don't have a choice :(
| pmontra wrote:
| You do. Install blockada. No more ads and trackers, even
| in apps.
|
| https://blokada.org/
| Method-X wrote:
| Do you have a PiHole?
| rubyfan wrote:
| I'm not deep in this space but was thinking something along
| the lines of your response. If I understand it right,
| advertisers will lose efficiency here but I'm skeptical that
| it'll cost ad networks much because advertisers will still
| need to reach an audience but will now suddenly be less
| effective at targeting.
| nojito wrote:
| >Good or bad or neutral, FB's targeting specifically works
| amazingly well and better than anything else for many buyers.
| Especially for direct response ads.
|
| A recent study says otherwise.
|
| https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/mksc.2019.118.
| ..
|
| Do you have any studies supporting your claim that it "works
| amazingly well"?
| dillondoyle wrote:
| I buy political ads for a living. I can (usually) make an
| immediate positive return on investment running ads for
| donations or growing an email list. Been doing this for
| years and has raised millions for our clients.
|
| I have tested and spent money on other platforms none of
| them work nearly as well for our clients. Search ads work
| but I believe that's far more of what OP is talking about.
| If your website is already #1 spot and someone searches to
| donate they would probably do it already getting there
| quickly without the ad. The problem is when others or even
| the same party parent org buys that top spot to get that
| traffic.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| As someone not familiar with the advertising world, it
| wouldn't strike me as particularly surprising to learn
| that political advertising on fb works better than other
| domains. Not only do people post entire novels on their
| political opinions, but they're constantly exposed to
| debates and likely are more likely to feel that the ads
| are important to react to in the moment.
| nojito wrote:
| A simple no would have sufficed.
|
| No one is arguing that data brokers don't make millions
| selling ads. The argument verified by the study is that
| demographic and location segmentation doesn't work when
| targeting ads.
| tormeh wrote:
| Demographic and location segmentation is just a shitty
| way to target and is a prime example of looking for your
| keys under the lamppost because that's where the light
| is. That said, your point is unfortunately very relevant
| because many advertisers still do this.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > A simple no would have sufficed.
|
| Actually, I think it is pretty important that they
| explained that they are an expert in the field, and that
| you, a not expert, don't really know anything about the
| space, and thus your opinion is quite literally, not as
| informed as theirs.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| That study isn't about Facebook targeting, right? It's
| anecdotal, but FB/Instagram ads are noticeably better for
| me than anywhere else: they're probably the only ads that
| have ever resulted in me buying the advertised product.
| nojito wrote:
| It blinds all the vendors and one of the panel data
| sources was Facebook.
| karlp wrote:
| As someone who doesn't work in advertising but is insterested
| in the space, I find your comment interesting but it doesn't
| help you are not providing much data for your hot take
| either. You mention Kickstarter, but looking at the list of
| crowdfunded projects, most of the successful ones were quite
| a while ago, if anything the most recent ones looks like
| scammy crypto coins, which would suggest advertising works
| rather for bad projects, a net negative.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-
| funded_crowd...
| morelisp wrote:
| > You can simply control by making only one single change
| segregated to a control and treatment geo/group before and
| after, measure delta.
|
| Because nothing else is going on in the world besides your ad
| campaign, right?
|
| Like you I find the comments about the ad industry here on HN
| largely ignorant, but I also think most advertisers and
| agencies are dumb as rocks, or at best high on their own
| supply. Like, a piece of analysis I saw recently had some
| claimed weirdass causation along the lines of, X days is the
| optimum period between first indication of intent in a
| product and showing an ad for that product, if the user
| didn't convert immediately. They had run an experiment like
| you suggest with varying intervals for audiences. But, the
| way better correlation was with stimulus payouts. That wasn't
| in their model, because their model only had the inputs they
| controlled, before and after, and measured delta.
|
| Everyone is selling snake oil because every advertiser is
| demanding snake oil. It's so fucked up.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Perhaps I'm naive but my view is that online advertising
| should have targeting no better than bus stop ads (coarse
| geographic) and conversion should ideally not even be
| measurable. When I buy shoes I prefer to not even say which
| campaign made me do it (just like the bus stop ad).
|
| I find the whole jargon of this post dystopian.
| gsnedders wrote:
| Note that plenty of advertising like bus stop ads,
| especially if there's any QR code, is often tracked for
| conversion (by having a unique reference code embedded in
| the URL in the QR code).
