
Apple's privacy feature costs ad companies millions - oneeyedpigeon
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/09/apple-tracking-block-costs-advertising-companies-millions-dollars-criteo-web-browser-safari
======
kstrauser
> “We also want to work across the industry (ideally including Apple) longer-
> term to address more robust, cross-device advertising targeting and
> measurement capabilities that are also consumer friendly.”

Just to be clear: _you_ want that. Whatever lies you tell yourself to get to
sleep at night, no one outside your parasitic industry wants this. I, for one,
absolutely 100% do not want you to target and measure me robustly across
devices.

~~~
EgoIncarnate
I don't think it's that simple.

Nobody wants their privacy invaded, but they do want cheaper products. In
theory better targeted ads allow a company to spend it's advertising budget
more effectively. Selling more products for the same amount of ad cost should
allow for cheaper products.

I'm sure some companies will not pass on the savings, but I believe economic
theory says the market as a whole should.

If the savings are enough, some people may be willing to give up some of their
privacy in the name of cheaper products.

How much more do companies make? Is all this invasive tracking really
necessary in order to keep websites like Google and Facebook free? Is it worth
saving 10% (or whatever) on some product?

Unfortunately the decision is forced upon everyone by advertisers with little
thought to allowing for an informed choice (or any choice really).

~~~
mveew2
Yeah but can you quantify exactly how much savings you get for giving up your
privacy? If targeted ads lowered the cost of an 8 dollar widget by 10 cents, I
think most people would take their privacy.

But we don't know how much online advertising lowers prices. Would be
interesting for an economist to study.

For all we know, online ads could have no effect. And what about ads intended
to generate demand instead of address current demand? Maybe online ads are
tricking us to by more of what we don't want (Yay, another subscription box).

~~~
EgoIncarnate
Agreed. It's not currently an informed choice, nor clear it's even necessary.
To steal from another of my replies: "You can have still have ads without
invasive tracking, they just might not be as effective.

If the difference in effectiveness is enough to make Google, etc unprofitable
than maybe there is an argument to be made that it is necessary.

If it means they make 10% less profit, people would probably prefer privacy."

------
staunch
Designing your company so that you share your customer's incentives is a major
source of Apple's success. Facebook, Google, and Microsoft don't seem to even
grasp the concept.

~~~
mikestew
More and more I'm reminded of the scene from the movie _The Big Short_ : "I'll
do the deal, but I need one thing from you: tell me how you're going to fuck
me." I just plain dumped FB, but every time I have an interaction with Google,
Microsoft, and many others, that scene comes to mind. Only unlike the movie,
I'm never going to get that answer; it's up to me to just guess, and my
guesses are not flattering to the company.

Whereas when I spend money with Apple, AFAICT it's a simple, "give us some
money, and we'll give you software, a service, or a physical object that we
and you hope will solve a problem for you. Then we're done." Sure, Apple costs
extra, but I'm willing to pay extra as long as our transactions stay the way
they are.

~~~
jjeaff
Purposely slowing down your Apple devices so that you need to buy a newest one
every season doesn't strike you as a way apple is screwing you?

~~~
simonh
And now we have to risk our phones crashing when the batteries get older,
because the phone managing it’s power consumption to avoid that has been
demonised by a bunch of whiney asshats that didn’t bother understands the real
issue. Thanks.

~~~
ajnin
Sounds like a false dichotomy. Another way could be to let the user turn on
low-power mode, or accept the diminished battery capacity. I know that doing
what Apple thinks is best is Apple's way, but maybe in this case it's the
wrong way, especially if done in a way that seems surreptitious.

~~~
dingo_bat
Another way is to do whatever other manufacturers like Samsung are doing. No
slowdown based on battery capacity and no sudden shutdown either.

~~~
user5994461
Samsung has similar issues.

Battery are physical object with physical limitations. They will have
diminished peak capacity and peak voltage over time.

~~~
dingo_bat
No they don't. Those issues are very rare and indicative of faulty batteries.
When you sell hundred million devices a few hundred can be defective. Not a
big deal. Generally, Samsung phones (or any other manufacturer tbf) do not
start shutting down randomly after 2 years. They also do not slow down the
CPU. So they must be doing something which Apple hasn't discovered yet or
(more likely) hasn't implemented because this way they can force users to buy
$1000 every year.

