Apple is building a demand-side platform
digiday.com
digiday.com
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...
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
No trillion dollar corporation deserves the benefit of the doubt, including Apple.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/09/09/apple-a...
[2] https://www.computerworld.com/article/3646190/apple-is-sneak...
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.)
> 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...
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.
> 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.
We just had a real judge say that definition is completely false in the Epic vs Apple case.
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.
This idea that Apple has a monopoly is ridiculous.
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.
Apple doesn't need to scrub the internet for information to show you ads in the App Store - they have your authenticated account where you have bought other apps. Similarly, Google doesn't need to build a clandestine profile for you if they have your Youtube and search history going back to when you created your gmail account.
Google and Apple typically have little desire to share any of that information with third parties (in either direction). Without a need to implement third-party tracking, features like Hide My Email don't really affect them. However, thats not a privileged position in the operating system (Google doesn't really have such a position on iOS). Thats just a strong relationship with the person involved - something both companies have been establishing for decades.
Both companies are also heavily invested in future tech where ad decisions being based on local data rather than sharing that data to make a decision on a server, and in conversions being tracked by an anonymized process.
But this means that you are baking a certain amount of business logic into the browser. So, in addition to advertising providers needing to do substantial work to leverage these new features, they also might have a mismatch between what their product does today and the proposed browser schemes.
In addition to making this a remarkably complex technical problem, it is also why Google's attempts to block third party cookies has been held up by regulators for years.
If people are opting out of that tracking, then maybe those businesses were built on customer ignorance to begin with.
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.
Mid 2021, Google forcefully replaced the launcher/home screen for all android TV devices, such that the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the screen is taken up by an ad. You can't disable it, you can't remove it, there is _nothing_ you can do about it. Every time you use this home theatre device, the first thing you're presented with is an ad. I paid for that device and the software on it. I paid for youtube premium to avoid ads. I paid for google drive space to store my data. It's not like I was getting a free lunch.
I've got an Apple TV now, and an iPhone as well - replaced my OnePlus.
I use chrome for work unfortunately, yesterday I was _delighted_ to see that Google had very helpfully placed an add for their new wireless earphones on my new tab page. Very cool.
I can’t vouch for their iOS browser (yet) but I’ve been using their Mac browser and it’s been pleasant.
As I'm sure you know, Android 13 does more here...
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.
The only stations that were add free were the same premium channels that you have today like HBO.
Some of the earliest cable “superstations” were just rebroadcast of local channels with ads like TBS and WGzn.
It is already a pain point for apps, because they tend to assume that it is fine to make the same shitty app for both platforms. Apple really should be way more strict with the quality of apps they approve.
Even when I'm in low or no-data modes (like on a plane).
Every time that screen pops up I lose a little more sanity.
- 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/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Garc%C3%ADa_Mart%C3%ADnez_%28author%29There are also supply-side platforms (SSP) where media companies sell space to advertisers. In this case the ad inventory is already there on the platform looking for places to get deployed.
Can you give examples of each?
Thanks.
The stack can get a bit convoluted.
If you want a high signal overview to various components of the ecosystem, I often point people to the Jounce "little black book" series as I find it does a decent job of summarizing the components and their use, as well as how data flows between and within them.
Google search is a place where ads shown along with Search results.
Do you have a credible basis for this, or is this pure conjecture?
My understanding from reading the Wikipedia article[1] is that it’s a marketing-specific suite for analytics and competitive ad-buying. As a layperson, I’m understanding it as something like a bidding system for ad space, combined with analytics specifically tailored to that, and designed to be highly interactive/fast paced. Or, a private stock exchange/poker table where the stakes are ad-viewing eyeballs/equivalent.
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.
This is a needlessly binary take. When most people hear privacy, they really just want to stop seeing creepy personalized ads courtesy of Google, Facebook, and Amazon. The "Apple" solution is not one of 'complete' privacy, but one where the user knows exactly who and what is using their data, assuming you completely buy into their ecosystem (including iCloud+).
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.
I doubt that. He will use his billions to get privacy for himself while the users will be used for profits.