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I don't know. It isn't that I think targeted ads are bad. I
| think it is simply jarring that humans are that
| quantifiable, and separately, that I am skeptical of the
| privacy policies of the gatherers of this data.
|
| My Instagram feed shows me lots of startup clothing
| companies for young to middle aged men, and I finally tried
| some, and damnit if they aren't decent jeans.
|
| If we accept that ads are not inherently evil, and we
| accept that ads (when not manipulative or selling
| unethical/addictive products) are more beneficial to a
| recipient if they're relevant, then targeting (if done
| ethically and stored as anonymously as possible) is a great
| thing.
|
| I find that the ads are actually more straightforward than
| traditional ads. They literally say "These jeans are
| stylish, durable and American-made". I didn't sit through
| 30 seconds of Brett Favre throwing a football to signal
| that I'm just like him.
| alkonaut wrote:
| I think they are bad if they use context I didn't want to
| provide. I'd be happy to give any website a pretty
| detailed profile of interests and "cohort" if I knew
| that's where it stopped.
|
| But I don't think ads can target ethically and with
| respect for privacy. I'd love to be proven wrong.
| azinman2 wrote:
| I'm guessing you've never tried to start an Internet-based
| business. Being able to target ads is often your lifeblood
| of your company. Or have you tried and somehow found a
| different method?
| alkonaut wrote:
| I absolutely have not. But I don't think the possibility
| of buying tracking ads is somehow excused because e.g
| "you couldn't start internet businesses otherwise" or
| even "most of the free content online would disappear".
|
| Targeting doesn't _have_ to imply tracking or trading in
| my info. Facebook knows my age and gender, and some of my
| interests (from groups etc). That should be plenty. That
| means a company that sells kitchens can't target people
| "interested in kitchens" in the sense they have recently
| searches for it or visited a site of a kitchen
| manufacturer that told Facebook. They can target people
| in country X of a certain age. If that doesn't sell
| enough kitchens then just close down me kitchen business
| or buy a bus stop ad but don't follow me around the
| internet.
| ROFISH wrote:
| I run a company where about 70% of my audience (in 2018
| no less, so likely a lot higher now) use adblockers. To
| me, any amount of search ad spend or similar is pissing
| money down the drain.
|
| For reference, our marketing strategy is opt-in email
| newsletters, organic social media, the occasional
| sponsorship of events, and natural word-of-mouth (no
| incentive). And we've been in business for 12+ years.
| somedude895 wrote:
| Search ads are very effective and are paid on a per-click
| basis, so you really can't go wrong with them.
| dwild wrote:
| >opt-in email newsletters,
|
| Opt-in, or "kinda opt-in"? Or you just don't know and
| trust whoever publish that newsletters?
|
| Seriously newsletters are the most annoying ads I get and
| by far. So many are not really opt-in, but instead use
| dark patterns to make you sign up.
| yohannparis wrote:
| I agree with you, I hate when news report as "cost", a loss of
| revenue they never going to get is not a "cost". They just need
| to adjust to the market.
| tormeh wrote:
| The blanket statement "Advertisement does not work", which I
| really hope is a strawman, is trivially wrong. If you start a
| new B2C business the only way to do inbound sales is
| advertisement, as by definition no one knows about your
| company/brand/products/services. Outbound sales is (usually)
| impossible in B2C for cost reasons. Almost every successful B2C
| company is evidence that advertisement works. There are some
| exceptions like banking and utilities, where the LTV of a
| retail customer is high enough to do outbound sales, but most
| B2C companies can't afford this.
| amelius wrote:
| Only under the assumption that no alternatives to advertising
| exist.
|
| Ban advertising, and suddenly this statement is not true
| anymore: "If you start a new B2C business the only way to do
| inbound sales is advertisement, as by definition no one knows
| about your company/brand/products/services."
|
| ... for the simple reason that people will look for other
| means to find products online. For example non-biased search
| engines, product catalogues, review sites, etc. etc.
|
| And no, listing your product with objective info is not the
| same as advertising.
| tgv wrote:
| And then those other means will become commercially very
| interesting and you'll have to buy your way into them.
|
| But let's assume advertising doesn't work. Two companies
| start with the same product and same market at the same
| time. One advertises, the other doesn't. According to you,
| the former one should lose, because it wastes money on ads.
