[HN Gopher] Can Apple change ads?
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Can Apple change ads?
Author : prostoalex
Score : 89 points
Date : 2021-06-02 15:19 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ben-evans.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ben-evans.com)
| whoisjuan wrote:
| Clearly advertisement is a massive untapped market for Apple.
| They have all the pieces to create a money printing machine.
|
| They can push contextual ads in so many surfaces: Safari's
| Typeahead, Maps, App Store, Wallet/Apple Card, Apple TV+, etc...
|
| But the reality is that they can't create a narrative around
| privacy focused ads without betraying their general privacy
| narrative. Privacy and Ads are antagonistic concepts. Serving
| effective digital ads depends entirely on knowing certains
| characteristics and demographics of the end consumer.
|
| Facebook and Google are better equiped to create a narrative that
| reconciles ad serving and privacy because their core services are
| "free". Apple simply can't because their core business is to sell
| expensive phones and computers. Perhaps customers wouldn't care
| about getting ads in their expensive iPhones, but once the cat is
| out, I find hard to imagine a situation where that idea wouldn't
| be deeply criticized and scrutinized.
| pell wrote:
| >Privacy and Ads are antagonistic concepts.
|
| They didn't use to be. There might be room for competition by
| avoiding the modern day advertising shenanigans.
| npunt wrote:
| There's a lot of sunlight between 'barely targeted brand ad'
| and 'i was just talking about this exact product yesterday and
| now its in an ad'.
|
| It's the latter that creeps people out, especially combined
| with a) data leaks, b) news coming out about how fine-grained
| the targeting systems are, and c) a system that constantly nags
| you to share personal information (FB).
|
| Nobody balks at ads in magazines or TV or frankly half of the
| youtube ads out there (other than we'd like less). I don't
| think the narrative is at stake if the ads team is kept on a
| short leash, which they likely will be, and I'm guessing
| there'll be clear preferences to control this.
|
| Agree completely Apple's potential ad surface area is big.
| amelius wrote:
| It depends. Even if they do, if Apple's revenue levels off and
| shareholders still demand growth, then the whole advertisement
| story might repeat itself.
| swiley wrote:
| There's that rule about headlines with questions in them.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| I'm not sure that an Apple targeted ad platform would be seen as
| very different from Facebook's targeted ad platform by consumers.
| It's true that Apple have a better track record of keeping data
| private, and there's been no Cambridge Analytics style
| atrocities. But providing tracking ads of any kind (whether
| bundled by cohorts or what ever privacy enabling methodology
| could be added) could tarnish their reputation.
|
| Just because a business can destroy another huge companies
| business model it doesn't mean that replicating it is a good
| idea.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I disagree. Apple has a more diversified portfolio of business
| -- they don't need to go down the rabbit hole as deep as Google
| or Facebook to get value.
|
| Think of early Google... they made billions off of keyword
| advertising before they integrated things like mapping and
| created a surveillance network. I think a lot of that was
| driven by walled gardens like Facebook killing the open web.
|
| My guess is that Apple could leverage their relationship with
| customers and trust in them to sell a premium ad product with
| coarser targeting or for certain categories. They could do ad
| placement in apps, for example, or combine ad placement with
| one click purchasing.
| npunt wrote:
| I think you're right, it's hard to argue they'll do anything
| near the full extraction playbook that FB/Goog runs because
| of that diversification, and depending on where the ads are
| placed, it may not risk the brand much.
|
| My guess is app installs will be their target, for several
| reasons:
|
| 1. A lot of the most expensive/lucrative ads are for apps
|
| 2. Apple has better data on this - ad networks had to guess
| at what apps you had and how to attribute, while the iPhone
| knows with certainty. [1]
|
| 3. Apple already sells these ads in the App Store itself, so
| it stands to reason putting these ads _in_ apps is just
| another step.
|
| 4. With IDFA gone, a lot of popular apps (that they want in
| the app store) are losing revenue and will be looking for
| alternate ways to support themselves. Better for the
| ecosystem that devs are compensated.
|
| Apple doesn't need to give ads the Apple treatment in the way
| they do hardware products; they can do the more 'good enough'
| TV & Music treatment of leveraging their position to get some
| low hanging fruit. It'll pay for itself pretty quickly and
| provide a nice revenue stream.