Privacy is not a luxury that can be offered by a US-based company, especially not at that scale.
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.
Tim Cook similarly is a career suit who happens to be gay. He's not going to choose advocacy over fiduciary duties.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In rough Apple parlance, the base level of privacy means understanding where your personal information is going and being able to consent or reject access and sharing of personal information.
If Apple built an advertising platform that made entirely local decisions on what ads to show, anonymized information on ad display and anonymized attribution, that consent prompt would be to either have advertisements chosen locally based on device-held information, or have advertisements chosen solely based on context.
I'm guessing it will be a more privacy focused platform.
Putting users first by removing headphone jacks?
Putting users first by crippling competing web browsers on iOS?
Apple has traditionally removed things before other companies did (both the floppy and optical drive). This angers some people, which is understandable, but others don't mind and again, it is a trade of for a thinner laptop.
Removing the headphone jack is also a trade of: recent iPhones have survived extended stays in water, which is just not possible if there is a headphone jack.
Your preferences may be different, in which case their products aren't for you.
As for crippling competing web browsers on IOS, you can download chrome and firefox from their app store. They aren't crippled in any way except that they have to use the same browser engine apple uses. Which has two effects: random websites don't get to ask me if they want to send me notifications and it prevents Chrome from completely taking over the internet.
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.
I can happily re-enable the privacy-destroying qualities of web browsing by using Chrome on iOS, thank you very much.
They won't play because all browsers on iOS use webkit, and webkit doesn't support WebM. Whereas chrome and firefox on android both support it.
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.
Oh, you can disable that crap for non apple apps. But Apple doesn't let you do it for theirs.
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.
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.
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
"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...
Apple's pro-privacy behaviour was their message, explicitly speaking. But ultimately the market received it as "anti-advertising". The best of marketing isn't telling you what to think, ( pro-privacy ) but leads you what to think ( anti-advertising ). And Apple was happy to play along with it.
They were absolutely against advertising, or more precisely Facebook's advertising revenue.
The two example you show were already well pass 2020. As I said Tim Cook had to make a few statement about how they are not anti Advertising cough. after the damage was done. And only after the Ad industry were furious.
I hear what you're saying — privacy protections impact anti-privacy business models, absolutely — but I'd argue that it's not "anti-advertising" in the sense that more digital advertising dollars are being spent to target iOS users in 2022 vs. 2021.
> And only after the Ad industry were furious.
It's ad networks' fiduciary duty to hate this. My response to them: Suck an egg.
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
Not that I mind them fucking with advertisers, but let's not pretend Apple is benevolent here.
* 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.
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.
- 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.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/skadnetwo...
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/storekit/skadnetwo...
It’s but one of many subjective takes by someone who earns through clicks, grabbing attention, instigating circular discourse online.
I have no obligation to support this author’s position, OR Apple’s rhetoric. I judge on the technical implementation; Apple earns through hardware sales and fees for services charged directly to service users.
Whether you agree with the price they set for those things is irrelevant; technically speaking the bulk of their revenue comes from hardware sales and direct charges for services.
Their competitors could do that too. They could charge for a phone and take a cut for app distribution, sell storage services. They don’t, because they don’t want to compete with Apple; they want the public and courts to force Apple to change.
That they went a different way of generating revenue and it bit them in the ass is not Apple's problem. Those businesses made their choices.
That’s how it’s supposed to work. All this rhetoric about those “poor” wealthy businesses being screwed by Apple are actually mad they picked the wrong path to revenue.
All the whining about whose sports team is best belittles the tremendous disservice these profit seeking monsters have done throughout the advent of true portable computing.
Personally I don't think it's a solvable problem, and they shouldn't exist at all.
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.
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.
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.
Mail order ads used to list different PO Boxes so they could track sales attribution.
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.
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.
By and large, people don’t understand statistics (I mostly include myself in that).
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.
So you can use Googles platforms to gather data, but you won't be getting what Google has.
So in that respect, I can agree.
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.
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.
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.
Which is what Google initially promised web site owners: Targeted advertising. That's why it's called Google AdSense. 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!
