
Apple’s Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market - salgernon
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apples-ad-targeting-crackdown-shakes-up-ad-market?pu=hackernews4qs3ac&utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=unlocka
======
snowwrestler
> Only about 9% of Safari users on an iPhone allow outside companies to track
> where they go on the web

> In comparison, 79% of people who use Google’s Chrome browser allow
> advertisers to track their browsing habits on mobile devices through
> cookies.

Something to keep in mind the next time you see someone from Google
complaining about how Apple won’t allow Google Chrome to run natively on the
iPhone.

~~~
Abishek_Muthian
And when there is a security vulnerability which exploits webkit by just
visiting a website, one has to wait till Apple releases an OS update(if it
decides to acknowledge and fix it[1]), where as one on Firefox 'if Apple had
allowed its own engine' could get updated via the AppStore.

What Apple has done with the trackers is commendable, but the security
argument when it comes to browsers is always in favour of allowing browsers
with their own engines; which apple doesn't.

[1][https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2019/09/apple...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2019/09/apple-takes-flak-for-disputing-ios-security-bombshell-
dropped-by-google/)

~~~
scarface74
What’s the practical difference between an OS update that can be one tiny
patch and an app update? Not only does iOS 13 support all phones back to 2015.
They released a patch for older devices going back to 2011 less than 6 months
ago.

~~~
ubercow13
One requires you to restart your phone and one doesn’t. One allows you to get
the security patch without other unwanted changes to the OS.

------
faizanbhat
As someone who worked in ad tech for half a decade, I fail to understand the
fuss about cookie based targeting. We're speaking of databases mapping data to
random numbers stored in a file that can easily be deleted. The real issue is
ad targeting by a handful of large companies that have personally identifiable
information.

It's not like cookie based targeting is very effective either. It's very
difficult to get cookie based ad targeting right – you have to make
significant investments into product, technical integrations and data buys.
Given the fact that the cookies to which you are tying these investments can
vanish at any time (and a large % do so regularly), it rarely makes business
sense to make the right sort of investments. Instead most companies do the
bare minimum and try to make a guess that is slightly better than a coin flip.
I actually remember seeing a deck from a data company boasting how their
gender data was ~ 60% accurate.

Why are we worried about this? Contextual targeting is far more effective. As
an example, targeting an ad on Elle.com is more than 60% likely to reach women
than an ad targeted based on cookie data.

Genuinely curious so would appreciate calm, non-aggressive responses. I'm
wondering whether this is due to a generally poor understanding of cookie
targeting effectiveness or if I'm missing something.

~~~
AznHisoka
What if I want to target women who recently bought Chanel perfume? How would I
go about doing that unless I do cookie targeting?

~~~
dev_tty01
Is this a serious question? Just because you want to target something doesn't
mean it is ok to do it. Geez, the arrogance. You want to do X, so the rest of
us have to give up our privacy? Technical feasibility is not the same thing as
ethical, courteous, or just plain being respectful of other people. The whole
industry seems to have done some sort of massive mob rationalization of
inappropriate behavior. It's not ok.

If I am on a tech site reading about disk drive failure rates, feed me an ad
about an SSD sale. If I am reading about mountain climbing, show me ads about
climbing equipment. Fine. But don't start following me around the web with
adds about ascenders for the rest of the afternoon. Or travel insurance. Or
... It is none of your business what I browsed half an hour earlier.

Thank goodness at least one business (Apple) has enough customer focus left to
try to address some of this nonsense. All the better that it helps them
against some of their competitors. That just makes them more motivated. Bully
for that. At least we are still the customers rather than the products with
Apple.

~~~
matheusmoreira
Couldn't agree more. I hate it when people respond to concerns with "I make
money that way, how could I possibly go on otherwise" as if it somehow
legitimitized their unscrupulous activity. Their profits are nobody's problem
but theirs and there is absolutely nothing wrong with putting them out of
business if that's what it takes to stop their abusive surveillance
capitalism. If people's use of privacy-focused software and products reduces
their revenue, so be it.

~~~
AznHisoka
You got too emotional when reading my response.

I was just asking the question because I was genuinely curious whether there
was technically a way to do so w/o cookie targeting. I have no interest in
doing such targeting. I was interested in whether a HNer had a creative
workaround.

