[HN Gopher] Apple is building a demand-side platform
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Apple is building a demand-side platform
Author : helij
Score : 160 points
Date : 2022-08-04 12:08 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (digiday.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (digiday.com)
| foxbee wrote:
| I feel Apple have tried this numerous times in different flavors
| before.
|
| Just stick to what you do best. Let Google and social networks
| poison our minds with ads.
| solarkraft wrote:
| Apple is already advertising on the App Store, significantly
| hurting the experience. Excited to see how they're going to kill
| their biggest advantage over other platforms (basic respect for
| the user in certain areas).
| noncoml wrote:
| This need to be heard loud and clear. The main reason to use
| iProducts is the non-ad experience. App Store is already a
| horrible experience with their ads. If this expands, I don't
| see why one shouldn't move to Google.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| because Google is all ads all the time, and you're the ad?
| vkou wrote:
| For those of us old enough to remember television, cable TV
| also started out as a premium experience that you pay for,
| that did not have ads.
|
| Fast foward to the present, and cable TV is nothing but
| ads, you are the product, and you get to pay $XYZ/month for
| the privilege of being advertised to.
|
| It's just a matter of time until Apple will be the cable TV
| of tech.
|
| Just because you pay, or even pay a premium doesn't mean
| you aren't the product. When quarterly growth expected by
| shareholders cannot be met by getting new users, it will be
| met by squeezing existing ones.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| i hope you're wrong about it being a matter of time until
| Apple advertises us to oblivion, but i know what you
| mean!
| notsapiensatall wrote:
| Eh, it's overblown. I use Android, and I don't see ads.
|
| I tried moving to iOS for the bleeding-edge app permissions
| and privacy protections. But because they forbid any
| browser besides Safari/WebKit, the iOS version of Firefox
| cannot run ordinary extensions.
|
| I tried, but I could not find a content blocker that was
| nearly as effective as uBlock+noScript. So I'm back on
| Android, where I can browse the web in peace.
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| reader mode works brilliantly
| bigyikes wrote:
| Check out Orion[1]. They claim to run web extensions on
| iOS. Apparently they ported many extension APIs to work
| with WebKit, which sounds pretty impressive.
|
| I can't vouch for their iOS browser (yet) but I've been
| using their Mac browser and it's been pleasant.
|
| [1]: https://browser.kagi.com/
| eastbound wrote:
| Because Google didn't encrypt mobile phones until Android 6,
| and updates are up to the manufacturer, so Android's security
| culture is globally appalling? in addition to permissions
| being intentionally mingled, for the benefit of advertisers.
| At least Apple pretends that the consumer is the client.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Sources within Apple, a company notoriously shy of making
| public statements, have briefed media outlets with news of more
| advertising opportunities for those eager to promote their wares
| in the App Store.
|
| > The planned ad placements include two additional slots in the
| App Store with a promotional placement on its "Today" tab where
| the paid-for slots will feature alongside editorialized content.
| The other planned ad placement will feature on app product pages
| where ads will be served under a tab that reads "You Might Also
| Like."
|
| We'll see if Apple's ad efforts extend beyond the App Store but
| even so, the incentives here are all fucked up. Why bother making
| App Store search better and cleaning up spam/scam apps when these
| problems enable a new revenue stream in the form of paid
| placements?
|
| Incidentally, is the App Store yet another venue where you need
| to buy ad placement for your own product's name lest it be taken
| over by your competitors?
| behnamoh wrote:
| Or maybe this job listing is a coy to throw off the
| competition. Am I to believe that Apple would post a job
| listing for such an important position instead of using their
| vast professional network to hire the right person for the job
| in-person?
| [deleted]
| api wrote:
| > We'll see if Apple's ad efforts extend beyond the App Store
| but even so, the incentives here are all fucked up. Why bother
| making App Store search better and cleaning up spam/scam apps
| when these problems enable a new revenue stream in the form of
| paid placements?
|
| _All_ commercial vendor app stores are trash fires. We need
| anti-trust action to force the ability to subscribe to
| alternative app stores. There 's just no incentive to improve
| them once users are locked in and as you say there are often
| perverse incentives to do the opposite.
|
| I'm really glad both power users and developers on the Mac
| roundly rejected the Mac App Store. I actually do use it for
| things like communicator apps and other limited-scope apps
| since auto-updates are nice, but if Apple pushed app-store-only
| for Mac or even made installing apps outside the store too hard
| (pushing via dark pattern) it's one of the things that would
| drive me off the platform.
|
| I realize there are security benefits but like I said the App
| Store is a trash fire. They all are.
| jhenkens wrote:
| I don't think I've relied on the app store search for
| anything except exact matches in half a decade. The greatest
| feature of the app store is that it handles app links. I just
| use search engines to discover apps then click the links to
| open in the app store.
|
| I still do wish they weren't quite so abusive in other ways
| of their monopoly - their pricing, and dev tooling fees, are
| pretty outrageous.
| matwood wrote:
| Same, but you and I are technical. Does the average person
| rely on search engines and then just link in? IDK.
| minhazm wrote:
| I'm not sure the average person is going out of their way
| to look for an app in the app store to solve their
| problem. I think they are just searching for something on
| Google, and if an app is recommended they might install
| it.
| [deleted]
| fariszr wrote:
| If you think Apple cares about privacy after the CSAM thing, I
| really don't understand why, yes they are a bit better than other
| big tech companies, but they are in no way "Privacy-respecting".
|
| This video might help.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r38Epj6ldKU
| cletus wrote:
| So I like Apple a lot. Given there are only two choices of phone
| (iOS or Android), IMHO Apple is _way_ better than Google in terms
| of privacy.
|
| Apple sent shockwaves through the ad industry by making third-
| party ad cookies opt-in [1]. This has a material impact on, for
| example, Facebook's business, arguably to tune of $10 billion
| [2].
|
| So a demand-side platform ("DSP") would be an incredibly
| significant move by Apple. A DSP is really one side of the coin
| of programmatic or real-time bidding ("RTB"). The other side is
| the exchange of supply side platform ("SSP"). RTB exchanges
| started as a way of selling remnant inventory in the display
| advertising space but have grown significantly since then.
|
| But why this is significant is that the big player in display
| advertising is Google and the centerpiece for that is the
| Doubleclick Ad Exchange.
|
| So Apple could be positioning itself to take a shot at Google's
| dominance of this space just like they have been doing to
| Facebook.
|
| If so, Apple needs to be _incredibly_ careful here because if
| they offer advantages to their own DSP or exchange they may well
| run afoul of anticompetitive behaviour.
|
| Disclaimer: Ex-Googler (and I worked on the Doubleclick Ad
| Exchange many, many years ago).
|
| [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-26/how-
| apple...
|
| [2]: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/02/facebook-says-apple-ios-
| priv...
| dismalpedigree wrote:
| Damnit Apple. Focus on user. Remove distractions and noise. Don't
| go down the path of everyone else.
| Rackedup wrote:
| The only thing different about Apple is their speech.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| I feel the Apple I used to like would say "Why would we bother
| making an ad platform? It's a boring problem and ads only make
| the experience worse"
| ggregoire wrote:
| > It's a boring problem
|
| When you start digging into it, it's actually a pretty complex
| and interesting topic. Lots of engineering and
| infra/scalability problems to tackle.
| post_break wrote:
| And now Apple is like Mr Krabs. "Money"
| mattlondon wrote:
| Because it is hugely profitable? Look at Facebook and Google -
| billions and billions in profits from selling ads. Now Amazon
| is following suit too.
|
| Apple are well poised to do this (some might say well poised to
| _abuse_ their position...) so it would be almost irresponsible
| to Apple shareholders _not_ to pursue this, since they have a
| responsibility to their shareholders.
| smm11 wrote:
| I thought this was a DATA demand-side platform.
|
| Since we're living a dumb client-terminal life now anyway, only
| nobody realizes it.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| To some degree, I trust both Apple and Google but for different
| reasons. Apple is pushing privacy tools, and within limits of
| government suponenas they do a reasonable job. Google has a
| business of using your data to advise advertisers how to sell you
| stuff, but if you go on Google's privacy settings page you have a
| fair amount of control. Personally, I let Google track my YouTube
| use for 90 days in order to make good suggestions and turn almost
| everything else off (Google makes money from me from buying
| content, paying for YouTube, and GCP).
|
| I really respect people who self-host their own data platforms,
| etc. but I don't have time for that.
| okdood64 wrote:
| > I really respect people who self-host their own data
| platforms, etc. but I don't have time for that.
|
| Exactly how I feel when I see the myriad amounts of
| threads/comments from people here who are self-hosting things
| in the name of privacy, control, "stick it to the man", etc.
| MrWiffles wrote:
| So, how long before iOS becomes another unusable ad-infested
| hellscape as bad as Android? One year? Two?
| Yhippa wrote:
| So was Apple being disingenuous this whole time about privacy?
| Presuming they plan on using all the data they capture from their
| users iDevices for their ad platform. Is there a way to opt out
| of that?