| I'm betting that (on average), the latter will lose,
| though.
|
| I know, it's a very black-and-white hypothetical situation.
| nlh wrote:
| Heh we wrote basically the same reply at exactly the same
| moment. Cheers :)
| amelius wrote:
| The whole problem we should avoid is that people have to
| pay for advertising. The _best_ product should win, not
| the one with the biggest advertising budget. Advertising
| undermines the principles of the free market.
| spullara wrote:
| How do you think people find out about these products to
| compare them?
| nlh wrote:
| > For example non-biased search engines, product
| catalogues, review sites, etc. etc.
|
| This absolutely makes logical sense and I deeply wish this
| could work. The problem is that in reality, almost all of
| these sites are as (if not more) "manipulatable" as the ads
| you'd like to replace. Search engines have their own
| optimization games, most review sites these days are pay-
| to-play (or would rapidly become even more so), etc.
|
| So the fundamental issue is that any non-advertising method
| of getting the word out rapidly becomes just obfuscated
| advertising. Given the choice I'd prefer at least the ads
| be honest about being ads.
| amelius wrote:
| Yes, these sites could be manipulated but that is then a
| second-order effect.
| ayewo wrote:
| > _If you start a new B2C business the only way to do inbound
| sales is advertisement, as by definition no one knows about
| your company /brand/products/services._
|
| This is not strictly true. Inbound sales is one tactic, there
| is also inbound marketing (aka SEO). The tactic or set of
| tactics available to a new B2C business largely depends on
| what trade offs they are willing to make between time and
| money. A cash-strapped B2C could invest time in SEO, while a
| decently-funded competitor could invest money in paid search
| ads. A well-funded rival could do both while also investing
| in social media ads. The tactics that will prove effective
| will largely depend on how clear the messaging is relative to
| more established competitors.
|
| > _Outbound sales is (usually) impossible in B2C for cost
| reasons. Almost every successful B2C company is evidence that
| advertisement works._
|
| Again, not totally correct because you are using terms in a
| non-standard way. For instance, you refer to 'advertisement'
| when you really mean 'marketing'.
|
| Sales and marketing as human activities, have existed from
| the beginning.
|
| Advertisements, the thing so derided on HN, only became
| feasible (and widespread) with the help technology. In other
| words, all ad forms depend on a enabling technology for their
| existence.
|
| The spread of printing presses eventually made one of the
| first ad formats--handbills--economically feasible when
| compared to the traditional practice of shouting to draw
| attention from patrons to the market square. The telephone
| made telesales/robocalls economically feasible at a scale
| that far surpasses doing cold calls on foot (i.e. door-to-
| door sales). Same with radio, television and ad formats
| enabled by the modern Web.
| iwitaly wrote:
| +1
| [deleted]
| megaman821 wrote:
| I wonder what this means for free apps. * Will
| they simply disappear from iOS? * Will new subscription
| options appear? * Will they remain free but require users
| to enter a 20 question demographic survey to continue?
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| You simply start charging a subscription for your app
| muro wrote:
| Subscriptions to apps to will work about as well as
| subscriptions to news sites.
| slver wrote:
| Not sure if you're an iOS user, but every second apps
| demands outrageous subscription amounts like $10/week for
| an app that adds emoji on your photos.
| [deleted]
| lwansbrough wrote:
| Which is subject to a 15-30% fee, unlike ads. And assumes
| users want to have a subscription to my app (they don't.)
| a4isms wrote:
| Worth noting that unless you're personally selling
| advertising (which only a few people can do), ads are
| subject to a fee as well, by the broker/network.
|
| You don't collect 100% of the money paid by the advertiser.
|
| What you avoid with ads on iOS is paying twice: Once to the
| broker, and again to Apple.