~~~
matheusmoreira
The way you asked the question suggested you were trying to find alternative
methods to track people. That implies the method of tracking (cookies) was the
problem rather than the tracking itself. My response to that is tracking
people isn't something that should be done to begin with. People should not
_want_ to track others. It should not be _possible_ to track people in any
way, let alone make any money from the practice.

~~~
AznHisoka
Ok I understand. Thanks.

------
JumpCrisscross
> _The cost of reaching Safari users has fallen over 60% in the past two
> years, according to data from ad tech firm Rubicon Project. Meanwhile ad
> prices on Google’s Chrome browser have risen slightly._

This is a great metric for privacy.

~~~
turdnagel
I’m confused by this. If Safari users are harder to target, and demand for
targeting Safari users hasn’t changed, shouldn’t the price go up?

~~~
manigandham
The demand for highly-targeted users is what drives up prices. Since Safari
users all look the same now and can't be highly targeted, they have lost that
high-end demand and prices have fallen to generic display rates.

~~~
dmitrygr
I would disagree. "People who can afford Apple gadgets" is a desirable high-
income audience. I wouldn't be surprised if it was broken out as a special
category for purchase by FB and GOOG soon.

~~~
simonh
The point is they are less valuable because you can't track them, so you can't
take advantage of their potential value.

Lets say an average Android user is worth 100 value units, and you can get
lots of uniquely identifying information about them, say 90% of the ideal
amount of info, so their effective value to you is 90 value units each (90% of
100).

Uniquely identifiable Apple users info is potentially much more valuable, say
200 value units. However you can only get a very small amount of actionable
information about them because they are so hard to track, due to Apple's
security and privacy systems. So maybe you can only get 10% of the information
you would ideally like to have about them. That makes their actionable value
to you only 20 value units each (10% of 200).

~~~
tatersolid
> The point is they are less valuable because you can't track them, so you
> can't take advantage of their potential value.

This is simply bullshit. So-called “targeted” advertising is a giant scam
pulled on non-technical marketers who don’t understand it at all and use
“measurements” provided by the ad networks themselves.

Targeted ads don’t actually work in any meaningful sense:
[https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-
is-h...](https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-here-its-
called-online-advertising/13228924500-22d5fd24)

------
Razengan
Sometimes I wonder if the entire ads racket isn't a case of the emperor with
no clothes.

Has anyone here actually had a meaningful increase in users and revenue by
using targeted-ad services, that they couldn't achieve by more organic methods
(e.g. posting on places like Reddit, word of mouth)?

~~~
1propionyl
The real goal for the big players using these services isn't actually
increasing their own users and revenue. They have better ways to do that.

Rather, the goal is to lock everyone else out from even possibly doing so.

For example: AdWords isn't about reaching new audiences, it's about staking a
claim on an audience in perpetuity (as long as your budget allows). This is
completely apparent from the pricing model.

Google's brilliance is that via the ubiquity of their search platform, they
have effectively managed to leverage a property tax on attentional real
estate. If you don't pay, someone else will move in and hopefully develop the
attentional property further, raising the value Google can charge you for it
until you're priced out and someone else comes along to hold onto it.

~~~
Joe-Z
That's like the 1000th ad-targeting article I've read, but the first time to
hear this perspective. Absolutely fascinating, thank you!

Here's one question though: If you're the established player in one field and
don't really need the online ads other than for staking a claim, would it
really influence your sales that much if a competitor takes over that space?
Probably just a downturn in number of sales to new customers? (Who presumably
haven't heard about the other players in the field and just go with the one
that's shown to them in online search results?)

Okay, that's more than one question, but maybe you'd like to elaborate a bit.

~~~
simonh
I very much doubt the small bump in sales of Coke after a major ad campaign
actually pays for the campaign. That's not the point.

Lets suppose CocaCola stopped advertising completely. No TV adds, no product
placement, no billboards, nothing, but Pepsi and the other soft drinks
companies kept up their rate of advertising or even increased it to fill the
gap. The only time anyone ever saw the name Coke would be when they saw it on
a shelf. It might take a while, but the outcome would be inevitable.

