The difference is that Big Tobacco was regulated by the government. Apple is a competitor to Facebook. Apples ads are not effected by this[0].
[0]https://mobiledevmemo.com/apple-privileges-its-own-ad-networ...
[0]https://mobiledevmemo.com/apple-privileges-its-own-ad-networ...
Apple's ad system is subject to the same rules. The link you are posting is outdated - since last year's iOS 14.5 the SKAdNetwork has been extended to provide the full API.
This does not appear to be true, given that they were asked this question by the FT and refused to answer.
See: https://www.ft.com/content/074b881f-a931-4986-888e-2ac53e286...
Money quote (which to be fair, was not too an FT journalist):
“Apple was unable to validate for us that Apple’s solutions are compliant with Apple’s policy,” he said. “Despite multiple requests and trying to get them to confirm that their products are compliant with their own solutions, we were unable to get there.”
Seriously though, what newspaper(s) would you honestly be willing to spend ad dollars with (and for what products) thinking that this would be a good investment? Geritol? Now, if your suggestion is buying newspaper ads would then get ads in their digital versions as well, then maybe. However, seems to me that most viewers of news sites are from link aggregators more than just readers of a website. Not sure how that would affect ad placement.
Your are correct if you are using over the air TV or Kodi and if you use FOSS podcast players such as Antennapod or Podverse.
Everything is moving this way. It's only a natural desire for those spending money on advertsing to want to know if the money is being spent effectively, or if they'd be just as well off lighting cigars with $100 bills.
The lure of targeting, tracking (ad effectiveness, not people per se), etc is just too inticing for those non-techies that haven't pulled back the curtain to see that the all powerful wizard isn't wearing any clothes (to mix metaphors). Those of a certain age that depended on Nielsen ratings and what not buying TV/Radio ad time were always very interested in knowing how effective the ad buy really was. Then, the digital ads folks come along telling them they can hit exactly the demo they want to target and then show click through rates, etc. It's like a dream come true with a cherry on top under a rainbow with the leprechaun delivering a pot of gold riding on the unicorn's back. They all bit hard hook,line,and sinker.
Spotify exclusives are non pre podcasts than pages that were hosted on AOL.
My smart tv isn’t connected to the internet after registering it. I have an AppleTV connected.
I think podcast has outgrown that definition some time ago.
But Apple doesn’t make money by advertising based on the podcast you listen to. I doubt they make any real money on their new podcast subscription service. Apple doesn’t even hosts podcasts. They just index RSS feeds. The podcast directory API has been freely available for over a decade and is used by third party podcast players.
Unlike Spotify, you can subscribe to a podcast feed that isn’t in the directory.
Small businesses are willing to give more money per ad campaign if they know they’ll get clickthru on a specific target market. These same small businesses don’t have the money to run long ad campaigns which would result in less clicks.
On the other hand, misinformation and propaganda also work without tracking, just less efficiently.
Wi'll have to strike a balance somewhere.
I strongly suspect that might be the case. I also believe that social networks could - in theory - create effective advertising possibilities without the need to target user properties.
Take my experience with Instagram. When I am looking at mostly typography related posts, it tends to work well if they show me paid ads for interesting fonts. But when they show these to me, when I am looking at gardening content, I tend to be irritated and ignore them.
I know - I am talking anecdata here - but maybe there could be a way to not target users, but target topics and hit the users that move through these topics (so to speak).
One problem, though, I see with this approach is when you want to create a longing in somebody who never before had the idea that he/she would like to have a cool new font (to stay with my example). Or the next "hot" stuff from some global brand (or what they believe that i should want to feel cool).
But as said - I can't find the studies I seem to remember right now on the effectiveness of context based advertising compared to personalized advertising. So I am not sure if this was just my imagination.
The vast majority of people love ad supported services. They prefer free/low cost to expensive and express this preference regularly. They don't think advertising is evil, and in fact many people voluntarily wear adverts on their own clothes.
Online advertising pays for a massive amount of stuff. If it dies, then the outcome is not "everything stays the same but somehow better". The outcome is that a lot of services we take for granted go away and either don't come back at all, or come back far worse because their market is now much smaller and only rich people pay for it.
To put this in perspective, when I worked at Google they had a prototype internal service that let you "buy" your way out of seeing ads by bidding against yourself in the auction. The idea was to allow people to pay for an ad-free internet, but without making users freeloaders on the services they used (that's ad blocking and exists already). I thought, what a great idea. I'll sign up. Result: to get rid of a just a fraction of all the ads I was seeing online (my guess, ~20% of ads I saw were served by Google) would have costed $200-$300 per month.
After seeing the scale at which advertisers were subsidizing my online experience, I lost interest, as did everyone else. Paying 4x as much as my entire normal internet bill just to see fewer ads, not even get ridding of all of them, just wasn't worth it.
The reality is that the public aren't demanding restrictions on online advertising. They don't care. They like free stuff and they've got nothing against advertisers. This is a war being waged for political and commercial reasons, dressed up as consumer protection, and if/when it actually starts to bite in visible ways, a whole lot of people are going to be mighty shocked at how upset the public will get.
This eliminates all the redundant transportation, housing, waste (food, cloths, electronics, equipment)
And the only way to provide is that through tracking (both history and intent).
Selling user data (for ads) IS the problem.
No one would collect and store massive amounts of data if not to make a profit selling it.
They would only collect things that are useful in improving the product.
That kind of tracking IS valuable.
I would be happy to answer questions (within some fairly broad guidelines of proprietary information) in as much detail as anyone would like.
Everything from the technology to the organizational imperatives to the competitive landscape is actually quite complex and nuanced.