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| so then how do you plan on making money without privacy
| offensive ads ? Without charging your customers, there is
| no way
| lanstin wrote:
| Sounds fine to me. The problem with apps is not quantity
| but quality. If we had ten percent as many and they were
| twice as good, I would be happy. Even if they were
| basically the same but didn't constantly put click here
| to go to the App Store screens, I would be happy.
| [deleted]
| eddieroger wrote:
| For uninteresting reasons, I had to wipe settings on my iPhone
| this weekend, which meant re-approving everything, including the
| do not track setting mentioned here. When 14.5 came out, I
| updated faster than apps like Instagram could, so I missed their
| "please approve" screens that I got to see now. It's not strange
| to see an app explain why it is about to prompt for permission to
| do something, but posing for better personalization in the ads
| I'm going to see anyway really didn't land with me. I fully admit
| that I was never going to approve this setting, but I still find
| it surprising that they think I would be happier with more
| specific ads. Does that work for some folks? I guess I can
| understand that if I have to see ads at all, may as well make
| them personalized, but I'd still rather not see ads, to the point
| of blocking them when possible.
| peterhi wrote:
| I've never found a benefit in "Personalized ads" because they
| have never been something that I am interested in, it seems to
| really mean "we can charge the brands more for this ad". There
| is a ton of stuff I would willingly pay for but it never seems
| to be what people want to advertise to me
| _game_of_life wrote:
| I opt into personalization and am constantly getting ads for
| tampons (not a woman), essential oils (yuck), iced tea (I
| only drink water), chinese clothing (lol), and then
| sporadically...
|
| 100k+ metal 3d printers and other industrial engineering
| equipment. I am a disabled, unemployed student.
|
| I also have serious doubts that "personalized" ads even
| really exist. It's like they're trying to show me the least
| applicable products to my life.
| lanstin wrote:
| This was always true for me until recently the Instagram ads
| (I use Instagram to see what my kids and their friends are up
| to). Those ads are all very much in the sweet spot of my
| weaknesses. Haven't bought from them, but I still watch more
| than halfway in fascination before I realize consciously what
| has happened.
| malka wrote:
| I am more interested in LESS relevant ad. They will be less
| succesful at manipulating me.
| baby wrote:
| It's interesting because I believe everyone would choose to see
| personalized ads if asked. But the wording Apple employs is
| "the app is asking to _track_ you", which is negative wording
| and thus has no chance of being accepted. They pretty much
| turned off the feature but made it look like the user still had
| a choice.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Er but that's the truth, no? And if the truth is damning for
| Facebook and Instagram and Google, well that's what those
| companies chose as their business model
| fpgaminer wrote:
| > I guess I can understand that if I have to see ads at all,
| may as well make them personalized
|
| I think this is the greatest lie the ad industry has foisted on
| us, and unfortunately I see a lot of people fall for it.
|
| We hear the word "personalized" and we think "relevant" or
| "interesting". That if you _have_ to see an ad, at least let it
| be one that tickles your fancy.
|
| Yet interesting and relevant is _not_ what ad tech is
| optimizing for. Rather, ads are optimized for _conversion_; the
| likelihood that a user will be converted into a "sale" (where
| "sale" can range from simply clicking the ad, to buying a
| product, to subscribing to a service, etc. Whatever is most
| important to the ad buyer and measurable.)
|
| Optimizing for conversion is _not_ the same as optimizing for
| being relevant or interesting. Instead these ads are being
| optimized to exploit whatever weaknesses you, the targeted
| user, may have. How can they _trick_ you into converting.
|
| It's the same problem we see with social media. Social media
| companies optimize for engagement, which means they get filled
| with the baser human emotions in ways that get people addicted,
| regardless of its cost to the user or society as a whole. Ad
| tech is doing the same thing, and in many ways "engagement" is
| synonymous with "conversion". Ad buyers are paying ad markets
| to do absolutely whatever it takes to engage a user in the ad
| buyer's desired activity. Come hell or high water, those ad
| markets will convert you and they will consume as much data and
| processing power as necessary to find a way to do that.
|
| All this to say that ad tracking is not about making ads more
| interesting to a user, more palatable, like many seem to
| believe. It's about using _your_ personal data to _manipulate_
| you.
|
| Ad tracking is finding ways to tailor a drug to the specific
| user to maximize the seller's profit.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I'd much rather have unpersonalized ads, because then I won't
| be tempted to buy yet more stuff I don't need. I might get
| suckered into picking up some new widget that I'll play with
| once and then forget about. There's zero chance I'd get
| talked into buying, say, a box of tampons.
|
| If you substitute "predatory" for "personalized" whenever the
| subject comes up, it better represents my thoughts.
| malshe wrote:
| +1 This is pretty much how I feel too.
| superjan wrote:
| No, but it's the best argument they can make to make it sound
| like it's advantageous to you.