~~~
Razengan
> _The only time anyone ever saw the name Coke would be when they saw it on a
> shelf._

Or, when it was posted/mentioned by people who liked Coke.

~~~
simonh
Or when someone digs up an old coke bottle.

------
dang
Similar to the other day
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21725985](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21725985)),
we asked The Information to unlock this article for HN readers and they
agreed. Thanks!

(Submitted URL was [https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apples-ad-
targeting-...](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apples-ad-targeting-
crackdown-shakes-up-ad-market))

------
grumblez
Breaking News: Advertisers concerned feature is working as advertised.

~~~
manigandham
Advertisers don't care and have never worried about this. It's the adtech
supply chain, and the publishers who get paid that worry about the revenue and
targeting.

~~~
jefftk
Depends on the advertiser! Big brand who mostly wants to reach everyone in a
geographic area? Targeting doesn't matter. Retailer that wants to bring
someone back in to complete a purchase? Without targeting they won't buy ads
at all.

(Disclosure: I work on ads at Google)

~~~
dannyw
You suggest this as if the majority of ad spending comes from small businesses
trying to retarget their customers; when the vast, vast majority of ad
spending comes from big brands; and your mom and pop business isn't running a
sophisticated ad targeting campaign.

Adtech is for the establishment.

------
Wowfunhappy
How has this been so effective, when Panopticlick still says my Safari browser
has "a nearly-unique fingerprint"? (And based on what I've read from other
users's experience, this is normal.)

~~~
jedberg
When you load Panopticlick, you'll notice it takes a minute or so to
fingerprint you. That's a pretty long time and a lot of CPU.

Re/Targeted ads require the decision to be made in milliseconds, including
network transit time. They just don't have the time to fingerprint you on
every request. They could do it once, but then they are back to the problem of
having to set a cookie to keep track of you after that.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
Thanks, that actually explains a lot!

~~~
1propionyl
It's not accurate though. See other replies.

------
vassilyk
Related. The next big change for privacy and ad targeting is the removal of
the IDFA by Apple and the GAID by Google. Removal or aggressive randomization,
but there is no way those IDs remain as persistent as currently.

It's a matter of months, maybe a couple of years.

When this happens, what is happening with Safari now will look like a minor
issue.

~~~
zie
You can set the IDFA on iOS to all 0's in Settings. See:
[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205223](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT205223) under "Opt Out of Targeted Advertising" (at the end).

~~~
vassilyk
Yes indeed. And reset your GAID when you want and know how to do it. But my
point is that such a behavior will be forced by the OS rather than offered as
a choice.

It's what is happening with Safari (and the other browsers). First,
knowledgeable users are empowered to make a decision, then, that decision is
rolled out automatically to the masses. E.g., https.

------
_bxg1
Let us not forget that Apple isn't doing this out of altruism, but 50% because
it hurts their competitors and 50% because it makes their users happy. That
said, being 50% motivated by making their users happy is more than can be said
about Google or Facebook.

Edit: To be clear, I am an Apple customer and it's mainly on privacy grounds.
I just like to keep realistic expectations about their present and future
behavior, instead of buying into Tim Cook's rhetoric of idealism.

~~~
ridiculous_fish
At an Apple all-hands around 2005, an employee asked Steve why they made the
iPod, and he said "because we love music." And the answer was so simple and so
earnest, that you just knew it was true.

Apple, for better or for worse, makes products based on what its executives
_personally_ want to use. That's not the only consideration, but it's
unusually salient compared to other companies.

My guess is that Apple works to limit ad tracking because its executives
_personally_ do not want to be tracked.