| pxc wrote:
| Any OS vendor that tries to trick or harangue you into signing
| into/up for cloud services and telemetry before you even log
| into your device for the first time is absolutely not privacy-
| oriented. That Apple automatically opts users into everything
| and tries to alarm them with popups if they dare opt out should
| have made things clear enough.
|
| The only way that Apple has managed to seem even sort of
| focused on customer privacy is that Microsoft is my now so god-
| awful and free software desktops are so marginal that most
| people no longer trulyv remember what it's like to even set up
| a system whose mission is not to monetize the user by plugging
| them into a ton of services that collect data about them.
|
| The only companies not tempted to do this are (some of) the
| ones that don't collect data like this in the first place.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Gotta chase growth to keep the shareholders happy. Don't be
| surprised when App Store ads come to your home screen or
| Finder.
| Ro93 wrote:
| You sound like such a typical HN user it's hilarious . Not
| everything is so cynical. Apple has a history of putting
| users first. Do you really think they're going to jeopardize
| the likability of their own OS to the masses?
| MobiusHorizons wrote:
| Apple has a history of making choices that jeopardize the
| likability of their platforms with the masses (eg headphone
| jack, removing Touch ID) They also have a history of
| getting away with it.
| threeseed wrote:
| > jeopardize the likability of their platforms with the
| masses
|
| You don't represent the opinions of the masses.
|
| The fact that Apple iPhone sales continue unabated
| factually and objectively indicates that Headphone jacks
| and TouchID are not significant issues to warrant
| customers switching platforms.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| They're already doing things that Mac OS users from lets
| say the era of Jaguar would find utterly tasteless.
|
| I use iTunes match for my music but for 6 months last year
| once a month opening their music app it would force me to
| dismiss an Apple Music trail before I could play MY files.
|
| App Store already has a pile of ads and paid placements
| before you get to the exact name match.
|
| End of the day they don't have a product visionary at the
| helm they have a bean counter.
| postalrat wrote:
| Users first but users can't use a web browser that might
| (but unlikely) compete with their app revenue?
| slivanes wrote:
| Putting users first by making un-serviceable laptops?
|
| Putting users first by removing headphone jacks?
|
| Putting users first by crippling competing web browsers on
| iOS?
| threeseed wrote:
| a) Laptops are serviceable and manuals/parts are
| available to self-repair them.
|
| b) Headphone jacks are simply not useful for most people
| with the popularity of Bluetooth. And those that need
| them can use Apple's class leading USB DAC dongles.
|
| c) Web browsers are such a significant security vector
| that I am fully in favour of heavily sandboxing them and
| restricting what they can do. I like my web sites to be
| different from my apps.
| anonymousab wrote:
| MacOS already bugs me about using Safari and other apps
| with periodic notification banners that cannot be disabled.
|
| Oh, you can disable that crap for non apple apps. But Apple
| doesn't let you do it for theirs.
| onelovetwo wrote:
| No, they are beholden to the same rules they set in place.
|
| I'm guessing it will be a more privacy focused platform.
| colmmacc wrote:
| Having a gay CEO in times of re-emerging bigotry and homophobic
| oppression probably does help make Apple genuinely committed to
| some privacy for its own sake, and its revenue model does give
| it more latitude to serve the needs of customers.
|
| But at the same time when it comes to advertising, it's clear
| that Apple has the same sense of self-serving "we mean private
| between you and us, not private to you. Total coincidence that
| that means we can build a walled garden around our ad platform"
| that is an industry norm in the US.
|
| I recently unlocked my iPad mini while staying in downtown
| Boston. Right there on the Home Screen was a geo-based app
| suggestion for Dunkin' Donuts. It felt very wrong, like when a
| Smart TV tries to give you a suggestion. I don't want my iPad
| spying on me. I've never used the Dunkin' Donuts app and had no
| interest. Apple had clearly used my location to target me with
| a suggestion. That told me everything I need to know about how
| far they are willing to push privacy.
| warcher wrote:
| I feel obliged to push back on the "gay people would respect
| privacy better" narrative with a couple notable
| counterexamples. J. Edgar Hoover and Roy Cohn.
|
| I have to add that attributing virtue or vice based on
| nothing but personal demographics in this fashion is
| overwhelmingly likely to lead you to some bad conclusions.
| Willamin wrote:
| Any chance that was a location based App Clip suggestion in
| your Siri App Suggestions home screen widget?
|
| That or the App Store widget (which is essentially a banner
| ad widget) are the only reasons I can imagine where:
|
| 1. You don't have the Dunkin' Donuts app installed
|
| 2. You saw the Dunkin' Donuts app icon on your homescreen
|
| ---
|
| If it's an App Clip suggestion in your Siri App Suggestions
| widget, you can disable this behavior in a couple of places
| (depending on what you care about):
|
| * Settings > Siri & Search > App Clips > Suggest App Clips
|
| * Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > System
| Services > Location-Based Suggestions
|
| ---
|
| I don't mean to suggest that Apple is free and clear of
| guilt. They often add new options with their preferred value
| as the default - rather than a user-focused default.
|
| However, I don't think this is caused by advertisements in
| the same way that Smart TVs suggest things.
| tobylane wrote:
| But did Dunkin' Donuts learn your address and buying habits
| when it paid for that advert? Apple could be serving you
| accurate ads that rely on collected data, while only telling
| DD that an ad was sold to Apple's idea of a relevant viewer
| and let them judge if they want to buy more. I think we need
| to distinguish this, perhaps you are with the walled garden
| spying. Do you trust the option to reset your advertiser ID?
| colmmacc wrote:
| You're most likely right about what Dunkin' Donuts know.
| I'm less confident about what Apple themselves know. Apple
| have people talented enough that they can build a privacy-
| preserving back-end too so that their operators and staff
| have no way to know where I was. I hope that is how it
| works, but I've never seen it explained that way. If Apple
| end up on the wrong end of broad subpoenas to find out who
| was near abortion clinics ... getting better
| recommendations for donuts wasn't worth it.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Apple end up on the wrong end of broad subpoenas to
| find out who was near abortion clinics
|
| I would be more concerned about ATT/Verizon/T-Mobile, who
| have real-time data on where every connected phone is all
| the time and a FISA court can always serve them with a
| secret warrant.
|
| Also, what you are describing is not Dunkin paying Apple
| for an advertisement. If it is, then it would be huge
| news that Apple is pushing non Apple ads to its devices.
| codyb wrote:
| I just turn off all the toggles for personalized suggestions
| from Siri and targeted advertising and don't worry about it?
| I don't receive anything targeted to me as far as I've seen.
|
| I believe the toggles are fairly visible under Settings >
| Siri, and then I'd probably search for Privacy and
| Advertising and do toggles there too.
|
| To be fair, I rarely have location services turned on either.
| Mostly just cause I enjoy looking at the maps more than I
| enjoy getting directions as opposed to a big concern about
| being tracked. I find I learn the areas I'm in better that
| way.
| smoldesu wrote:
| As a gay individual, I have genuinely no idea how you're
| conflating an openly gay CEO with a responsibility to create
| private products.
| colmmacc wrote:
| Tim Cook emphasizes personal privacy in every interview
| I've seen with him, and he seems genuinely affected and
| passionate about it. He's also backed tough fights with the
| FBI and DoJ. I don't mean to reduce a gay person to their
| sexuality, and I'm no psychoanalyst, but every person I
| know who was a gay adult in the 80s and 90s has a very
| personal sense of how important privacy is and it has a
| very material color to it.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Well maybe Tim Cook could turn over a new leaf by
| refusing to help China hunt down ethnic and sexual
| minorities in their country. Maybe show a little
| backbone, if this is something he feels strongly about.
| dymk wrote:
| How is he helping China hunt down those groups?
| smoldesu wrote:
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/10/22826695/apple-china-
| mou...
|
| It's an open secret that Chinese authorities have access
| to all domestic iCloud data without a warrant, which is
| often used to profile political dissidents and the Uighur
| populations that Apple relies on to build their iPhones.
| This is only possible because Tim Cook agreed to move the
| nation's iCloud datacenters into Chinese territory. So,
| when Tim Cook says "Privacy is a human right", what he
| apparently implies is that not all humans are created
| equal. It's certainly an ugly hill to die on, but it also
| makes it incredibly hard to believe that Apple has an
| ideological attachment to privacy when they bend over
| backwards for China more than any other FAANG member.
| rchaud wrote:
| Peter Thiel meets that criteria, and he is pushing
| regressive politics and investing in panopticon software
| for state intelligence services.
|
| Tim Cook similarly is a career suit who happens to be
| gay. He's not going to choose advocacy over fiduciary
| duties.
| wrs wrote:
| That sounds like a location-based app suggestion, not an ad.
| iOS will suggest an app that is used a lot at your current
| location. (Edit: Siri uses other signals as well to suggest
| apps. You can turn off the whole thing by removing "Siri App
| Suggestions" from your lock screen.)
