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Comment by nicce | Hacker News Reader

Apple's ad business, however, is growing all the time. And in significant margins.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/apple-is-an-ad-company-now

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1330127/apple-ad-revenue...

Apple shows ads for apps in the App Store sans behavioural targeting. If there is a kind of “ethical ads” that’s as close as it gets.

Apple advertising extends beyond the app store, both for iOS and macOS, and is personalized by default. You can disable this in Settings -> Privacy and Security -> Apple Advertising on both platforms.

You’re right, it’s a bit more than the App Store.

AFAIK it also includes ads in the News app and apps that load articles from the News app (e.g. Stocks app).

Their fine print also mentions the TV app, but I haven’t seen ads there, so perhaps they’re referring to content suggestions.

This seems to be confirmed further down the line in the fine print when it says:

> We create segments to deliver personalized ads on the App Store, Apple News, and Stocks.

I’d say the main difference between Meta and Apple is that the latter doesn’t combine data from different source and only relies on their own data (what Apple calls “tracking”):

> Apple’s advertising platform does not track you, meaning that it does not link user or device data collected from our apps with user or device data collected from third parties for targeted advertising or advertising measurement purposes, and does not share user or device data with data brokers.

The ads on the TV app I think are 30s trailers when playing episodes or movies (only once per session as I’ve experienced) which can immediately be skipped like a recap.

It’s the only ad on a streaming service that has never annoyed me (I also like the fact that it’s not targeted). Zero ads are better but their implementation on tv plus is the least irritating I’ve experienced.

I have been getting them on every episode on specific series. But yeah, could be worse.

It's been opt-in since at least 2021: https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/09/02/apple-pushes-pop-...

> If there is a kind of “ethical ads” that’s as close as it gets.

A news paper ad? A builtin board? I think advertisements that hijack your attention are always unethical. You should have to look for ads to see them.

I picked up a copy of Popular Mechanics yesterday and it took me a solid 2 seconds on half a dozen pages to determine if it was an ad or an article. The styles have sort of blended together and I don't think that's an accident.

It is the same in some digital newspapers. It is also harder to block them as ads. So called ”sponsored” articles.

Isn't looking at an Apple device just like looking at a newspaper? I seem to recall papers being chock full of ads outside the front page to a far greater extent than the Apple News app.

Our society depends on advertising for promoting new services, gaining new customers, and building trust. I would call it a social necessity which makes it very ethical as long as it is truthful. The hijacking that occurs is consensual as you should not visit sites if you disagree with their advertising habits. Even with the App Store almost never open it directly.

The ones that cannot be avoided are in the outside world. I would celebrate if every billboard, postal mail item, and other real world advertisement were banned completely as that is the part I have no direct control over.

This is a super fascinating comment, because why wouldn't you just want better advertising regulations across the board instead of trying to justify one form while proclaiming the other is harmful?

> I would call it a social necessity which makes it very ethical as long as it is truthful.

Disagree on this one. Blogs, media, social, word of mouth, etc. would still exist without advertising and would serve the purpose of all of those things. PR teams would become as large as marketing teams, things would get exploited (they already are), but we wouldn't be subjected to distraction and manipulation.

I don't think ads are the most evil thing there is, but society would be fine without them and you would probably see a much smaller imbalance of power in wealth and companies. I'll take 1000s of small forums compared to one big Meta.

Honest question: what kind of "blogs" and "social" would survive without advertising? What kind of content creator can produce quality content in the long run, for free?

The Verge? Nops. Techcrunch? Also not. AnandTech or Business Insider? No and no. Hackaday? Dead. NYT and Bloomberg? Maybe, and likely not. And what about your top 20 favorite YouTube creators? The majority would be gone.

Sure, the long tail of quirky small bloggers would be unaffected -- they don't really make any money today from advertising. But a lot of them are bottom-feeders; they consume content produced by others, and re-hash to add their own takes.

And we're not even talking about the second order effect -- all the ecommerce companies that would be wiped out without qualified leads and traffic. Go to any site - The Verge, Hackaday, Daring Fireball - and see the ads. Most of those companies would disappear.

Is this really the web you want to live in? A web with only a handful of publications with large followings who can command premium subscription (read: The Information, NYT, Stratechery, etc), and the top x% of privileged wealthy folks who can afford paying for a bunch of subscriptions?

Yes, I would call advertising a social necessity. It's like a multi-dimension version of prisoner's dilemma - it may not feel you're winning, but the alternative option is much worse.

Out of curiosity, in these flights of fantastical hypotheticals where “advertising” doesn’t exist, or at least the advertising industry, why are we assuming the other features of capitalism would remain?