~~~
thanhhaimai
Apple under Steve Jobs 2005 and Apple under Tim Cook now are different beasts.
Steve would go crazy at the executives releasing all the buggy/unpolished
products Apple released recently. Imagine the Macbook keyboard or the Touchbar
being released under Steve.

iPod was a great product. But time has changed, and I would be cautious in
extrapolating that experience to Apple today. I can't imagine Apple executives
saying "We change the keyboard because we love typing".

~~~
thatfunkymunki
I feel the same way. Imagine how Steve Jobs would feel if he found out you
could go to an Apple store, buy a Macbook and an iPhone, and still have to buy
an additional cable to connect them together!

~~~
sjwright
No, Steve would correctly point out that the supplied cable isn’t for
connecting to a computer, it’s to charge the phone or dock with a car.

Connecting an iPhone to a Mac is a niche activity these days, and anyone who
needs to do that surely understands what USB-A and USB-C are.

~~~
shantly
"The future's USB-C! Convert!"

"So, the iphone charging cable will connect to USB-C?"

"What, are you crazy? Literally everything is USB-A."

------
quotemstr
People are going to unpleasantly surprised by the way the internet changes
after tracking for personalized advertising stops working. Already, I see tons
of complains about paywalled news sites, micropayments everywhere, and the
death of the "old internet". Just imagine how much worse it'll be when _only_
two or three giant social media companies can make money with advertising
(since they can rely on first-party data) and everyone else is relegated to a
high-friction ghetto. If you're sad about the death of the "old internet",
look out, because you haven't seen anything yet.

As for tracking: the current "privacy" push looks like a moral panic to me.
I've yet to see any _actual_ personal harm come to anyone as a result of
cookie-based tracking. I have, on the other hand, seen billions of people
benefit from the monetarily-free services that personalized ads enable.
Whipping up an anti-cookie hysteria is making the internet worse for everyone
but the big established giant companies.

~~~
pferde
I've yet to see any harm from that lion hiding in tall grass over there, stop
panicking and get back to grazing.

I have yet to see any harm from eating badly and not excercising for this
young person, stop panicking and let them enjoy their double-upsized extra-
bacon Monsterbuger.

~~~
quotemstr
Is there supposed to be an argument in there?

------
reilly3000
All of that cookie blocking makes for smaller, and sometimes fewer requests.
In total that represents a non-zero effect on battery life (and bandwidth)
that Apple gets to use to bolster their battery benchmarks.

------
kccqzy
> For instance, a publisher can track what people do on their own site—just
> not on other sites. So they can sell targeted ads based on the information
> they have.

This is what I believe is fair. Unfortunately we are seeing the difference
between first-party cookies and third-party cookies gradually vanish.
Publishers are already encouraged by ad tech companies to set up CNAME records
so that a subdomain on a publisher site points to an ad-tech company domain.

~~~
dangoldin
That may help the one adtech company but they still wouldn't be able to "sync"
([https://www.adpushup.com/blog/cookie-
syncing/](https://www.adpushup.com/blog/cookie-syncing/)) their cookies with
other companies in the supply chain.

------
Someone
Does this cover iOS apps, too?

If so, that could mean fewer iOS apps will get written.

If not, is that only on technical grounds (it may be easier to hide what data
apps send out) or (also) because it is good for Apple if one has to write an
iOS apps to better track users?

~~~
RandallBrown
iOS apps have an advertising identifier that can be reset by the user.

There are of course other ways to fingerprint the devices, but they will get
your app removed from the App Store if you're using them for advertising. (If
you're caught of course.)

~~~
surround
Apple is “cracking down” on ad targeting, while simultaneously helping iOS
apps track and target users through a unique advertising ID.

~~~
RandallBrown
It keeps the advertisers happy while still allowing users to opt out of
tracking.

~~~
surround
Safari “opts out” of (blocks) tracking by default iirc. But users have to
explicitly choose to opt out of iOS tracking.

Most people don’t even know about the tracking ID.