| cr__ wrote:
| That's an ad.
| 015a wrote:
| I get in my car. The weather app is suggested to me,
| because I oftentimes, when getting into my car, want to
| check the weather. This is innocuous; definitely not an
| ad.
|
| I get in my car. Candy Crush 2 is suggested to me,
| because I oftentimes, when being driven around by my
| wife, play games.
|
| At a surface level, one could argue: Candy Crush did not
| pay for that impression, its not an ad. On the other
| hand; Candy Crush does pay Apple 30% of every transaction
| in the app; and that service fee includes not only access
| to market on the iOS App Store, but _also_ , _critically_
| , access to be installed at all on iOS. Developers pay
| Apple to be allowed to install Applications on users'
| phones; any installed application could be given
| preferential display by iOS in suggested applications,
| location based suggestions, etc; Apple has a monetary
| interest (30%) in suggesting applications which would
| generate revenue for both them & the developer; the
| algorithms which power these application suggestions are
| black-boxed and poorly understood by consumers.
|
| Similarly; I drive up to Starbucks, and iOS displays the
| Starbucks application. The innocuous argument is: arrive
| at location -> many users open this app at this location
| -> presenting it is convenient. The "weirder" argument
| is: arrive at location -> Apple wants to keep Starbucks
| happy, in the App Store, and using Apple Pay ->
| presenting it is monetarily beneficial to Apple &
| Starbucks, Starbucks knew that their app could be
| presented like this and approved of it, and thus its an
| Ad. Critically, there's nothing different about these two
| situations beyond intent, and to some degree that just
| speaks to the fact that we live in a capitalist society.
| But I label the situation "weird" for a reason. And
| "weirdest"? Arrive at location -> There's a starbucks & a
| panera bread right next to each other -> iOS can only
| recommend one application, so which does it choose? This
| is where being explicit about "this is an ad" actually
| matters; its no longer a matter of convenience or "wow
| that's cool", its a matter of "a billion devices are now
| pushing their users to make getting coffee at Starbucks a
| little bit easier than Panera", and that's not ok even
| _if_ the intention is totally ethical.
|
| I think there's an argument, maybe not a strong one but
| extant nonetheless, that any "preferential display" iOS
| exhibits toward one app over another, anywhere on your
| phone, is advertising, simply due to how intertwined
| their megacorporation interests & reach is with how money
| flows through their platform.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Whether if they're ads or not, these preferential display
| recommendations also end up entrenching the top apps,
| which doesn't exactly help discoverability for new
| players.
| dymk wrote:
| When I plug my phone into my car in the mid afternoon,
| maps suggests I drive to the YMCA. Is that an ad for the
| YMCA?
| rchaud wrote:
| Why is the maps app making any suggestions at all?
|
| As much as Google apps annoy me (Android user), at least
| Google Maps still acts like a dump pipe. Silent unless
| called upon.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| I at least personally appreciate it because when I get in
| my car after class (to drive the place I drive 90% of the
| time after class-home) it'll push an ETA onto my lock
| screen. It's not always right but it's generally _very_
| predictable (and can be disabled).
| dymk wrote:
| Because I drive there often at that time, and it saves me
| typing in the address manually.
| rchaud wrote:
| That's different from what the OP was saying, which was
| seeing a Dunkin Donuts app recommendation, while he was
| in a different city, and didn't have a history of going
| to DD.
|
| So your thing is not an ad, just an unnecessary reminder.
| I imagine after going the first couple of times, you
| don't need navigational assistance to get there.
| dymk wrote:
| How do you know that? Maybe OP often goes to their local
| DD.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| OP: I've never used the Dunkin' Donuts app and had no
| interest.
| dwaite wrote:
| In the sense that you'd see a big sign for Duncan Donuts
| if you were standing in front of the store, yes.
| rchaud wrote:
| That's signage. No different from you adding a homescreen
| shortcut to a website, or a pin on a map.
| calderwoodra wrote:
| Only if they're being paid to show it - which I'm not
| sure is the case here.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| If the app is monetized then apple makes money if you use
| the app. It's in apple's interest to advertise things to
| you. Doesn't matter if it's paid for.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| "Having a gay CEO in times of re-emerging bigotry and
| homophobic oppression probably does help make Apple genuinely
| committed to some privacy for its own sake,"
|
| I doubt that. He will use his billions to get privacy for
| himself while the users will be used for profits.
| agumonkey wrote:
| He might still be a lot more sensitive to this subject than
| the average people.
| thefz wrote:
| > "Our platform runs and delivers advertising auctions to match
| supply (customers) with demand (advertisers), focusing on
| technical components including Campaign Management, Bidding,
| Incrementality, Dynamic Creative Optimization, Matching,
| Auctions, and Experimentation
|
| Silly me, I thought that in a supply/demand scenario you are
| meant to pay your suppliers, not just harvest what you need from
| them without spending a cent. Monetization of everything.
| soared wrote:
| Users are "paid" in the sense that they use apps for free. App
| developers instead of charging a user a download fee, show
| users ads.
|
| You're also taking industry words and using them in weird ways.
| Supply is available ad slots, demand is advertiser dollars
| wanting to fill those slots. Demand pays suppliers but it goes
| through tons of intermediaries (brand, agency, agency, dsp,
| exchange, ssp, agency, app/website) plus a bunch of vendors get
| tiny percentages during the dsp/exchange/ssp phase
| cutler wrote:
| I wish journalists would define their terms. I had to dig deep
| into the article just to find out what a "demand-side platform"
| is.
| pantulis wrote:
| To be fair to the journo, I'd say the target audience of
| Digiday should be pretty acquainted to the term.
| echelon wrote:
| I'm so sick of big tech.
|
| They own the platform. Keep us locked in the platform. Then sell
| our minds to advertisers.
|
| Incumbents can't grow any larger without eating their users
| eventually. Maybe with proper antitrust action we would see a new
| generation of healthy upstarts. New search engines, new devices,
| new everything.
|
| The forest needs a fire.
| josho wrote:
| While I agree with your sentiment, in this case what Apple is
| rumoured to be planning is no different than what happens in
| retail today. For example, your grocer sells their 'end cap'
| shelving space (end of aisle--highly visible product
| placement). Not only that, grocers have moved to stocking their
| inventory in a highly inefficient approach so that average
| consumers need to walk every aisle to fill their cart (the
| Apple comparable is a bad search experience, to lead consumers
| to paid placement instead).
|
| Apple is doing what we already experience in the physical
| world. If you dislike Apple's changes then the fix is going to
| have to be general consumer protection laws that apply in real
| world spaces as well as digital.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| The analogy here breaks down because the App Store is not a
| physical space with "aisles" and "endcaps". The _only_
| realistic way to navigate the App Store 's millions of apps
| is with search. It's ok to place paid results for searches
| like "todo list" or "calendar". But if I search for
| "Fantastical", I better get "Fantastical.app" as my first
| result. Not some unrelated bullshit that a competitor has
| placed there. The latter is the equivalent of me reaching for
| the Corn Flakes at the store and some guy popping up and
| shoving Cheerios in my hand instead.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It would be the same as having Cheerios to pay more, thus
| Corn Flakes gets demoted to the lower rows, knie level.
| echelon wrote:
| Not when you're searching for Cheerios.
|
| This type of behavior is new and the patterns were
| developed by the advertising giants to favor their
| revenue streams.
|
| It's trademark disparagement. It lets platform monopolies
| take even more revenue from disenfranchised businesses.
| Businesses that in turn have to cede more control over
| their storefronts, brands, and operations to these
| hitherto unrelated tech companies.
| pjmlp wrote:
| You will be searching for them alright, and find them, on
| the bottom row on the supermarket aisle.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Because of the dominance of advertising as a revenue model, new
| entrants may actually be _worse_ than what we already have.
| Before the forest gets a fire we need to make more room for
| software business models besides "ad-funded". My favoured
| approach is regulation that would make tracking mandatory "opt-
| in", but anything that makes collecting and selling user data
| less lucrative would be good.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Usually when the soil is fertile, a new set of trees replace
| the former forest and everything is old again.
| [deleted]
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| As an actual DSP (Digital Signal Processing) person I can only
| manage a weary sigh at what looks like dog poop all over the tidy
| lawn of my acronym space.
| Macha wrote:
| Unfortunately you're about 15 years past the get off my lawn
| time for the demand side platforms.
| [deleted]
| Animats wrote:
| So Apple has turned to the dark side. Sad.