I already don't see ads on any of the sites you mentioned and I haven't for a decade thanks to Raymond Hill. Clearly they're able to survive with a significant percentage of users saying nope.

Sure I agree. But there has to be some distinction between annoying but more or less harmless ads, like magazine ads and bus stop ads, and annoying ads, like the ones that might end up under your car wipers, in your bicycle basket, or mail box --- and internet spyware ads, that spy on you and sell your privacy to whoever got a dime.

If I'm going to see an ad, I would way rather see an ad about something I care about vs not. Have you watched the evening news on broadcast TV? That is what untargeted ads look like. I don't have IBS but I know the names of every drug that would help me if I did.

I've actually found furniture I'm looking for on websites I didn't know existed on Instagram. Why is targeted ads a bad thing?

There are ads in the Apple News app that are the same kind of garbage you'd see on Google ads.

What's with the pathetic apple fanboyism? They are one of the biggest vaccuums of data. They will use that data for money just like everyone else. Apple's just late to the ad game.

Years ago it was google fanboyism with 'don't be evil'. Now it's the unbearable apple privacy fanboys and the insufferable tesla/spacex cult members.

What's the point of this name calling? I could call you a dead-end Apple cynic, of which there are plenty (and they're often wrong).

> In 2022, Apple generated 4.7 billion U.S. dollars with its global advertising business.

> By 2022, Facebook's ad revenues had hit $135.94 billion.

$4.7B is not a small number but no where close to Facebook’s.

Velocity is often more important than the absolute amount in a business context. If velocity is 100% growth, year over year, it holds true for a couple of years, it's going to draw significant attention.

This isn’t really a business context though, it’s an ethical one.

I think most people would agree that velocity hardly matters here, what’s been actually done is generally what gets judgement, not where you will be in some time if you do everything the same.

What you are describing is essentially pre-crime.

Also, not all ads are the same from an ethical standpoint.

Displaying an app ad in the appstore upon searching for a similar term is very different than displaying ads based on your whole life, collected in malicious ways.

I don't own an apple device now but why does app store have ads ? After paying upwards of $1000+ on a iPhone, why can't you expect an ad free experience on a first party app store?

They’re promoted apps, the developer pays to promote their app. This tends to help startups that name their company off some random word like _bumble_.

Because Apple has decided so, because it makes them lots of money, and it isn't a big enough dealbreaker for consumers to not buy iPhones. I believe the Google Play Store has ads, too.

Even settings app on iphones has adds.

This is the bullshit I'm talking about in another thread. No it doesn't. Telling you about icloud which is like an inherent feature and partially the reason some people buy their phones is absolutely in no way comparable to actual ads.

Do you know what has ads in settings? Xiaomi. A relative bought one and I helped him set it up, and you literally had to see an ad to listen to your ringtone!!!

it also advertises news, music and apple tv (and probably all their services, those are just the ones i've noticed)

If people bought their phone because of iCloud there's no need to advertise it to them.

What's really annoying on iOS is that persistent notification badge to "finish setting up your account" even when I choose not to use some apple services.

That is simply untrue.

Perhaps there is some sort of pressure by stockholders to have the ability to promote their own products and services on the device or just some sort of backroom dealings.

My personal hope is that Apple course corrects at some point that they do not need to extract the extra cash while damaging the customer experience. The company feels much less customer oriented now and has lost a lot of the premium feel. I have already stopped using their TV app because they have made it nearly non-functional with the amount of promoted content. The News app has an exceptional number of subscription only items in the feed to where I am about to go back to pure RSS. The feeling is like what Google would have done with Google Reader if it was still going stuffing in promotions.

I agree first party apps should be advertisement free if they are advertised as being included in the price of the phone. Otherwise it is a hidden bill you are paying with hours or days of your life that you can't get back.

I would pay for a service that just disabled all first party promotions advertisements. Give me the real price instead of wasting my valuable time with advertisements I would never click.

> why does app store have ads

Because it's useful.

It helps users discover apps that the developer believes is relevant to that keyword.

I can't think of a better mechanism for doing this without an auction style system.

You could just provide better search interface instead. But that does not bring money.

Or show a button to open separate window which shows related apps.

But instead, we always want to bring everything instantly under our attention [in same screen, close to the line of sight].

That's kind of arbitrary though. Why if they wanted to price it at $2k if it were to be ad free? Would the consumer then prefer ads if offered with such choice?

They are taking the risk of repelling their customer who paid $1k+ and still sees ads and they are entitled to the courage of their conviction to take that risk.

But is it ok for Apple to show you an ad in the first party Stocks or News app based on what you've searched for and purchased in the App store?

Apple is worth 3.5x as much as Facebook, so the expectation of revenues is 3.5x higher.

If Facebook were Apple's size they'd be doing 450 billion in ads.

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