|
| The more strategic value this brings is it gets them a few
| steps closer to building their own search engine, providing a
| revenue carrot should they decide to (or need to) break with
| Google. Creating a search engine isn't exactly in Apple's
| wheelhouse, but they are shifting toward services and
| software more and more, it fits well with their privacy-
| oriented strategy, and Google does still leave a lot to be
| desired in UX and results. With Apple's very different
| incentive/revenue structure, there's many decisions they
| could make differently.
|
| [1] Android used to support grabbing the user's app list but
| that was shut off a few years back.
| ksec wrote:
| It is not about Apple selling Ads per se, it is about Apple
| trash talking tracking Ads while they are also selling
| tracking ads themselves.
|
| There is a different in _tracking_ and mass data, cross site
| / domain data gathering . Now it seems Apple has successfully
| lump these two together.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| What does any of this stuff mean? The obvious opportunity
| is to redefine what a "good ad" is!
| coldpie wrote:
| Why does Apple need to get into ads at all? They seem plenty
| profitable already without abusing their users.
| nojito wrote:
| Because the current system/platforms of ads in existence is
| in anthesis to apples stance on privacy.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Why replace ads when they could just kill them?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| They've already increased the flagship phone cost like 250%
|
| Wall St demands earnings growth.
| paxys wrote:
| If they have an advertising network set up and realize they
| can extract more value out of it, will they choose not to
| just because they don't "need to"?
| vineyardmike wrote:
| The worst (best?) part is that apple _already_ sells targeted
| ads - and they 're getting away with it without major backlash.
| virtue3 wrote:
| Have we collectively forgotten about:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICloud_leaks_of_celebrity_phot...
|
| ?
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Have you forgotten that more Google accounts were phished
| than iCloud accounts in Celebgate?
|
| >According to court filings, Collins stole photos, videos and
| sometimes entire iPhone backups from at least 50 iCloud
| accounts and 72 Gmail accounts.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
| intersect/wp/2016/03...
| flixic wrote:
| I don't remember reading any articles about leaked Google
| accounts. Media is really distorting the reality when it
| covers every little misstep by Apple, and ignore much
| larger issues when it happens to other companies.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > Apple claimed in a press release that access was gained via
| spear phishing attacks.
|
| Ah, because American celebrities spend so much of their time
| clicking through junk mail and seeing where it goes. Makes
| plenty of sense.
| Retric wrote:
| There isn't a second set of technology used by American
| celebrities. Smartphones are used by just about everyone
| and email is part of that.
|
| Spearfishing looks like legitimate emails to most people
| which is why it works.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Of all the good reasons to criticize Apple, you picked the
| most bogus one. Congratulations, that's an achievement. :D
|
| You severely overestimate celebrities' technical prowess --
| and underestimate their naivete. They live in their own
| bubble of trust and laughs and fun and parties; and if
| somebody crafts a message that looks to be from their agent
| or a friend celebrity they absolutely WILL click on it and
| will give their data willingly.
|
| None of us has the entire picture of course, but after
| knowing a few local celebrities 10+ years ago, I can
| definitely believe they are that gullible so as to make a
| spear-phishing attack successful.
| smoldesu wrote:
| It sounds like they're just like everyone else then: in
| which case, even more users were vulnerable, and Apple
| has even more incentive to secure their system. Is there
| anything I'm missing here?
| pdimitar wrote:
| Nothing, except for the fact that people hate managing
| passwords with a passion and take the risk for their
| accounts _willingly_ (I 've had the heated table
| discussions to prove it). For them it's all about the
| tradeoff between "how much energy must I invest?" and
| "how much do I care if I lose this account?".
|
| Most of the people I knew only enabled 2FA on their Gmail
| because they really couldn't afford to lose it.
| Everything else they were very meh about. They even had
| 000000 as their online banking PIN... <facepalm>
|
| Password managers only started gaining prominence after
| biometric authentication allowed you to access your
| passwords with your finger or face.
|
| So yeah, celebrities are users like all others -- if not
| slightly worse even.
|
| I am pretty sure every corp like Apple, Google, Facebook,
| Microsoft et. al. would _love_ to enforce maximum
| security but they also have to be very careful not to
| alienate their users. One good example is Google who will
| pester you for 2FA and recovery codes but never truly
| force you; they prefer to ban your account for suspicious
| activity instead (happened to one guy I knew some 3-4
| years ago because his drunk friends tried to breach his
| Gmail account from several different phones).