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| Can someone explain the difference with "standard" advertisement?
| peanut_worm wrote:
| Unrelated but this site says they charge 160 dollars for a 3
| month subscription that seems insane for a newspaper
| swayvil wrote:
| We will deliver your cheeseburger momentarily, but first we will
| flap this prostitute's filthy junk in your face.
|
| How did the toxic apocalypse of ubiquitous advertising become so
| normal? I can only blame the slowly boiled frog.
| [deleted]
| saimiam wrote:
| Yeah, it's unbelievable how much we have accepted being
| constantly marketed to.
|
| Our brains don't ever get any downtime to just be. Sometimes,
| it is insidious - e.g., in my apartment building's WhatsApp
| group, we have a neighbor who regularly posts content by dairy
| brand called Country Delight promoting contests for kids. I
| feel she's getting paid to do this because she's the only one
| who puts out this content.
|
| Our HOA has monetized us residents by entering into an MOU with
| MyGate to allow promo events by brands inside the community on
| Sundays. In return, they get a discount on their yearly MyGate
| charges.
|
| It's all pervasive now and there's no escaping.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| mouzogu wrote:
| you WILL be surprised, and you WILL be delighted
| juve1996 wrote:
| This has nothing to do with a "walled-garden" approach.
| Removing the walled garden essentially allows what you're so
| smugly against.
|
| Of course, this can be abused. But the problem isn't having a
| walled garden. The problem is monopoly and duopoly. There
| aren't any real options.
|
| We keep beating around the bush of the reality - anti-trust is
| what's needed. Not squabbling over details and feeling good
| about arguing with kids about apple. I mean, go ahead, pat
| yourself on the back, but we're still in the same place. The EU
| can add a selector for a browser or tell apple to change their
| input jack but that still doesn't solve the problem - the
| market is anti-competitive because there is no competition.
| Walled garden or not doesn't matter if there are only 2
| competitors.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The good thing about ads is that it's a cancer that nobody
| wants so even anticompetitive actions such as pushing all the
| other players out of business is beneficial as it just leaves
| one adtech company to block as opposed to dozens/hundreds.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| Unfortunately, in app data collection and in OS data
| collection in a completely uncustomizable OS is unavoidable.
|
| Watch as they cripple Safari to no longer be able to block
| their own services (or collect it in the background)
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I don't disagree, but my point was that if Apple switches
| to ads and pushes all other adtech vendors out of the
| market, all you'd need to do is to switch to literally any
| other manufacturer than Apple. In a way they'd be doing you
| a favour by killing off this disgusting industry.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| I do not understand what a demand-side platform is and the
| article does a terrible job of explaining it. Something to do
| with ads?
|
| Pretty sure they just made this phrase up for the article.
| dboreham wrote:
| I think it's the thing that facilitates showing you an ad for a
| thing you already bought last week.
| ikiris wrote:
| Its always weird when people jump from "I don't understand
| something" to "no one understands something, they must have
| made it up" without any effort to verify that its not just you.
| Like is it arrogance?
|
| You can clearly find the term almost immediately defined here
| for example https://bfy.tw/TOgI
|
| Like any basic search will do so.
| metadat wrote:
| You've hidden a LMGTFY link behind a URL shortener. Please
| don't do this.
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| What's worse, someone unwilling to go searching for bullshit
| ad terminology, or being a toxic dick and posting troll
| links?
| jasode wrote:
| _> I do not understand what a demand-side platform is and the
| article does a terrible job of explaining it. _
|
| The intended audience for Digiday (the domain of this thread's
| article) are people already interested in the _business of
| digital ads and marketing_. Therefore, a common industry term
| like DSP is assumed as baseline knowledge so explaining it
| would be redundant and tedious for their readers.
|
| It's when the article is re-posted to an aggregator like HN
| that it seems like "demand side platform" is poorly explained
| by the author. HN readers like us were not the intended
| audience.
|
| EDIT to downvoters: I have no idea what you're downvoting. If
| you think my information is incorrect about Digiday, please
| post the correction.
| pxue wrote:
| - marketplaces has demand and supply
|
| - demand are the buyers (people who spend the money)
|
| - supply are the sellers (people who has the goods)
|
| - online digital ads are typically sold and bought in a
| marketplace style system
|
| - demand are the advertisers
|
| - supply are people with the "goods", in this case, ad
| placement slots such as websites, newsletters, apps, app
| stores.. anywhere the advertiser can find audience and put an
| ad.
|
| - demand side platform is a platform for the advertisers to
| connect with the supply.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Apple already has ads in the App Store, Apple Music, Apple
| TV+, Apple News, etc. So doesn't it already have a "demand-
| side platform" for the businesses that purchase ads for those
| mediums? Or am I misunderstanding the term?
| aasasd wrote:
| Same. I'm a web dev since mid-twothousands, and I gave up on
| understanding advertising lingo lately.
| nemothekid wrote:
| Lately?? The term DSP is as old as Facebook, the company.
| DSPs are "legacy" tech at this point
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| Actually DSP to most people on HN is going to mean "digital
| signal processing".
| secondcoming wrote:
| DSPs are the part of adtech that match your data to an
| advertising campaign and then bid to serve you that ad.
| JLCarveth wrote:
| It's definitely an established term, Apple is using it in their
| job posts https://jobs.apple.com/en-us/privacy?returnUrl=/en-
| us/detail...
| jaywalk wrote:
| Definitely not made up. It's basically a platform to allow
| advertisers to manage bidding on ad impressions in real-time,
| among other aspects of their ad campaigns.
|
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand-side_platform
| pkaler wrote:
| This is an excellent 3-part series on Apple, ATT, and how they
| robbed the ad mob: -
| https://mobiledevmemo.com/apple-robbed-the-mobs-bank/ -
| https://mobiledevmemo.com/apple-robbed-the-mobs-bank-part-2/
| - https://mobiledevmemo.com/apple-robbed-the-mobs-bank-part-3/
|
| Also the job posting for Senior Manager for DSP (Demand-Side
| Platform) was probably supposed to be Antonio Garica Martinez
| before he got hired/fired/offer rescinded. - http
| s://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Garc%C3%ADa_Mart%C3%ADnez_%28au
| thor%29
| [deleted]
| navi0 wrote:
| I, for one, would welcome an Apple attempt to create a better
| digital advertising paradigm focused on users and that
| respects/protects privacy as much as possible.
|
| As an optimistic college freshman in 2000 (dating myself, I
| know), I had the privilege of taking a class where once a week, a
| successful business entrepreneur would come in and expand our
| minds about a company/product/vision they had created.
|
| Being the height of dot com frenzy, I still remember one class
| where a guy described how the Internet offered the potential to
| revolutionize advertising in a way that would be a win-win for
| everyone. He described a world where ads might even be enjoyable
| to watch because of the Internet's potential to show each
| viewer/user ads relevant to them: because every beard trimmer ad
| shown to a woman was wasted time for her and money for the
| advertiser.
|
| So far, his predictions have broadly become true, but stick with
| me.
|
| The coolest part of his vision to my 18yo self was that each of
| us would have a personal ad software agent running on our PC/TV
| (the most personal devices at the time) that learned our desires
| and went out and found ads for stuff we might want. It was a
| completely different paradigm to the ad model of the day and one
| that was potentially privacy protecting because your personal ad
| agent would be the automated broker for your time and attention,
| and everyone would want this because a good agent would delight
| you with new services and products that you found useful and
| maybe didn't know you wanted. There would be a healthy market of
| personal agents to choose from, too, because the costs of
| switching were minimal and companies would complete to create the
| best personal agents.
|
| Alas, the optimism of the early Internet morphed into magic
| Google and Facebook/Meta pixels, and we got personal ad agents,
| but they are oligopolies with extreme network effects that are
| incompatible with privacy.
|
| The Brave browser has come closest to the vision described by the
| dot com entrepreneur who spoke to my class, but I've always
| wondered whether anyone else would create personal ad agents, and
| of all the candidates, Apple is probably best positioned. I'm
| curious to see how they do it.
| fuzzylightbulb wrote:
| Turns out, rather than trying to figure out what you actually
| want (whatever that means), it is a lot easier for advertisers
| to tell you what you should want and to trick you into thinking
| the whole thing was your own idea.
| duxup wrote:
| I wish I could tell them what I want to see.
|
| Amazon thinks I'm a woman, and wants to sell me things I
| already bought / don't want to buy anymore.
|
| Google is convinced I'm a Cornhuskers super fan (I'm a fan of a
| rival team).
|
| I got an ad once to "sign melania trump's virtual birthday
| card"....
| joshstrange wrote:
| I'm a little confused by this author feeling like they are
| pulling back the curtain on Apple & Ads. Apple hasn't been anti-
| ad (though their products have way fewer ads than the
| competition. I installed Windows on a new machine yesterday and
| oh boy I was not prepared) but rather they are pro-privacy. Their
| recent crackdown on ad networks wasn't "we hate ads so we are
| going it make harder" but instead it was "you all are leaking
| customer data like a sieve and that's not ok".
|
| The problem with most all the ad networks out there is they are
| not good stewards of their data and will sell it (directly or
| indirectly) to anyone with the money to buy it. Personally I hate
| ads but I understand their place in the world and if I have to
| see ads I trust Apple way more than Google or whatever fly-by-
| night ad tracking company is out there. The problem has always
| been that the advertisers had way more access to the info about
| the customer (and sometimes the customer's PII/unique id) than I
| was comfortable with and they would share that indiscriminately.