| anamexis wrote:
| All else being the same, I would prefer to see personalized ads
| over not. It's not worth the incursion of privacy to me, but
| that said, I'd prefer to see ads for, say, clothes I might wear
| rather than perfume or prescription medicine.
| Terretta wrote:
| Do you read articles or visit sites having to do with
| clothes? What about perfume or meds?
|
| Context adjacent ads have worked fine on TV and in magazines
| for quite a long time. NYT claimed their ad revenue went up
| by getting back to that.
| anamexis wrote:
| No, not really. My only point was that in a vacuum, if I
| have to see ads, I would prefer to see ads that are
| relevant to me over seeing ads that are irrelevant to me. I
| do NOT think that this justifies the invasion of privacy,
| and I block trackers (and ads in general) whenever
| possible.
| poundofshrimp wrote:
| To folks that are complaining of being manipulated, I always
| felt that if you can be coerced into impulse-buying something
| voluntarily, and then regretting the purchase, there is
| probably not anyone to blame but yourself. Putting aside the
| existence of ads for a minute (I hate ads too), why do you feel
| that voluntarily purchasing something based on an ad is
| "manipulation"? If you resent such purchase afterwards, seems
| to imply you made a bad decision (rather than anyone
| manipulated you).
|
| EDIT: care to elaborate the downvotes?
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| Of course it's manipulation. Ads are made in order to modify
| your behavior in the benefit of the brand. That's literally
| the definition of manipulation: to control or play upon by
| artful [...] means especially to one's own advantage;
| controlling someone [...] to your own advantage [...].
|
| > why do you feel that voluntarily purchasing something based
| on an ad is "manipulation"?
|
| There's nothing in the definition of manipulation that says
| it has to be involuntary.
| lanstin wrote:
| Many humans struggle to stay on the path of activity that
| their best rationality and knowledge of a fulfilling life
| recommends. If you ever stay up too late, drink too much,
| struggle with a bad relationship or smoking or you know too
| much Free Flow, you have to chance to be aware of some of the
| weaknesses in our nervous systems. Perhaps you are so far
| away from the human norms that you don't find anything
| tempting that is not also beneficial, but is it quite common
| I promise you.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Homo economicus. Man may be a free agent on paper but most
| decisions we make are driven by easily hijacked heuristics.
| kstrauser wrote:
| There are literally psychologists working to use our brain's
| design to their benefit. It's not entirely fair to criticize
| someone for being manipulated by highly trained experts who
| labor to manipulate them.
| poundofshrimp wrote:
| As someone who was in the past a salesperson, I don't see
| how data-hungry digital advertisement is fundamentally
| different from old and tried sales methods. Salespeople
| would kill to know as much as possible about their
| prospects including their personal life, so that they can
| appeal to basic human emotions. I mean, this is literally
| how sales are made. The difference is that in online ads
| this part of the process is automated with algorithms,
| which apparently rubs some people the wrong way.
|
| If you are repulsed by sales as an activity, I can see how
| you'd arrive at the "manipulation" point of view. However,
| I would much prefer this type of "manipulation" to being
| hard sold in a car dealership, for example, or having to
| endure cold calls from strangers. Undesired synchronous
| sales interactions are much more emotionally draining than
| seeing computer-generated ads online, IMHO.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I would prefer more specific ads. Maybe they will finally show
| something worthwhile?
|
| I mean I am not holding my breath, despite all their tracking
| facebook can't show me relevant ads and google kept showing me
| ads for things I was interested in (I have since changed to
| DDG).
| llIIllIIllIIl wrote:
| Excellent
| vmception wrote:
| Now allow us to share only some contacts!
|
| And don't approve apps that use our phone numbers as
| authentication _and_ to build a social graph with people that
| uploaded our contact prior.
| marvel_boy wrote:
| Well done Apple. A little step to improve privacy.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| It will decimate the ecosystem and have no impact on users.
|
| Meanwhile a world of premium-priced alternatives or
| subscriptions remains out of reach because of Apple's 30%
| commission and $0.99 minimum charge, and lack of support for
| upgrade pricing (although Apple will happily launch competitor
| apps and take 100% of the proceeds, as well as giving itself
| premium search positioning).
|
| Some of the biggest companies (eg. Facebook) might just buy
| carrier user data directly, actually worsening privacy.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| > It will decimate the ecosystem
|
| If 90% of the ecosystem survives just fine I would call that
| an unqualified success.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| > It will decimate the ecosystem
|
| I agree it's hard to say how reducing income for app
| developers of free apps helps users.