|
| So I get it, you don't like Apple, but as I have snarkily
| remarked above: it's for the wrong reasons. (I don't like
| them either but it's for completely other reasons.)
| acdha wrote:
| And, let's be clear, this is true for almost everyone --
| even most HN commenters. Companies have spent years
| training people to expect email from bizarre domains,
| with random attachments or HTML links which point to
| gibberish tracking URLs, etc. Spam filters have gotten
| better but by far the best protection move has been
| widespread U2F/FIDO deployment.
| procinct wrote:
| Maybe if you're referring to regular phishing sure, but
| spear phishing is specifically designed so it won't go to
| your junk email and will look like something made for them
| personally, there won't be any spelling mistakes, it will
| have been sent from a likely email source, it will most
| likely contain some personal information. The right phish
| at the right time could catch just about anyone out.
|
| There's a great talk at Black Hat about how Stripe trains
| staff against these sorts of phishing campaigns and these
| are highly technical people and they still click the links.
| https://youtu.be/Z20XNp-luNA
| yumaikas wrote:
| Spear phishing, by design, is intended to _not_ look like
| junk mail. Maybe it 's designed to look like it came from
| an agent? Maybe like it was from someone they had hired to
| take care of their pets, or kids? If you're constantly busy
| (and it is my understanding that many celebrities are busy,
| at a bare minimum), and you don't want to think too hard
| about a particular thing, then a spear phishing attack
| could quite easily hit you, if your guard isn't up, and you
| don't consider technology to be a battelground.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Sounds like a security oversight on Apple's behalf then.
| iCloud should have 2FA enabled by default if it's so easy
| to trick the subconscious user into handing over
| credentials. Furthermore, it's already been confirmed
| that iCloud had multiple exploits allowing for brute-
| force and injection attacks[0] at the same time that the
| hacks happened, so it's definitely more feasible that an
| unpatched, full-disclosure exploit was abused instead of
| a couple hundred interns all clicking on the same spam
| email at the same time.
|
| [0] https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/icloud-accounts-risk-brute-
| force-a...
| acdha wrote:
| You might want to read up on the history: this is a key
| part of why Apple needed up the _default_ experience
| because hectoring users about using strong passwords, not
| sharing them, etc. hasn't worked. A lot of what we take
| for granted now was contentious at the time and it's
| taken years to improve the balance in a user-friendly
| manner -- and pointing out that they acted on problems
| years ago seems more like a positive than supporting
| whatever point you think you're making.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Considering the celebrities involved, I find this entirely
| likely.
|
| Heck, corporate CEOs get nailed by spearfishing. There was
| an article on HN just a couple of years ago showing that
| even many CIOs can't tell a real e-mail from a fake one.
| acdha wrote:
| Or CISOs, or analysts. Technically proficient users are
| _more_ likely to spot a problem but nobody is immune --
| it's just a question of how much someone wants to spend
| targeting you.
| danaris wrote:
| Forgotten about the time celebrities got their passwords
| compromised by social engineering attacks, something there's
| no reasonable way for Apple to prevent?
|
| No, but why on earth would it be relevant?
| paxys wrote:
| Not to mention that Apple has already tried running their own
| targeted ads business once and failed.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > Just because a business can destroy another huge companies
| business model it doesn't mean that replicating it is a good
| idea.
|
| That's the big takeaway here. As far as I can tell, Apple
| really stands to gain nothing by blocking trackers when it's
| one of the smallest concerns I have with regards to modern
| digital privacy. Snowden didn't warn people about ads, he
| warned people about massive surveillance campaigns operating
| just out of view of the public.
|
| The largest modern privacy concern is being dependent on any
| one private party. Relinquishing all control of your data,
| software and hardware to the largest company in the world is a
| security concern. Whether it's a sacrifice you're willing to
| make or not is a different story.
| Angostura wrote:
| > Snowden didn't warn people about ads, he warned people
| about massive surveillance campaigns operating just out of
| view of the public.
|
| Snowden's areas of expertise wasn't ads. He warned about that
| which he had direct experience of - he didn't warn about
| global warming either.
| defaultname wrote:
| "The largest modern privacy concern is being dependent on any
| one private party."
|
| How does that follow at all? It doesn't.
|
| Further, Snowden pointed out government abuse surreptitiously
| gathering user data. In the wake of that the government has a
| much, much harder time doing so covertly, so in many cases
| they engage in the same data broker activities that everyone
| else does. They don't have tap underseas cables anymore --
| they can just buy the data wholesale from a wide variety of
| sources.