Edit: Apple ought to prioritize the privacy of users over “keeping advertisers
happy.”

~~~
zwaps
The difference is that users can go to privacy, and switch a single option and
they are opted out.

In Android, and with Google in general, you have to go through many different
menus and hidden option in different places. And then, you can't really stop
tracking either, because you'd need to also go to several of these "ad
alliance" scam websites and try to disable tracking for hundreds of services.
And of course, these websites never actually work for more than a couple of
those.....

From my perspective, coming from Android, iOS is really good. I am soo jaded
by Google and Android that I just expect a company to try to obfusicate
options and generally be hostile to my privacy.

I regret using Android for many years, especially since Google, while I wasn't
lookin, quietly moved from innovative and user-friendly to literally user
hostile.

~~~
bryan_w
Nobody is talking about android here. The point is that Apple doesn't care
about privacy because it allows ios tracking (Why is that even a thing?)

------
kevindong
> A Criteo spokeswoman said that by making the ad-blocking feature automatic
> in Safari, Apple “does not truly promote choice for the users of its
> browser.”

That's an... interesting take on the situation.

~~~
Ididntdothis
Whenever I hear a lobbyist or business person talk about “choice” or “freedom”
it’s usually bad for people....

~~~
lostlogin
You’ve forgotten to include politicians.

~~~
munk-a
I think it's reasonable to think of politicians as mouthpieces for lobbyists -
most of them will become lobbyists after losing a reelection anyways.

------
alwillis
Breaking: more updates to ITP, including the ability to block all 3rd party
cookies— [https://webkit.org/blog/9661/preventing-tracking-
prevention-...](https://webkit.org/blog/9661/preventing-tracking-prevention-
tracking/)

------
tartoran
Is this Apple's subtle revenge for Google's Android ripping off the early
Iphone?

~~~
threeseed
More likely that Apple employees simply hate their data being shared with
every advertiser like the rest of us do.

------
dxemy
You can read the article for free if you make up an email. It does not ask for
confirmation.

~~~
mffnbs
I was enjoying the irony of reading the article on safari only to have it cut
off so they can ask me for my personal information to track me.

~~~
manigandham
It's a paywalled site. They're not tracking you other than to ask you to pay
for the content. This will only become more common as sites shift from ad
revenue to subscriptions.

~~~
Nextgrid
I’m not too sure about that. There’s no guarantee they won’t both get your
payment _and_ then track you (with confirmed personal details you provided
during payment).

------
jedberg
I was talking to my friend about this the other day. He's an executive at an
ad company (not Google). He had an interesting take on this:

Yes, it is in fact working and breaks targeting and retargeting. But what is
the outcome of that?

The CPMs (how much the website makes) are 10x higher for re/targeted ads. So
as they stop working, do you think the website will cut their revenue? No,
they'll either put up a paywall, or put 10x more ads on their page. And those
ads will frustrate you even more, because they aren't targeted to you.

And in the meantime, Google and Facebook will still know everything about you.
It's just the smaller websites who suffer by not getting ad revenue. And they
weren't even getting your personal data in the first place.

I still side with Apple on this one, but he has a good point. Overall what
they are doing will probably just make things worse for everyone that isn't
Apple, Google, and Facebook.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
I'm not _nearly_ as anti-ad as many people I've interacted with on HN and
Twitter. I like the idea of getting free-to-me content supported by ads. I
resisted running ad blockers for a very, _very_ long time.

But.

The ads just got bigger. And bigger. And more intrusive. They approached 50%
of the visible content (and that's on the desktop, not mobile). They played
more video. They played more music. _They started blocking the content I was
trying to read,_ all in an effort to get me to click.

So I gave in. I run an ad-blocker, too.

Your friend inadvertently pinned what I personally think is the original sin
of online advertising: measuring an ad's success through the number of clicks
it gets. Ads in other mediums aren't designed with the idea that the only
successful ad is one that makes you go AAAAH MUST GO BUY RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW
DROP EVERYTHING AAAAAAAA... but 20 years ago, some dingdong decided that
because it was _possible_ to measure "direct engagement" with ads on the web
in a way you couldn't with TV or print, it was _appropriate_ to measure ads
that way.

Think of how different the web might be if, instead, we'd just sold ads by the
number of visits to an _article_ the ad is on... or better yet, by the number
of visits to the web site, period. "But that's not an exact measure! We can't
tell if it's really worth what we're being charged!" You also have no way of
knowing whether or not that full-page color ad in the New Yorker is "really
worth" what you're being charged, but you know what? You got along fine that
way for decades. You did. Your business was fine.