| If Apple is the one holding that info and if they design their
| system in a way that protects it then I don't personally see this
| as a problem.
| thefz wrote:
| Someone down in the comments was waiting for the Apple defense
| squad to pop up and say that this has been in consumer's best
| interest the whole time, and there you are.
|
| _of course_ they do it because they care about your privacy,
| and not for their revenue. Of course.
| joshstrange wrote:
| And if I had added a "and of course someone will come into
| the replies and say it's only about profit" then that would
| have negated your comment?
|
| Welcome to the real world where 2 things can be true at the
| same time: Apple cares about profits and Apple cares about
| privacy.
| thefz wrote:
| Hey whatever, if it makes you feel better.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| > I trust Apple way more than Google
|
| I hear this a lot but Google is probably one of the most
| trustworthy stewards of the most amount of private data in the
| history of mankind.
| pvarangot wrote:
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Sure, if you want to use an inflammatory and incorrect
| metaphor.
| simonh wrote:
| I'm not sure it is incorrect. Google doesn't sell the
| data sure, it sells indirect access to it by selling
| targeted adds based on the data. They abuse the data on
| behalf of others, but it's still getting abused.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Why?
| spanktheuser wrote:
| Google is also responsible for the Android and Chrome
| platforms. In both cases, my impression is that they have
| long tolerated, if not promoted, ecosystems open to third
| party data collection of the more abusive sort. While Google
| may protect data gathered through maps, mail and their many
| other properties, their stewardship of Android / Chrome
| greatly diminishes my trust in their organization.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| It's fair to say that Android is a big attack vector.
| Google is responsible for leaving the door unlocked, sure.
| But the data that's stolen is not Google's data. It's
| independently grabbed data.
|
| So you can use Googles platforms to gather data, but you
| won't be getting what Google has.
| _jal wrote:
| I think you can say they built the first huge, impactful non-
| classified pile of surveillance data dedicated to
| advertising, and thereby set the bar for corporate behavior
| with this sort of thing. Of course it is inevitable that
| slimier outfits came along later and were worse. That's a
| predictable and expected outcome in any market niche.
|
| So in that respect, I can agree.
| quitit wrote:
| In addition to this:
|
| They've been building ad tools because that's what developers
| have been asking for as a way to surface their app.
|
| Otherwise all developers had was a situation where only Apple's
| algorithms decides which app is similar to another app, which
| is largely generated through user searches/behaviours
| (something that is easily exploited as seen on amazon with the
| "customers also bought" exploits). That left developers with
| limited ability to surface their ad honestly and absolutely no
| way to feature event-based activities, expansions and other
| promotional industry norms.
|
| HN won't like it because it's Apple - but this largely improves
| the experience for the developers. While consumers get relevant
| ads without the unscrupulous on-selling of data.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Will this really improve the experience for the average
| developer, or will this be a way for those with deep pockets
| to blanket the platform with ads and drown out small-time
| indie devs even more?
|
| It feels like a more lasting solution not based on being able
| to buy eyeballs would be making the search experience on the
| App Store more robust and modernized. To fix the solution
| with an UX upgrade. _That_ feels more like an Apple solution,
| not by adding more ads into the mix.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| Does anyone remember this?
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/28/the-downfall-of-the-walled...
|
| Apple tried before with ads in iOS. Right now it seems like
| they advertise only in the App Store but adding more ads to the
| core OS would be bad but I could see a play where you get free
| Apple Music and tv+ but you just have to tolerate ads (and I
| would switch to that).
| throwaway-blaze wrote:
| They advertise in Apple News too. I don't think they've ever
| released a real number but estimates are that they did
| $3-4billion in advertising revenue in 2021. Not big by the
| standards of GOOG or META but growing fast.
| pxc wrote:
| > Apple hasn't been anti-ad (though their products have way
| fewer ads than the competition.)
|
| > Personally I hate ads but [...] if I have to see ads I trust
| Apple
|
| You don't have to see ads. There have been and still are
| operating systems with no ads, and Apple is absolutely swimming
| in cash. There is no necessity here-- Apple is not integrating
| ads because they 'have to', and we don't 'have to' see them
| because we don't have to use operating systems that integrate
| ads.
|
| The resignation here just kills me.
| novok wrote:
| IMO Apple is pro-privacy from competitors and 3rd parties. They
| are not pro-privacy from Apple itself and the governments that
| force them to disclose things.
|
| There is a lot of tracking from apple you just cannot opt out
| of from apple straight out. A lot of logs are just uploaded and
| you can't stop it from the device itself as a setting, such as
| battery analytics and more. Just investigate what comes out of
| your iphone & mac still data wise even when you opt out of
| things you are given as an option.
|
| You cannot open an apple id without a phone number or other
| strong identifying information, even if all you want to do is
| download free apps. iPhones are mostly unusable without an
| Apple ID.
|
| Apple does not give you an option to not have any encryption
| keys kept in escrow by apple, like they do with iCloud and
| iCloud backups. And backups are on by default, including the
| contents of your iMessage logs. They don't keep your iMessage
| keys in escrow by default, so they've always been capable in
| not doing that. They keep iCloud data within China, so the
| Chinese government probably has continuous full access to
| whatever is on iCloud for Chinese users, because apple keeps
| the iCloud keys in escrow. The same goes with the NSA in the
| USA, because we all know those governments invest enough to
| fully compromise apple's data centers. Apple could chose a
| design that allows users to avoid the key escrow and make these
| government spy agency jobs much harder. The examples go on and
| on. But they are very good in not highlighting these facts.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _A lot of logs are just uploaded and you can 't stop it
| from the device itself as a setting, such as battery
| analytics and more._
|
| You actually can. It's one click to opt-out of all device
| analytics:
| https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/device-
| analytics...
|
| For anyone curious about what's being sent when device
| analytics is allowed to phone home, that's found at Settings
| > Privacy > Analytics & Improvements.
| fezfight wrote:
| Feels more like their standard move, lock out competitors so
| they can control it for their own profit.
|
| Not that I mind them fucking with advertisers, but let's not
| pretend Apple is benevolent here.
| simonh wrote:
| They have consciously chosen to give up dozens of billions in
| potential revenue, because it would be against their
| customer's interests. That's got to count for something.
| fezfight wrote:
| The article is literally about them successfully locking
| out their competitors and moving in on those billions for
| themselves.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Except that Apple not only _hasn 't_ done that, but has
| created ad network APIs and processes to support
| "competitors".
|
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/skadne
| two...
|
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/skadne
| two...
| simonh wrote:
| As the article points out this is almost certainly about
| advertising within their own sites, apps and stores. In
| which case competing and networks are irrelevant.
| ArtofIndirect wrote:
| philjohn wrote:
| Not recalling AirTags until the privacy implications are
| fixed, says otherwise.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Tile predated AirTags for nearly a decade and is still
| worse on privacy today. If you want to argue that
| consumer-level trackers shouldn't exist, that's fine, but
| it's not at all unique to Apple.
|
| Personally I don't think it's a solvable problem, and
| they shouldn't exist at all.
| philjohn wrote:
| Tile never became ubiquitous though - but yes, I agree,
| if it can't be done in a way that can be abused, it
| shouldn't be a product.
|
| But money talks, and Apple have decided they're
| comfortable with the risks because it's another brick in
| their ecosystem wall, and makes them money.
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| > yes, I agree, if it can't be done in a way that can be
| abused, it shouldn't be a product.
|
| What about knives, alcohol, cars, escooters, power tools,
| rope, bleach?
|
| These are all products that can be abused. Should they
| also not exist?
|
| There will always be a new product that can be abused.
| Education and threat of punishment keep a lot of people
| from abusing them. The same can be true for AirTags.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| Any half-competent EE can throw together the equivalent
| of a Tile or AirTag with off the shelf parts nowadays.
| That genie is out of the bottle and has been for years
| and years
| philjohn wrote:
| They can - but that's a higher barrier than "Pay $35".
| simonh wrote:
| It can be both true that they have potential privacy
| problems with a product, and that they have given up
| dozens of billions in potential revenue due to privacy
| concerns.
| threeseed wrote:
| This position doesn't even make any sense.
|
| - Google has a monopoly on ads on Google Search.
|
| - Facebook has a monopoly on ads on Facebook, Instagram etc.
|
| - Apple has a monopoly on ads on App Store, News+ etc.
|
| Every company has a monopoly on ads on their own properties.
| jensensbutton wrote:
| The issue is Apple considers anything running on an iphone
| to be their property.
| joshstrange wrote:
| They aren't benevolent but there is such a thing as a
| mutually beneficial relationship. I'm fine with people making
| money off advertisement as long as they aren't selling my
| data directly and the number of companies I trust to do that
| is very low. In a lot of ways targeted ads and the like can
| be beneficial, it's about connecting people selling something
| the the people who want/need that thing, the problem is when
| data companies can just hoover up or buy that data and do
| gross things with it.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't trust any company to do it because:
|
| * Even the competent companies have data leaks.