I have no ambition of informing folks’ moral judgements (I have my own), but on average it’s probably better if moral judgements are informed by detailed understanding.
But if your product is serving ads then collecting data for ads is improving your product
In this case, I would say FB is more in the side of the angels than Google. People knowingly give FB information about them
They had this mobile advertising platform then closed it, or reduced it to the ads GP mentioned.
When you're "America's Computer" with a 51+% entrenchment, you shouldn't be able to govern commerce. You're a common carrier at that point.
The DOJ better be watching. This behavior makes 90's Microsoft look absolutely tame by comparison. Apple is the new Standard Oil.
I would say FAANG got popular and powerful because regulating them is direct conflict of interest for many politicians.
I don't like the fact that my code is up for review. I don't have the nanny state overseeing my web deploys.
I don't like the fact that the feedback is uneven and arbitrary.
I don't like being forced to give up my own choices for login and contact, essentially ceding my customers to Apple.
I don't like paying thirty percent for being forced to build for a platform I don't even want to be on but have to.
There should have been an open standard for native apps distributed over web. It should have been cross platform, like HTML, so we don't have to build twice or use stupid hacks to share code.
Apple builds hardware people like, but they're monsters.
But Apple seems to be pretty squarely in the: “don’t buy it if you don’t like it” vertex.
I use Apple stuff because the cost/benefit is something I can live with.
But most of my friends and colleagues never touch the stuff: it’s desktop Linux connecting to server Linux. Usually Android phones but some people get Pine or old Nokias or whatever.
Is Apple running some Internet-wide cookie scam that I’m unaware of?
Even more so if they do it with the flip of a switch instead of new and novel products.
Also, it would seem self evident that Apple’s ability to influence Facebook comes from having a novel product, that people like to use compared to the alternatives.
Apple controls 50+% of American computing. At this point it isn't just a "novel product". They own the American internet interface and it takes a nation state level of effort to compete. Facebook can't even keep up.
Android is a fragmented 40% and relies on advertising. Google locks it down so hard with their Play Store Services stranglehold (no YouTube/Maps/Gmail if you disobey), that there's no room for real competition to emerge and make any money doing something unique.
None of this is healthy for the world. Both companies need a hard slap from the DOJ.
Do you have a source for this assertion?
That Apple controls more than 50% of American computing seems, well, a bit on the high side.
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/all/united-s...
OS market share is higher than that as some Mac users will use Chrome or Firefox, but no users of other platforms use Safari.
50% still seems a bit excessive, but no question that Apple is very widely used.
> OS market share is higher than that as some Mac users will use Chrome or Firefox, but no users of other platforms use Safari.
No, and the source you initially provide show this not to be the case: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/all/united-states...
OS marketshare is actually lower than browser marketshare. Mac users using Chrome or Firefox have nothing to do with it, since the heuristic statcounter relies on, the User Agent, contains clear information about which OS is being used.
Wait, what? If you want to say that Apple controls 50% of mobile compute, then I might be willing to go along with that. But the blanket computing alone is laughable.
You've suddenly just ignored all of the data centers in the US that have very little Apple products seeing as Apple doesn't make a server product. Sure some niche data centers have popped up with racks full of Minis, but those are primarily for people making apps for those mobile devices mentioned earlier.
What a strange strange twist of logic.
then
>look at the interface where communication and commerce are happening. Apple owns most of it. Google the rest.
These are not even close to being the same, and you moving the conversation. Or, you're using words in a manner that the rest of us are not following.
Again, maybe saying something like 50% of American consumer computing or something, but the blanket statement as written and unqualified is just wrong.
Additionally you’ll be hard pressed to find someone who will say opt in tracking is a bad idea.
The larger argument is that the vast majority of high value companies probably should not exist today.
Google and Apple if they worked together to manipulate the market, that’s grounds for fines etc.
Kicking apps off their app stores would not qualify and should not qualify.
Facebook is free to pull its app from the App Store if they don't like Apple's policies.
It’s hard to take arguments against Apple on this issue seriously.
All we are talking about is giving the users an option to disable tracking.
The fact they have lost money over this, simply proves that Facebook is a business that can’t survive without deceiving its users.
This isn’t about Apple at all.
It only harms Facebook because their business only works if users are deceived into being tracked when they don’t want to be.
If users wanted to be tracked, they would opt-in.
That isn’t about Apple destroying anyone. It’s about Facebook building a business on a deceptive practice.
Which is false as Apple tracks you across apps without showing you this new prompt.
> That isn’t about Apple destroying anyone.
Could you elaborate on what are you implying here?
Are you saying Apple doesn’t damage anyone with this policy? It is obviously false.
Are you saying damaging competitors and building its own ads ecosystem is not Apple’s primary motivation here? It also seems false, as they build their own ad system, which tracks users.
> They could have done tons of features to benefit users, but they implement those which damage competitors.
Why does Facebook rely on unethical and shady business practices that harm users? Facebook is harming itself. And how is Facebook, in any meaningful way, a competitor to Apple? Apple's ad's business is PEANUTS.
Sink? I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. Furthermore, if Facebook's business model is predicated on actively harming Apple's customers (and Facebook is harming them in a multitude of ways, including this tracking), this isn't Apple's fault at all, it's Facebooks.
> When you're "America's Computer" with a 51+% entrenchment, you shouldn't be able to govern commerce. You're a common carrier at that point.
Yah, no. Apple's marketshare, even in the US, as of January is estimated to be ~33% (iOS and macOS) combined.
The GDPR is governments (the EU) regulating an industry that has failed to regulate itself the last 20 years and most would argue that the GDPR is much stricter than it needs to be.
For the ‘industry’, that is.