| akmarinov wrote:
| They'll finally start charging proper money for apps.
|
| We can buy $3-$4 cups of coffee every day, but $0.99 for an
| app is too much? Come on.
| carlob wrote:
| Slightly off topic.
|
| I strongly suspect that $3-4 for coffee is dictated by
| the unwillingness of the American public to have
| different prices for take away, counter or sit at a table
| with a computer for two hours. I live in Italy, and an
| espresso at the counter is on average 1 euro, go to a
| nice place sit down and have a waiter serve you and it
| can easily double in price, if you're sitting in a famous
| square in Venice it can go up to 5, but in any case you
| won't be able to order just one coffee and sit for two
| hours.
|
| So my guess is that every Starbucks customer is just
| paying for rent, whether they use the table or not. (also
| possibly the fact that Starbucks can't overcharge you for
| alcohol is a factor).
| bradbeattie wrote:
| I suspect people know what they're getting out of that $4
| cup of coffee. With a $1 app, it might end up being a
| waste of money.
|
| Does the Apple Store have refunds? If a user could refund
| an app within 48 hours of purchase (no questions asked),
| might that increase sales? (An abrupt change in policy
| might negatively impact premium "one time use" apps
| though...)
| scarface74 wrote:
| I have never once asked for a refund from Apple and not
| received it.
|
| On that same note, I've never asked a decent restaurant
| for a refund or exchange of a bad food or drink and not
| received it either.
| akmarinov wrote:
| It does have refunds, though you'll probably get denied
| after you do 3-4 in a short period of time. No refunds on
| IAPs.
| molszanski wrote:
| Yes it does. No questions asked. But it is a kinda hidden
| feature
| wyattpeak wrote:
| I've bought cups of coffee that were bad enough to throw
| away for $4. Not often, but it's happened. It doesn't
| stop me from buying coffees from new cafes.
|
| I reckon trying to solve this as though it's rationally
| thought-out is wrongheaded. I didn't consider and decide
| that I didn't like paying for apps, I just got used to
| not paying for apps. And indeed, once I got used to
| paying for apps again,* I stopped worrying about whether
| the $1 app would actually do what I wanted.
|
| * Since we're sort of discussing what would prompt people
| to spend money, for me it was games. Free-to-play games
| are so reliably so annoying that I eventually swore off
| downloading them.
| jimmont wrote:
| And many cups of coffee either taste bad or are bad for
| health, yet those customers still pay for those options
| and throw the cup away afterward. It's worth noting those
| cups of coffee typically cost more than $1.
| howinteresting wrote:
| The vast majority of people on the planet cannot afford
| $4 for a cup of coffee, though Apple tends to not care
| about most people as much as its rivals (so it doesn't
| market its phones to most people).
| querulous wrote:
| killing advertising also means discovery is going to be a
| huge problem for developers. it doesn't matter how many
| people are willing to pay for your app if there's no
| effective way to make them aware of it
| lanstin wrote:
| There are many ways to share information other than ads.
| spullara wrote:
| By definition sharing information about your product to
| convince people to buy it is an ad. Doesn't matter where
| you put it or how it reached the user. I'd love to hear
| your way of sharing information that doesn't match this
| definition.
|
| "An advertisement (often shortened to advert or ad) is
| the promotion of a product, brand or service to a
| viewership in order to attract interest, engagement and
| sales."
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| Users have to learn to pay, just like I said in my
| comment. You pay for things in real life, have to do it
| online too.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| If someone was giving out free coffee on demand on your
| phone, trust me, after a certain amount of time, you'd
| see a lot fewer cafes. It's a very toxic orange site
| take, this "just pay for it" perspective.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| On the other side, "Pay $5 per month for these basic
| features we're going to claim are pro functions!".
|
| Like Docker asking you to upgrade to pro so you can click
| "Skip update"...
| akmarinov wrote:
| True, though probably way harder on Android, where you
| can just sideload a cracked version.
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| You could install a cracked version of the app, but if
| you need a account that is paying to access you are SoL.
| So itll work even on Android.
| yoz-y wrote:
| Maybe, but this will be very, very, very hard. I'd love
| to be able to make a paid-front app rather than freemium,
| but the current habits make that impossible unless you
| are an established brand or have a huge marketing budget.