|
| * Even the competent companies will give it up if their
| government comes knocking.
|
| * Even a company which is relatively ethical now might
| someday be taken over by nickle-and-dime management.
| LadyCailin wrote:
| That's fine, but then you shouldn't give your info to
| apple at all. Or google, or facebook, or microsoft, or
| amazon, or ycombinator, for that matter. The fact is,
| unless you want to be a luddite (which you aren't, you're
| here, with an account, at least) then you have to trust
| at least some of these companies. So the question is,
| which ones can generally be trusted, and which can't? I
| personally trust apple more than facebook, ycombinator
| more than amazon, etc. Your ordering might be different,
| and that's fine, but you're drawing a bright line there,
| which only hurts yourself.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > So the question is, which ones can generally be
| trusted, and which can't?
|
| Let's see... pretty much any of the companies listed as
| PRISM-compliant back during the Snowden leaks?
|
| It's fun to be pedantic about security, but Facebook and
| Apple both phone home to the NSA at the end of the day.
| Quibbling about these differences is a zero-sum game,
| since FAANG's lowest common denominator is total
| surveillance.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Not sure if you're aware, but this is the classic tu
| quoque fallacy on display.
| [deleted]
| LtWorf wrote:
| Companies need to increase revenue, so even if they don't
| do it right now there is no guarantee they will not.
| ksec wrote:
| >Apple hasn't been anti-ad
|
| You mean Apple played the tracking and Anti Ads cards with all
| of its PR submarine articles and marketing, how Apple is not an
| Ad company and doesn't sell ad ( not true then and not true
| now, to the point the App Store Head questioned whether putting
| Ads on App Store search would go against Tim Cook's public
| image ). Fuel the public discourse against data collection
| _AND_ Ads, push the narrative on all forms of media ( including
| Social Media ) how every single ad is tracking. ( You may want
| to read Benedict Evan 's piece on Ad and Tracking ) And only to
| backtrack when the whole Ad industry questions Apple's motive
| on why are they all of a sudden Anti Ad? ( Tim Cook, somehow,
| for some reason, had to made a few public statement on how
| Apple is not "Anti-Ads". )
|
| The whole tracking and Ads PR strategy got to the point where
| Ad is evil on HN. It wasn't "Personally I hate ads _but I
| understand their place in the world_ ". It was simply I hate
| Ads. ( People working inside Ad industry rarely comments on HN
| anymore ) And when other players in the industry does
| "targeting" Ads, it is _tracking_. When Apple does it, it is
| "personalised". [1]
|
| I guess the pandemic had people forget how Apple started their
| grand strategy play against Facebook.
|
| I still cant believe nearly 20 years later how Apple has
| outdone Google's "Do No Evil" hypocrisy.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/Carnage4Life/status/1532861766492774400
| CharlesW wrote:
| You're doing what the parent comment says, which is
| conflating Apple's pro-privacy behavior with "anti-
| advertising" behavior. You're far from the only one, to the
| point that folks like Tim Cook regularly talk about this.
|
| _" We're not against digital advertising. I think digital
| advertising is going to thrive in any situation, because more
| and more time is spent online, less and less is spent on
| linear TV. And digital advertising will do well in any
| situation. The question is, do we allow the building of this
| detailed profile to exist without your consent?_
|
| _" We think that some number of people, I don't know how
| many, don't want to be tracked like that. And they should be
| able to say they don't."_1
|
| Apple has never disparaged advertising as a revenue model for
| developers. They even have regular WWDC sessions on the
| topic2. What they _have_ been very vocal about is user
| control.
|
| 1 https://www.thestar.com/business/2021/04/12/apple-ceo-tim-
| co...
|
| 2 https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2022/10038/
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Right, if Apple doesn't let people hyper target it's not
| necessarily a privacy issue. Main issue with Facebook ads
| is when you interact & identify (e.g. click an ad and sign
| up[0]) you are confirming to some advertiser that their
| campaign targeting applies to you.
|
| If this ever changes that will be a big privacy issue.
|
| [0] Advertisers can also identify you if you only click
| (and _don 't_ sign up or otherwise identify yourself) via
| some other data source like their own data, a third party
| service
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Google does not "sell data" directly to anyone, so only the
| 'indirect' part of your comment applies.
|
| Even then, Apple's changes have little impact on the "selling
| data" aspect of things... the real thing that they prevent
| doing is sale attribution, which is critical for advertising
| business and not really all that privacy invasive.
| dwaite wrote:
| Apple has provided frameworks and technology specifically for
| pro-privacy sale attribution, and continues to be invested in
| efforts to support standardization of such techniques.
| philjohn wrote:
| Except they deliberately delay the attribution messaage so
| optimising ads takes longer for buyers, and hence costs
| more money.
| elteto wrote:
| That sounds like a feature to me, the end user.
| dymk wrote:
| Higher costs being passed on to you?
| bee_rider wrote:
| Increases the incentive to look for brands that don't
| waste money on advertising.
| philjohn wrote:
| As someone who has found multiple small businesses that I
| use regularly, and wouldn't have without ads that are
| relevant, I vehemently disagree.
| mehlmao wrote:
| Then you can opt in to sharing data so ads can target you
| more effectively.
| dymk wrote:
| What's your method for discovering those brands?
| visarga wrote:
| You generally don't need those brands. If you do, you
| search for them, filter out spam, then judge.
|
| Or you hear about them organically, by participating in
| specific forums or following well chosen publications.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| I find it hard to believe Google research doesn't move data
| in or out in the form of peering agreements. Same for other
| parts of the org.
| toddmorey wrote:
| Sales attribution is often extremely privacy invasive. That
| data is how it works.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I would take issue with extremely. It is not tracking you
| all over the internet, it's just passing a token with a
| given ad click.
| zerohp wrote:
| Sale attribution wasn't critical before the internet.
| eli wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_mix_modeling got
| big in the 1980s. It's always been pretty important for
| marketers to know what channels work and what ones don't.
|
| Mail order ads used to list different PO Boxes so they
| could track sales attribution.
| dymk wrote:
| Motor vehicles weren't critical before the invention of the
| internal combustion engine
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Right, but it's the reason on-line advertising is
| efficient.
| halostatue wrote:
| I would correct that to "it's the reason on-line
| advertising is believed to be efficient."
|
| I've been seeing reporting over the last several years
| that suggests that a lot of the belief in sales
| attribution to ads or even specific interactions on-line
| are tenuous at best.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Pretty easy to prove this to be false with elementary A/B
| testing.
| w1nk wrote:
| For big organizations that have the capacity and data,
| online advertising becomes a ROI optimization game, and
| one that they perform quite well at.
|
| For a random business that wants to advertise online,
| without the infrastructure and data capability to back
| it, they will struggle to compete unless they exist in a
| segment full of similar peers. When the former happens,
| we see articles about how PPC doesn't actually work, etc.
|
| Reality is that it takes engineering work and
| infrastructure, coupled with some data capabilities to
| unlock real value in the online advertising space.
|
| As noted, online advertising brought all sorts of insight
| and visibility over traditional 'offline' marketing
| channels, but with that comes more savvy competitors that
| will do all the data things you're not.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Many platforms, such as Google, make A/B testing
| attribution (ie. incrementality measurements) really easy
| to perform.
| fariszr wrote:
| Apple is better than other big tech for sure, but don't let
| them fool you into believing they actually care about your
| privacy, because they don't, and they often use privacy as a an
| anti-competion weapon.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r38Epj6ldKU
| spideymans wrote:
| Breaking new: capitalistic companies are capitalistic. I
| don't give a shit as long as their corporate interests
| reasonably align with my own
| bombcar wrote:
| I'm a bit of cynic and I think part of Apple's _privacy push_
| is that they see the writing on the wall - advertising is _way
| less valuable_ than the current customers of advertising think
| it is, and by removing a bunch of the "targetability" of said
| advertising they can get closer to the more profitable
| advertising of yore (where you couldn't directly track all
| metrics all the time).
| avalys wrote:
| Have you ever run a business that relied on advertising to
| drive revenue or are you just relying on what you've read
| online?
|
| Anyone running a small business in a niche space knows that
| targeted advertising works.
|
| The other aspect of it is that targeted advertising allows
| you to make money from niche advertisers even if you operate
| a general-interest website.
| threeseed wrote:
| > Anyone running a small business in a niche space knows
| that targeted advertising works.
|
| My partner runs a small business in a niche space and
| spends a million/year on ads.
|
| She doesn't need customers to be tracked across sites or
| long term information maintained about their interests or
| behaviour. She really just needs to sell ads via (a) direct
| searches and (b) retargeting people who have visited her
| own site.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| How does she know whether the ads are working for her
| business?
|
| Also retargeting is not possible with Apple's changes.
| avalys wrote:
| What do you think is the practical difference between
| "track[ing] across sites" and "information maintained
| about their interests and behavior", and "retargeting
| people who have visited her own site"?