| ddxv wrote:
| Apple is fooling everyone into thinking they are providing
| privacy when all they've done is restrict cross app tracking.
| Facebook, Google etc can still track anything you do in those
| apps at the user level which is tied back to a real name most
| likely. They're losing insight into what you did post click into
| other apps, but it doesn't change the basic information they
| track about you in their own applications.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Obviously - that's why the prompt says "Allow <app> to track
| your activity across other companies' apps and websites?"
| instead of "Ensure privacy within this app".
| geewee wrote:
| This is still a huge deal though. Facebook and google scour so
| much data through stuff like facebook pixels and google
| analytics - there's no need to give them anymore than what they
| already have.
| smoldesu wrote:
| What's the point though? They can still continue to collect
| data on you based on your Chrome history, the Tweets you
| like, the articles your read, and everywhere else you
| interact with their discrete services. Apple is swatting
| privacy flies when Google and Facebook are holding a knife to
| your throat.
|
| Furthermore, it's not like Apple themselves don't provide
| targeted ads[0]. All they're doing now is inroading the ad
| system through their own proprietary API so they can get a
| cut. What was wrong with the previous one, you may ask? It
| wasn't making them enough mone- erm... it wasn't secure
| enough! GUID fingerprinting isn't vague enough!
|
| [0] https://searchads.apple.com/advanced/
| pdimitar wrote:
| > _What 's the point though?_
|
| I am not inside any of these corps but I started using a
| PiHole at home for 7 months now. Plus I installed
| ad/tracking blockers on all of family's devices, and
| installed every possible privacy addon on their web
| browsers.
|
| The result? In the rare cases when I had to open up the
| machine and so the PiHole was down, we've all seen the most
| random ads you can imagine -- and super generic. They knew
| my mother's phone was of an elderly woman so they pushed
| ads of all sorts of knee protectors and sore throat
| pills... ironically she has zero problems with both!
|
| Same for me. Apparently being 40+ I now need to buy one car
| each week and dream of going to "beach retreats full of
| young women" (that was literally the text of 10+ ads I've
| seen). Little do they know I am very happily married.
|
| Examples abound. It's kind of hilarious.
|
| Back to your point, and with us being techies, I think we
| are under no illusion that the corps still know quite a few
| things about us. But I am here to tell you that if you try
| well enough they'll eventually lose the big picture of you
| and will only have a few separate quanta of data about you
| which they aren't sure what to do with -- at least when it
| comes to targeted advertising.
| thomascgalvin wrote:
| I think the real question is, can ads change in response to
| Apple?
|
| Because Apple has already implemented do-not-track, and from what
| I read, CPM is cratering. That leaves the ad industry with three
| options:
|
| 1. Adapt to the new, anonymous normal. Targeted ads will no
| longer be a thing, so ads will have to be based on the content
| viewed, not the viewer.
|
| 2. Invent a new way to track users. I suspect many are hard at
| work on this already, and is definitely Google's plan. In
| Google's case, the tracking will look more like aggregate data
| than a fingerprint, but the end result is still targeted
| advertising.
|
| 3. Go out of business.
| ddxv wrote:
| Do not track is marketing jargon. Apps can still continue to
| track users individually. What was lost was cross app tracking
| which was used for most mobile app ads.
| blahburn wrote:
| 2 is already happening. Facebook is pushing hard to get full
| data from partners to optimize ad tracking. Just look at the
| maximum data option for the Shopify integration now:
|
| "The Maximum setting shares your customer's personal
| information to match users on Facebook's network. The
| information collected using this setting includes your
| customer's name, location, email address, and phone number, as
| well as their browsing behavior in your online store."
|
| https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/promoting-marketing/analy...
| op03 wrote:
| 4. Braindead Apple users press the allow tracking button.
| ratww wrote:
| It's not too many: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/202
| 1-05-10-13-percent...
| smoldesu wrote:
| It would be interesting to see what would happen if Apple
| presented a similar big blue button allowing you to install
| third-party IPAs from the internet. User choice is what
| matters, right?
| hpoe wrote:
| Honestly I don't understand why 1 is so bad? Does anyone have
| hard data that all of this tracking and user profiling is
| actually resulting in increased ad revenue? I for one have
| never liked personalized ads as it is almost always is
| something I don't want, already have, or just bought.