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| Hence my point about learning to pay. Its a mindset
| change for both parties involved. If your app is
| something people don't want to pay for, then maybe its
| not worth it. If you aren't willing to pay for an app you
| use a lot, dont expect it for free or look for other
| alternatives.
| yoz-y wrote:
| I wonder if that will ever happen. IMO even if all ads
| went away, the freemium model where a couple of paying
| users bear the burden of supporting the developer wins in
| the end, due to the "natural" marketing of having lots of
| users. Now, this of course won't work for niche programs.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| Your cafe charging $3-4 for coffee doesn't have to pay
| 30% to Apple.
|
| They'd have to charge $4.28 - $5.71 to make the same as
| before - actually more, since demand would also be
| reduced due to the higher price.
|
| Its likely that the cafe business would be basically
| completely uneconomic... we cannot anticipate the kind of
| ecosystem we could have if the platforms charged based on
| the service that they provide (which would be a few %
| points, with credit card fees as the main cost) instead
| of extracting monopoly rents.
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| Former director of a coffee shop here. If we could limit
| our rent, business rates, etc. etc. to 30% (or indeed 15%
| as per the new small business rate) we'd have been very
| happy.
| chongli wrote:
| _Your cafe charging $3-4 for coffee doesn 't have to pay
| 30% to Apple._
|
| No, but they do have to pay their landlord. In all
| likelihood, they pay even more than 30% to their
| landlord, especially when sales slow down. I can't tell
| you how many restaurants and cafes have closed during the
| pandemic.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| Businesses buy and rent land on an open market, with
| pricing based on supply and demand, and the opportunity
| to move if they feel they are not getting a good deal.
|
| No such ability exists on iOS.
|
| Software developers have to pay rent too. And salaries,
| and for hardware, and finally for a giant 30% commission
| to Apple..
|
| You are operating on the basis that a 30% commission from
| a platform owner is an established fact of the Universe,
| whereas I am suggesting it is merely an artificial cost
| tacked on to extract exorbitant rents and for no purpose
| other than to enrich an owner who faces zero competition.
| chongli wrote:
| I think one way to look at Apple's iOS App Store is like
| a mall. Storefront property in a mall must be leased from
| the mall, it's not available on the open market. Shop
| owners pay a lot for access to the large amount of foot
| traffic the mall provides.
|
| Developers are free to take their business elsewhere,
| such as to Android or PCs, or even to some open source
| phones. Apple just happens to own the "mall" with the
| lion's share of the foot traffic and the wealthiest
| customers.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| While I dislike this attitude from non-programmers, I
| despise it from my peers and it seems to be universal
| across the spectrum except, maybe, older programmers (>
| 50) who seem to have a better sense of the value they're
| getting.
|
| Peer: "You paid $30?!?! For an app?!?!" (I think it was
| OmniFocus)
|
| Me: "Umm, yeah, because it's good and I use it literally
| every day across all my devices" (At the time I'd just
| ditched my Windows gaming PC, and my Linux instances were
| all VPSes or similar)
|
| Peer: "But it's an _app_! " (like shouting louder
| explains something)
|
| Me: "Right, which is what we make. You should understand,
| more than most, the actual work that goes into something
| like this."
|
| Peer: _Shaking head_ "But it's an app..." _wanders off
| confused_
| prepend wrote:
| Coffee has a marginal and fixed cost. Digital products
| like apps only have fixed costs and marginal costs for
| manufacturing and distribution is zero or near zero.
|
| This allows lots of new methods that aren't possible for
| physical products.
|
| For me, I buy software when it has a good value (I like
| Omni products) but the argument that people should buy
| apps because they buy coffee is disingenuous and not
| useful without more info.
|
| I certainly wouldn't buy coffee for 3-4 if it didn't
| require a building and barista and shipping coffee across
| the world and roasting beans, etc. If coffee could
| magically appear in my hand for almost $0, then I
| certainly wouldn't pay so much.
|
| Of course, there are still costs like design for digital
| goods, but they are very different.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| At my previous office one of the guys brought in a $300
| espresso machine that (most of us) chipped in to pay for,
| we had an "espresso club" with $2/month dues for 15
| people other than that one time we asked everyone to chip
| in an extra $20 to cover the new machine (replaced the
| much cheaper Mr. Coffee machine that he donated to us at
| no cost). We made much better drinks than you'd find at
| Starbucks for a fraction of the cost.