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.
Also retargeting is not possible with Apple's changes.
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).
> 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.
of course they do it because they care about your privacy, and not for their revenue. Of course.
Welcome to the real world where 2 things can be true at the same time: Apple cares about profits and Apple cares about privacy.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
With or without ads in the app store, the problem about being out marketed exists outside the app store.
What this is merely apple’s privacy-protecting solution for what is seen inside the app store.
Im yet to see an argument which isn’t just some thinly veiled distaste for apple.
Hate apple all you like, but actually challenge the conversation with a valid argument.
> Improve the UX which they do regularly and introduce ads which developers have been screaming for.
If ads can be better, then developers will like them. But I question the supposition that developers have been screaming for ads, given that the status quo with App Store ads is situations like this:
https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/1270568780712706049
https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/1197642397854777344
https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/1271154427034918912
Granted, that's from two years ago, and any new ads rollouts would presumably be of greater quality. It's just that track record doesn't inspire a lot of confidence, and really throws into question the idea that developers really want ads. How do you prevent the big players with the biggest marketing budgets from buying up all of the space? I'm not going to pre-judge the feature, but I do believe some healthy skepticism is warranted.
If App Store ads follow even a modicum of some of these feature requests, then perhaps they will really be what developers want.
https://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/1271185023744397312
Edit: an example from six months ago
https://twitter.com/tgrapperon/status/1492460177001431042
https://twitter.com/miguelkennedy/status/1492529534729654274
What I’ve said, all along: It’s a privacy preserving ad product, an already announced solution to not being able to feature events, upgrades, expansions which currently doesn’t exist.
Getting caught into an irrelevant philosophical debate on the virtue of ads does reveal your bias, regardless of who you say you are.
If you are unwilling to accept the experiences of developers who are out there, and claim that developers have been clamoring for ads without showing evidence, and discount evidence clearly presented to you, then it seems like you have made up your mind and there is a deadlock.
> Getting caught into an irrelevant philosophical debate on the virtue of ads
I have not been caught into any of that. I am simply expressing that the ads that have been present when it comes to exact search results matching have led to a subpar UX, as seen by many, and this is a known situation, which you are unwilling to accept. Thus we are at an impasse, so I am willing to table this conversation until the actual ad product is revealed and in public. That said, a willingness to reject evidence out of hand is clearly representative of bias. And that's absolutely fine! Human beings are all inherently biased. We are not the machines that we are talking about. We ought to recognize our biases, accept them for what they are, and transcend them.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32371796
I just tried it out myself and even though the search bar suggests "papers please" as a query, the results truly do not immediately yield the popular game with that title.
If Apple wants to offer ads, perhaps that will make up for the shoddy search UX. But it seems like a poorer solution than simply improving App Store search functionality.
No. Developers are forced to only use Apple ads, as any possible competing ads have been completely demolished. Instead of having a market of possible partners Apple is forcing it to only be them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
As someone who worked in it for 7 years, nah it's all bad.
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.
When you start digging into it, it's actually a pretty complex and interesting topic. Lots of engineering and infra/scalability problems to tackle.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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”….
I wonder if this is to offer a free tier of AppleTV and Apple Music. whole DSP would not really be required if it was just for something like the App Store. Typically a DSP is for something like TV and radio.
Since we're living a dumb client-terminal life now anyway, only nobody realizes it.
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...
There's also degoogled Android options like GrapheneOS.
Both of these give you better privacy options than Android or iOS.
Just stick to what you do best. Let Google and social networks poison our minds with ads.
This video might help. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r38Epj6ldKU
> 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?
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.
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.
How did the toxic apocalypse of ubiquitous advertising become so normal? I can only blame the slowly boiled frog.
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.
Pretty sure they just made this phrase up for the article.
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.
- 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.
For example FB has an sdk that you can install in your app and then follow your user across the internet and serve ads to them.
Apple could do the same.
Not sure how privacy would come in.
You can clearly find the term almost immediately defined here for example https://bfy.tw/TOgI
Like any basic search will do so.
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.
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.
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.