| Spivak wrote:
| "We just attach a beacon to everyone who visits our site
| so that when they walk in front of billboards our ad is
| shown but we're not like _trackkking_ users.
| dwaite wrote:
| Third party general interest websites generally don't care
| where their advertising dollars come from, which is why
| they outsourced it all in the first place.
|
| If anything, they would probably prefer advertisements at
| least tangentially related to the content so that their
| readers don't get creeped out by some Amazon product
| following them around the internet.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _If anything, they would probably prefer advertisements
| at least tangentially related to the content so that
| their readers don't get creeped out by some Amazon
| product following them around the internet_
|
| Which is what Google initially promised web site owners:
| Targeted advertising. That's why it's called Google Ad
| _Sense_. Because, thanks to Google 's crawling ability,
| it was supposed to sense the content of the page and
| place appropriate ads there.
|
| Only later, as Google's managers became more greedy, did
| it become ads for forklifts on granny's sausage-making
| recipe page because must... wring... every... last...
| penny... for... rhetorical... shareholders... Gah!
| avalys wrote:
| Right, but they care about how much advertising dollars
| they make, and they can make more dollars if the pool of
| possible advertisers is larger.
| rchaud wrote:
| Third party websites can more or less only serve Google
| ads, or from some tiny competitor like Carbon Ads.
|
| Every other ad product is walled-garden specific.
| Facebook ads are shown only on on Facebook properties.
| Same with Twitter, Amazon and Apple. You may see ads for
| these companies on third party sites, but they are being
| served via Google Ads.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Anyone who is seriously in the advertising game knows how to
| measure the incrementality of their advertising spend.
|
| There isn't some vast conspiracy of people paying way too
| much for useless advertising. Advertising works, this is why
| people pay for it.
|
| Apple's changes don't really prevent people from targeting
| onsite ads... what they do block is the experiments
| advertisers do to see if their ads are working (ie. on-
| platform incrementality studies).
| rchaud wrote:
| At HN, only a few things are certain. Death, taxes, and
| advertisers and MBAs colluding to ruin every company.
| mgh2 wrote:
| Advertising itself is not necessarily bad, but it is _how_ it
| is done. All FAANGs are growing their shares of the pie.
|
| It is time for someone to do it right. Abusers have lived for
| too long, we need someone to beat them at their own game. Apple
| is rightly positioned to do so.
| rchaud wrote:
| Apple is positioned to expand their ads business and take
| market share from their competitors. "Doing it right" doesn't
| have a good enough ROI, especially in tech.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| > Advertising itself is not necessarily bad, but it is how it
| is done
|
| As someone who worked in it for 7 years, nah it's all bad.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| That's like saying that money is all bad. Technically true,
| but good luck with that maximalist position.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Apple managed to make the Macintosh, the iPod, the iPhone
| and iPad without an advertising business so yeah being
| maximalist and saying "This industry has nothing of value
| to add to our company" can result in great things.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Unsolicited advertising is necessarily bad. It is an invasion
| of cognitive space for financial exploitation of the victim.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| How do you think Apple can "do advertising" right?
| Advertising by its very nature is abusive to users:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_theft.
|
| Maybe they should make all advertising (not just targeted)
| opt-in like they did with the advertising ID! I'm sure plenty
| of users will click allow.
| amelius wrote:
| Interesting. If something as abstract as "intellectual
| property" can be a thing, then surely so can "attention
| theft".
| avalys wrote:
| The fact that someone has made this claim and given a name
| to the concept doesn't make it valid.
| mgh2 wrote:
| The article doesn't make it clear whether this will be
| applied to the App Store only.
|
| If this is the case, apps are not a life-necessity in the
| information era - unlike information (search), shopping
| (e-commerce), or communication (social media).
|
| They do not intrude our everyday living unless we
| _intentionally_ look for it. Every other kind of
| advertising does so and thus are open to abuse.
| howinteresting wrote:
| Banking apps (for example) are absolutely a necessity.
| This is kind of a silly distinction to draw.
|
| My take is that either all advertising is bad or none is.
| That's why I use Linux, which has fewer ads (zero) than
| any other OS.
| mgh2 wrote:
| You can go to your local bank or use the desktop app
| instead.
|
| How do you deter off bad/unethical advertising if
| everyone is subjective to it anyways?
|
| Like almost any tool, you have both bad and good actors.
|
| The _how_ matters https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/the%20end%20justi....
| [deleted]
| SergeAx wrote:
| I don't know about you, but for me it was obvious from day one.
| Amassing a huge heap of personal data, bar access to it for all
| competitors and not to exploit it themselves means to leave a
| tremendous pile of cache on the table. Shareholders won't
| understand that. Apple just badly needs revenue to justify its'
| 10 years exponential growth.
| 6841iam wrote:
| Listen to Mike Munger on Econtalk
|
| https://www.econtalk.org/michael-munger-on-antitrust/
| [deleted]
| avalys wrote:
| Apple is using their dominant (monopoly) position in mobile
| devices to shut down competitors in another industry
| (advertising) in order to drive growth in their own advertising
| platform, got it.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Apple is using their dominant (monopoly) position in mobile
| devices to shut down competitors..._
|
| Except that Apple not only hasn't done that, but has created ad
| network APIs and processes to support "competitors".
|
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/skadnetwo...
|
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/skadnetwo...
| [deleted]
| aerique wrote:
| Oh you sweet summer child.
| tl wrote:
| Here's an exhaustive list of companies running ads in the
| Settings app:
|
| 1. Apple - examples include Apple Arcade, AppleCare+,
| Fitness+
|
| I was so shocked when I saw an ad _in Settings_ I took a
| screenshot. It 's dated December 8th, 2020. Prosecution of
| Apple for abuse should have started at least that long ago.
| spicybright wrote:
| I 100% believe that's the case, but I'm curious about the
| details.
|
| I think integration with a specific product is ok with
| branding and a link to their website. Like you'd have
| FitBit, Nike+, or whatever under a fitness tab in settings.
|
| But it sounds closer to the banner ads on the bottom of the
| screen like a lot of free android apps do.
|
| How do they display the ads?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > How do they display the ads?
|
| It's not "ads" per se, but when you are eligible for a
| promotion such as free Apple TV+, Music, etc - there's an
| option all the way at the top that appears. You can open
| them and press "decline" and that particular promotion
| goes away.
|
| Not great (especially considering the services are shit),
| but very tame compared to the advertising you usually
| see.
| ajross wrote:
| They certainly haven't done it yet, though some things viewed
| in this perspective seem on the spectrum. The iOS 14 change
| of tracking preferences to opt-in absolutely put a knife in
| Meta's advertising business.
|
| And, sure, it can be viewed as a privacy feature, and that's
| great. So what happens next year when Apple rolls out their
| own user-targetted ad system based on the same tracking data
| they disallowed to competitors?
|
| It's a slippery slope for sure. Apple deserves the benefit of
| the doubt, but I don't see how anyone would look at this as
| good news.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Apple deserves the benefit of the doubt_
|
| No trillion dollar corporation deserves the benefit of the
| doubt, including Apple.
| aorloff wrote:
| Apple doesn't have to even roll out a user-targeted ad
| system.
|
| All they have to do is offer a buying platform where you
| can track conversion on Apple devices and software better.
| In other words, they don't have to offer more user-level
| accuracy to the end buyer, they simply need to measure
| campaigns more accurately on iOS (a bit of a simplification
| but not much).
|
| That alone will make their DSP a dominant player in the
| industry.
| macintux wrote:
| Under what definition of monopoly does Apple possess one? Even
| in their best market, the U.S., iPhone holds just a smidge over
| 50%.
| cma wrote:
| They have a clear monopoly in the high-end segment. "Intense
| competition" with Google has resulted in... few changes to
| app store cuts in 12+ years.
| eddieroger wrote:
| Monopoly means lack of competition, not lack of consumer
| choice. High end consumers prefer Apple devices, but
| nothing stops them or anyone from going out to buy any
| Android device they want, or any PC they want.
| cma wrote:
| Sure there is, Apple has done the same kind of bundling
| Microsoft got busted for. Switch from Safari to Firefox
| on your desktop and now your browser won't sync tabs to
| your phone unless you use the fake webkit-in-sheeps-
| clothing version of Firefox that Apple has mandated and
| maintains insane control over (no real ad blockers, only
| limited ones).
| macintux wrote:
| ...when Microsoft held, what, a 90% market share?
| cma wrote:
| What's Apple's dollar share of the market? The low end
| isn't as relevant on a per device level to the market.
| threeseed wrote:
| I'm confused what your problem is here.
|
| You use Firefox on your desktop and you're upset at Apple
| because you need to use Firefox on your mobile in order
| for tabs etc to sync.
|
| Are you also upset at Apple for needing to use Lightroom
| on your desktop and mobile for photos to sync ?
| sovnade wrote:
| Holding a monopoly and engaging in anti-competitive
| behavior are entirely different.