|
| It seems if you show me ads optimized to the content I am
| viewing it would turn out better. After all I will probably
| only want to purchase one chainsaw in my life, but if I am
| looking at how to cut down a tree it would make sense to show
| me chainsaw ads for that tiny sliver of time, then never again.
|
| Why did it get this way?
| asutekku wrote:
| For us advertising a product with targeted ads definitely
| performs better than non-targeted ads. Also remember that
| most stuff being advertised is consumable so you will most
| likely at some point buy it again.
| ipsi wrote:
| > it is almost always is something I don't want, already
| have, or just bought.
|
| The explanation I have heard for the "just bought" scenario
| (I heard it on the internet, so grain of salt and so on) is
| that they're looking to catch people who purchased the item
| but have returned it, and are now in the market for a
| different version of the same item (e.g., you returned the
| chainsaw because it was too small, and now want a bigger
| one). Which makes sense, but whether there are _enough_
| people in that scenario to be worth the cost...
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| That seems unlikely, when you consider the advertising
| market and how it works. Fundamentally, the providers (i.e.
| the chainsaw store) don't tell the advertising platforms
| when a person buys a chainsaw (and often they can't tell
| themselves).
|
| So, what ends up happening is the situation that many
| people complain about is that the provider shared a list of
| people who looked at chainsaws, and then the advertising
| platform shows them ads until they run out of money/find
| more profitable ads to sell.
|
| From the perspective of the ad platform, it doesn't matter
| that you already bought it. From the perspective of the
| provider, this is acceptable waste.
| kn8 wrote:
| It might be that personalised ads are only marginally better
| (if at all), but the perception of the advertisers and
| publishers is that it's very important, thus creating a
| (fakeish) moat for Google, as it's more difficult to execute.
| Or maybe that's really not that important, as the biggest
| moat remains Google being number one web destination.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| 4. Force social logins for apps and use that as tracking
| identifier.
|
| No longer anonymous ads
|
| ( Or people could just pay for the app as alternative. But that
| won't happen)
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| Kind of a tangent, but was this bit about iPods being a bigger
| business than the Mac ever true?
|
| > Once upon a time, Apple was the iPod company. iPods were a much
| bigger business than the Mac, and they also made Apple a dominant
| force in the music industry.
|
| I Googled "peak iPod" and saw Q4 2007 listed as the peak for iPod
| sales. Apple's Q4 2007 results list $1.619 billion in iPod
| revenue and $3.103 billion in Mac revenue. There is another $601
| million in "other music related products and services" but added
| to the iPod revenue that still doesn't equal the amount of money
| the Mac was bringing in (and the Mac was likely responsible for
| almost all of Apple's peripheral, software and service revenue).
| dwighttk wrote:
| 2006 iPods and Macs were both around 40% of Apple revenue
|
| 2007 iPhone launched and absorbed a bunch of iPod sales so I
| think your search was giving you just past the peak.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| Q4 2007 (real calendar) is actually Q1 2008 (October-December
| 2007) by Apple's fiscal calendar. They reported $3.997 billion
| in iPod revenue that quarter, compared to about $3.5 billion
| for Macs.
|
| iPods always did well in the 1st quarter as that captured all
| the Christmas gift sales.
| nolok wrote:
| Which means that annually, Macs were still ahead by a large
| amount at iPod peak
| smoldesu wrote:
| Sure, but you'd see more people out-and-about with an iPod
| than you would with a Macbook. The iPod was the beginning
| of Apple's legacy as a status symbol.
| musicale wrote:
| Apple is presumably accelerating the shift to server-side
| cookies, tracking, and data aggregation.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Remember that Apple's end goal is to ultimately reroute users
| through their own devices and experiences, where they can
| ultimately take a cut of the profits. Nobody is truly benevolent
| to the user in this case, it's just a matter of Apple's dystopian
| capitalist future versus Google's dystopian capitalist future.
| The tiebreaker for me is which company is willing to be more
| open, and accept users who want to extend their products. At the
| end of the day, that's Google, Microsoft and (to a lesser degree)
| Amazon, who have _at least_ put in the effort of giving
| developers documentation and API access.
|
| I can't support Apple's crusade to change ads if they just want
| to take me out of one Matrix battery pod and into another, Space
| Grey one.
| anti-nazi wrote:
| re-inventing advertising in 2021 makes you a fucking moron
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