~~~
jedberg
> So I gave in. I run an ad-blocker, too.

Me too. I worked for a company that made almost all of it's revenue from
advertising. It felt hypocritical to run an ad-blocker. But it just got so bad
I had to do it.

I'm just worried about what will happen to the web for all the people who
don't run ad-blockers. I care about them too, especially since they are the
customers in a lot of cases, and if they go away from the web completely
because it's so bad, what then?

> Think of how different the web might be if, instead, we'd just sold ads by
> the number of visits to an article the ad is on... or better yet, by the
> number of visits to the web site, period.

That's actually how many ads are sold. By CPM (cost per thousand impressions).

~~~
chipotle_coyote
I've heard the ad industry has been moving toward that model rather than
clicks, which seems good -- but it doesn't seem to be appreciably helping make
the ads suck less. For years Daring Fireball paid its bills and then some with
a simple, non-moving, square sidebar ad; obviously that wouldn't keep the
lights on at Vox, let alone the NYT, but I can't help but think ads could have
been... better.

There are places that at least strike a balance that doesn't make me want to
poke my eyes out -- The Outline, for instance, at least now that they've toned
down the over-engineered JavaScript woo they launched with -- but it's
depressing how uncommon that is.

------
starchild_3001
Seeing more relevant ads => good

Getting your data sold to a data broker => bad

free web sites & internet => good

having to pay for quality content => bad (gee, who pays for NYT or WP after
they're put behind a paywall?)

Getting the best ads possible without any human involvement => good

discovering the best products & services => good

microtargeting => bad

getting manipulated through political ads => bad

Look, ads ecosystem is the sponsor of free internet. Internet behind a paywall
is very low utility. If anything, today's big ad tech are great democratizers
& sponsors of the free web. That is, only if they can do the "good" and avoid
the "bad".

Disclaimer: I work for an adtech company.

~~~
visarga
> Look, ads ecosystem is the sponsor of free internet.

They are the sponsors of the shitty part of internet. They usually lead to the
creation of crap articles and websites that use SEO to grab and resell
traffic.

I think that even without ad revenue enough people are willing to put quality
content online that we don't need to fear. There are more reasons that making
ad money to create content.

------
manigandham
Overall this doesn't make much of a long-term difference. Ad serving will
shift to first-party with DNS or entire reverse proxies and is already in
progress.

Apple has made some solid improvements but should now focus on not letting
Safari become the next IE. The real impact changing the adtech industry is new
regulations around data and privacy. That will change everything in a few
months.

~~~
inetknght
Good. If the ads are served from the first party domain that should make it a
hell of a lot easier to attribute mal-action to that specific first party
instead of offloading blame elsewhere.

~~~
manigandham
Domains have nothing to do with the businesses and vendors behind them. The
vast majority of publishers don't have the resources to run their own adtech
infrastructure.

1st-party serving won't change anything with regards to chain of custody in ad
content but the new regulations should at least make the chain shorter and
more restricted in abilities.

~~~
inetknght
> _Domains have nothing to do with the businesses and vendors behind them._

TLS certificate says different. If malware comes from a TLS signed domain,
then the owner of that domain is at-fault. Getting reparations from that
domain is of course a different matter. But this should simplify the blame
game.

> _The vast majority of publishers don 't have the resources to run their own
> adtech infrastructure._

I strongly disagree. Where there's a will, there's a way. And Google has the
will.

~~~
manigandham
No. TLS certificates have nothing to do with domain ownership or the
businesses providing services behind them. Anyone can buy and transfer
certificates. Besides there are actual business contracts in place so there's
no need for such tenuous connections over domain names in the first place.