|
| The app store being closed and not allowing 3rd party
| stores would be considered anti-competitive. They have a
| 100% monopoly on the ios application market.
|
| I don't think they're doing much anti-competitive in the
| phone hardware space though.
| threeseed wrote:
| Samsung and Google are both very popular competitors in the
| high-end segment.
|
| This idea that Apple has a monopoly is ridiculous.
| summerlight wrote:
| We have a good old fashioned concept of "relevant market".
|
| > A relevant product market comprises all those products
| and/or services which are regarded as interchangeable or
| substitutable by the consumer by reason of the products'
| characteristics, their prices and their intended use.
|
| https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
| content/EN/TXT/?uri=LEGISSUM...
|
| Are we able to substitute browser engine or app store in iOS?
| If not, then its app store itself can make of a single
| relevant market. This is so obvious to the level that even
| Apple knows they cannot avoid, so they're trying to make an
| argument that app store and browser engine are technically
| inseparable system service, not an interchangable product. (I
| strongly suspect that this is one of the reasons why we
| cannot get standard 4~6 weeks browser updates for Safari,
| decoupled from OS updates) EU doesn't seem to be very happy
| with that argument so they passed the Digital Market Act in
| response. And US is preparing a bipartisan bill similar to
| DMA as well.
|
| Yeah, I know the actual process for defining market is much
| more complicated but this is the basic idea. Antitrust
| investigation is a largely economical, data driven process
| and you cannot simply say "Even in their best market, the
| U.S., iPhone holds just a smidge over 50%". I won't assert
| they're in a monopolistic position, but many regulators
| (especially in EU) believe in that.
| heisenbit wrote:
| Profits. Apple has by far the lion share of profits and is
| able to leverage them to muscle into businesses. As iPhones
| are the premium devices one can reasonably argue Apple has a
| near monopoly of access to affluent eyeballs.
|
| Apple, please listen. These platform dreams of controlling
| supply, demand and the underlying tech platform are
| dangerous. Likely to fail or if you succeed it will run anti-
| trust problems. But your biggest risk is distraction. The
| shiny new kids on block wagging the core business to the
| detriment of customers and shareholders.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| profits is a definition of monopoly ?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Under what definition of monopoly does Apple possess one?
|
| Market power is defined by pricing power (empirical absence
| of substitution effect), not share of some descriptive market
| (where you could always get any result you wanted just by
| changing the way you divide market descriptions.)
| tshaddox wrote:
| Then say market power instead of monopoly and no one will
| ever dispute that. Of course Apple can and does set the
| price of its products above their marginal cost. Doesn't
| have quite the ring to it as "monopoly" though.
| parkingrift wrote:
| That might be your definition, but it is absolutely not the
| definition used in legal proceedings to determine
| monopolistic behavior.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Correct, the legal interpretation of a monopoly is much
| more vague and open to interpretation.
| celeritascelery wrote:
| That isn't the definition of monopoly as stated by
| Wikipedia[1]: "a market with the "absence of competition",
| creating a situation where a specific person or enterprise
| is the only supplier of a particular thing." I think
| calling them a monopoly is a real stretch.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
| Apocryphon wrote:
| That is how the FTC defines one.
|
| > Courts do not require a literal monopoly before
| applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used
| as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable
| market power -- that is, the long term ability to raise
| price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is
| used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and
| durable market power. Courts look at the firm's market
| share, but typically do not find monopoly power if the
| firm (or a group of firms acting in concert) has less
| than 50 percent of the sales of a particular product or
| service within a certain geographic area. Some courts
| have required much higher percentages. In addition, that
| leading position must be sustainable over time: if
| competitive forces or the entry of new firms could
| discipline the conduct of the leading firm, courts are
| unlikely to find that the firm has lasting market power.
|
| > Obtaining a monopoly by superior products, innovation,
| or business acumen is legal; however, the same result
| achieved by exclusionary or predatory acts may raise
| antitrust concerns.
|
| https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-
| guidance/gui...
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| ok but you quote
|
| >Courts look at the firm's market share, but typically do
| not find monopoly power if the firm (or a group of firms
| acting in concert) has less than 50 percent of the sales
| of a particular product or service within a certain
| geographic area. Some courts have required much higher
| percentages.
|
| which seems to lend real credence to the argument that
| Apple would (most likely) not be understood as a monopoly
| in the courts. Sure it could happen, but lots of unlikely
| things can happen that still say won't happen because of
| how humans communicate.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Apple has 60% of the mobile OS market share in the US,
| and even more when it comes to mobile app distribution.
| Google has 40%, both in effect are a duopoly.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| If there's anything that's an industry outlier, it's a
| FAANG, not to mention the _most profitable company in the
| history of the world since the Dutch East India Company_.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > which seems to lend real credence to the argument that
| Apple would (most likely) not be understood as a monopoly
| in the courts
|
| The issue isn't marketshare, the issue is defining the
| market within which marketshare is looked at. If you
| don't use some consistent objective defenition of market
| boundaries, you can pick or choose any result you want by
| how you describe the market applicable to any given case.
|
| While it isn't perfect, "the space within which consumer
| substitution in response to changes like pricing occurs
| from the given good or service" is a rough description of
| what market boundary determination in US
| antitrust/competition law aims at.
|
| It's also, for obvious reasons, often the most
| contentious issue in antitrust cases, with a whole lot of
| market data thrown up by every interested party aimed at
| proving what the right market boundary is. If you just
| assume the boundary is some popular market description
| without interrogating whether consumer substitution for
| the given product really occurs across that whole
| descriptive market space (and, on the other side, _only_
| within that space), you are really just skipping over the
| most important question in antitrust.
| xphos wrote:
| I mean they are the only person who can legally provide
| adds and payment services on iPhones. Apple exhibits a
| huge amount of control over there platform in name of
| defending there customers but give little choice to the
| customer in how that's delivered
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > That isn't the definition of monopoly as stated by
| Wikipedia[1]: "a market with the "absence of
| competition",
|
| It exactly is, if you further define "market" empirically
| by consumer behavior demonstrating products actually
| compete with each other rather than analytically based on
| some abstract comparison of features that make you think
| they should.
| rchaud wrote:
| They don't allow alternative app stores. Android has several,
| I pretty much get all my apps via F-Droid for example.
| heartbreak wrote:
| Buying an iPhone is like buying a Costco membership. The
| argument is that you buy the device for the app ecosystem.
| If you want a different app ecosystem, you buy a different
| device.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Buying a Costco membership doesn't mean you can only shop
| at Costco though. If Wal-Mart has a better price on X or
| if Mom and Pop shop has item Y that Costco doesn't carry
| you can still buy them.
| tshaddox wrote:
| And buying an iPhone doesn't mean you can't also buy an
| Android phone. The analogy you're looking for is that
| Costco does not indiscriminately allow all sellers to
| sell products at a Costco warehouse.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I mean, that is what Apple wants to sell you, but that's
| really no different than Ford saying "You have to buy
| Ford gas and tires because this is a Ford ecosystem", in
| which we've told the car companies to screw right off,
| though this is coming back with electric vehicles in a
| bad way.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Is it different than video game consoles going to great
| lengths to prevent their hardware from running
| unauthorized software?
| pixl97 wrote:
| This is something that is debated quite often.
|
| One of the other arguments here is that when it comes to
| games I can get a Nintendo, or an Xbox, or a PS5, or a PC
| that I can run Windows/Linux games on.
|
| When it comes to phones we pretty much have a duopoly
| which means both groups can find it easy to manipulate
| the market to higher prices without indirect (illegal)
| signalling.
|
| Luckily it looks like the EU is telling Apple to suck it
| and they'll have to open up app stores on their phones.
| Melatonic wrote:
| The monopoly is the app store on existing iphones and ipads -
| not the device itself. Once you buy something with iOS you
| are locked into their store.
| [deleted]
| robbiep wrote:
| IPhone is ~56% in australia. It's 70% in Japan.
| jiscariot wrote:
| But they're the good guys(TM), so we probably won't see NYT hit
| pieces every other week.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| The problem becomes when people buy the phone specifically
| because they hate the advertising industry, and Apple is the
| only player attempting to make the situation a little better.
| [deleted]
| madrox wrote:
| There are two outcomes:
|
| 1. It isn't terribly successful and dies a quiet death as do a
| lot of non-consumer Apple initiatives
|
| 2. It's wildly successful and Apple shifts its focus to the
| pursuit of ad revenue...which will gradually erode privacy
| controls and the pristine experience Apple is known for.
|
| This may sound like hyperbole, but if this takes off, then we'll
| look back on this as where it all went wrong for Apple.
| [deleted]
| seydor wrote:
| > Whoever gets the job will be asked to "drive the design of the
| most privacy-forward, sophisticated demand side platform
| possible," per the post.
|
| Why would someone who can do that go to apple, instead of
| launching her own company? Has it become impossible to build new
| things on the internet independently now?
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