|
| Over 4 years we asked people to pay, about, $120 total
| (regular dues, the better machine, and once to replace
| some broken cups or mugs), that's approaching $0 to get a
| coffee to appear in your hand (and for most of the people
| it was "magic" as they didn't operate the espresso
| machines, they showed up and a coffee was handed to
| them).
| willis936 wrote:
| >It will decimate the ecosystem and have no impact on users.
|
| This reads like a very big win for users if "the ecosystem"
| is adtech.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Well, on the other hand, we have an existence proof that
| there are plenty of subscription based offerings in the App
| Store like Office 365, Adobe's suite and smaller players who
| force you to get a subscription outside of the App Store
| where Apple doesn't get a cut.
| baby wrote:
| Why didn't they just turn off the feature though? The wording
| they use "tracking" is so negative no user will ever reply yes
| to it. Maybe to educate users about privacy?
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| The blame is not with Apple if they choose to truthfully
| describe what these apps are doing
| saddlerustle wrote:
| And yet when Apple describes how they track where you are,
| what apps you use, and what news you read for their own
| advertising platform, they don't use that word [1]
|
| [1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202074
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| If that's the case, then we should call that out, instead
| of making excuses for Facebook
|
| (Like seriously, what a terrible hill to die on)
| t_von_doom wrote:
| I know nothing about how apples advertising works so
| sorry if this is a silly question:
|
| The screenshot in the link posted explicitly states apple
| does not track (maybe how they justify not using the
| word) you for their advertising network, so what are they
| doing instead?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| The usage of the word "tracking" is true.
|
| Apps can still display ads. They may not build a user profile
| and attach it to your identity across apps.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Small correction: apps owned by the same company can still
| track your identity across apps regardless of your tracking
| settings.
|
| For example, Google can track you across the YouTube app,
| the Google Maps app, the Gmail app, and anything else owned
| by Google itself.
|
| Apps do need to disclose this in the App Store privacy
| labels, but there isn't much to prevent them from lying.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| While I am not a big fan of advertising in some cases it may be a
| necessary evil. If I was going to see ads, I would prefer that
| they are:
|
| A - generic as to my identity attributes B - Not personalized in
| any way, except to the site
|
| Basically, much closer to the ads back in the 90s.
|
| If it works for TV for decades, it can work for the web.
| zenyc wrote:
| I'm the opposite. I hate ads that have nothing to do with me. I
| value my time and I prefer that if I'm going to see an ad, then
| that ad be something I would find interesting.
| doobeeus wrote:
| Follow the money - Apple's "privacy" initiative is just about
| Apple ensuring that every dollar spent in an iOS device sends 30
| cents to Apple. That isn't the case with ads not served by Apple.
| So Apple is making themselves the only viable way to serve ads on
| iOS (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205223) and encouraging
| in-app purchases for everything else - problem solved.
|
| Also, isn't it convenient that Apple is only concerned about
| their customer's privacy for business conducted outside of China
| and Russia?
| adrr wrote:
| This change will really hurt them. The biggest effect is on
| paid app installs since you no longer have access to the
| advertiser ID which makes it extremely difficult to measure
| performance and tracking app usage on the device. I'll take a
| bet that some of this gets rolled back when it hurts Apple's
| App Store revenue.
| vmception wrote:
| As it should and I don't care. Advertisers and data brokers get
| no sympathy from me. An Apple ad venue allows for some more
| uniform controls as well, such as tracking revokable consent of
| a user's data, even if you found a way to pay the user for
| their data at some point.
| doobeeus wrote:
| I agree Apple has the right to run the lawful aspects of
| their business as they see fit but I'm a little concerned
| about those that think Apple has their back with this privacy
| scam.
| nojito wrote:
| Why would you be concerned?
|
| Going against Facebook/Google and other ad giants is in
| their DNA.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39iKLwlUqBo
| doobeeus wrote:
| My concern is for people who take Apple's marketing
| (what's really in Apple's DNA) at face value, not Google
| or especially Facebook.
| schleiss wrote:
| Meanwhile, Google's and Facebook's market caps are near all time
| highs. The invisible hand dictates that the impact may very well
| be insignificant for those two.
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