As for your disagreement, what's your basis for claiming that publishers can
build, operate, and scale their own adtech infrastructure and salesforce?

~~~
inetknght
> _No. TLS certificates have nothing to do with domain ownership or the
> businesses providing services behind them._

> _Anyone can buy and transfer certificates._

The registrar has a business relationship with the domain because the domain
was purchased. The domain's owner uses DNS to point to an IP address. The
client connects to that IP address and verifies that the IP address knows
about the domain. "I paid for you to see example.com at 1.2.3.4" and "1.2.3.4
is responding to the name of example.com" completes that relationship.

With Letsencrypt, anyone can get certificates for free. And you certainly can
transfer your private key and certificate information to a third party. That
won't stop you from being liable for any malware served by them because _you_
are the one who owns the domain. Unless you transfer the domain too. Then it's
all on them. The third party. Hope you transferred the IP address payment too.

> _Besides there are actual business contracts in place so there 's no need
> for such tenuous connections over domain names in the first place._

Business contracts don't mean shit to me because I can't inspect them. I can
inspect DNS, however.

> As for your disagreement, what's your basis for claiming that publishers can
> build, operate, and scale their own adtech infrastructure and salesforce?

Publishers can just as easily create advertisements and host them on their own
website the same way they host any other static content. Scaling
advertisements is just as easy (or hard) as scaling any other web services.
Once upon a time businesses actually employed _people_ for their sales
departments instead of offloading it to a third party.

~~~
manigandham
> " _Business contracts don 't mean shit to me because I can't inspect them. I
> can inspect DNS, however._"

Your personal beliefs don't overrule how global business is conducted. Domain
name ownership has nothing to do with business operations, liability or
regulations. You can blame a certain domain all you want but it's ultimately
meaningless.

> " _Publishers can just as easily create advertisements and host them...
> Scaling advertisements is just as easy_ "

I have 15 years of experience in adtech and know 100s of publishers
personally. It's not that easy and it's only getting more complicated as
advertisers, campaigns and measurement get more sophisticated.

Please don't underestimate an entire 12-figure industry as if everyone else is
clueless and you figured it all out. It would be no different then walking
into Boeing and telling them how to design a plane or telling Dropbox you can
code it all in a weekend.

~~~
inetknght
> _I have 15 years of experience in adtech and know 100s of publishers
> personally. It 's not that easy and it's only getting more complicated as
> advertisers, campaigns and measurement get more sophisticated._

Advertising doesn't need to be sophisticated or complicated.

> _Please don 't underestimate an entire 12-figure industry as if everyone
> else is clueless and you figured it all out._

Please don't assume I don't understand how advertising works.

------
buboard
Is apple offering an alternative for blogs to make money or should they have
cake instead? Brave browser does it better than apple. I can already see
webmasters sending users to download brave instead of safari

Apple doesn't care about the web (why should they?). Their iAds thing went
nowhere.

(please enlighten me if apple is offering an alternative. i d love to use it)

~~~
criddell
There's another way to think about this. Privacy is a human right. If your
business model is built on violating human rights at scale then I'm not going
to have a lot of sympathy for you if technology kills your business.

The lesson from Apple is build something great, something that people love,
and they will pay you for it.

~~~
buboard
Agreed about privacy. So how is apple helping websites get paid?

~~~
ridiculous_fish
See Privacy Preserving Ad Click Attribution For the Web:

[https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-
att...](https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-attribution-
for-the-web/)

~~~
buboard
looks good. i d love to see them building an ad exchange on top of it

------
echelon
I'd like to see a p2p mesh network where articles stripped of ads are upvoted,
annotated, and shared. Something like outline, but truly distributed. The
markup doesn't allow for embedded javascript or cookies.

If it were to get popular, a microtransaction system could be built on top to
pay the authors. In fact, payment could serve as one kind of ranking
heuristic.

Store articles in a blockchain and garbage collect them from your node when
they're no longer being actively read. Content will of course always be
available as long as some node has the full history. This has the added
benefit of making future updates or redaction without explicit change logs
impossible.

You could even distribute comments the same way. All participants have keys,
everything gets signed, natural interest graphs form...

This type of application of bkockchain tech seems more immediately useful than
currency and brings us back into alignment with the old web paradigm.
Distributed, experimental, hobbyist, not commercial.

~~~
jpadkins
in your system, who would write the articles?