------
samsonradu
Pop the champagne bottle on this news. The ad industry has been consistently
sucking money out of smaller content producers and consolidated behemoths like
FB and Google. Apple being the only browser player who can afford to do such a
move, how is this not good news?

Edit

Waiting for Microsoft to move next

~~~
jasonkostempski
What do you think is holding Firefox back from doing the same?

~~~
starsinspace
Good question... I often wonder why Mozilla talks so much about privacy and
user-rights, but then in reality does so little in Firefox to implement them
by technical means. Why isn't their tracking-blocking the best among major
browsers? Why is Firefox still so easily fingerprintable, as confirmed by
EFF's Panopticlick?

But then again when you know the recent stories like Firefox+Cliqz... it
doesn't really leave questions open...

~~~
stinkytaco
Well, they are transparent about it: [https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/privacy/firefox-cliqz/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox-
cliqz/)

I agree that setting default options that respect privacy is good, but I also
feel Mozilla has struck the balance between "best customer experience and a
revenue stream", plus "informing the customer so they can make decisions".

~~~
starsinspace
> but I also feel Mozilla has struck the balance between [...]

My impression is that those who don't care about privacy have already switched
to Chrome long ago, and see little reason to go back. And from those who do
care, an increasing number (including me) is considering leaving FireFox due
decreased trust in Mozilla's self-proclaimed privacy standing. I do wonder
which target audience will be left to use FireFox after all then.

~~~
stinkytaco
I'm not sure what's left after Chrome and FF. Safari if you are on a Mac and
IE on Windows (though IE seems imperfect). I suppose you can use a FF
derivative like Ice Weasel. For my money, Mozilla is still the best option and
with so many free options out there, it's hard to keep up unless you play the
game somewhat. Mozilla's most important role is a seat at the web standards
table and if they wither on the vine because users jump to Chrome because it
"just works", they will lose that seat.

------
michaelbuckbee
I think you have to keep in mind that this isn't particularly benevolence, but
ecosystem pruning.

Apple would prefer that everything be conducted in apps on mobile where they
can take a 30% cut of initial sale and IAP revenue and not on the open web
where most of these ads take place.

~~~
prepend
I like how you accurately frame this not as benevolence but just as Apple
applying their goals that are different from advertisers.

But I’m happy with this as I think Apple’s goals are more in alignment with my
own as a user. I don’t expect Apple to support me altruistically, but
currently their model of charging a lot for hardware so user data across the
web is not necessary for them is one that allows for high levels of user
privacy.

~~~
ucaetano
> But I’m happy with this as I think Apple’s goals are more in alignment with
> my own as a user.

Except that Apple having a monopoly on the interactions means they would
extract monopolistic rents from the value chain, which will be paid, yep, by
you.

Apple wants to kill the open web, and charge everyone 30% or topline to access
their "users". The best way to do it is to hit the web on the pocket: ad
revenues.

~~~
ThorAndZeus
But it also comes down to trust. I would rather "trust" (in a sense that
Apple's business model does not explicitly benefits from selling my user data)
than any other business. And yes, I would much rather pay for any service than
have it for "free".

~~~
musage
To me "trust" is an absolute thing; it comes in degrees, but the anchor is
absolute, and in you. "rather trust" in contrast is relative and something
entirely different. Yeah, sometimes we have to bite bullets or choose poisons,
but I'd still set apart from things I really like and want to see prosper in
the world.

For me, not collecting data warrants trust, not whatever mental gymnastics
involving "collecting data, _but_ ". If that data is vital for companies or
applications beyond a certain scale, then I don't trust companies or
applications beyond a certain scale, and would prefer to see them all pruned
by consumers using their brains to vote with their wallets. Some behemoths so
desperately want a world in which they're vital, to me that's a world doomed
to die in important ways. That's not aimed at Apple, but among tech companies,
they don't even make my list of considerations for top N thousand I like or
trust. Not to mention companies and organizations in general.

But more importantly it's not like I have to chose whom of a bunch of shady
fucks I trust most. If I don't trust any of them, that's fine with me, too.

As for business, I like the people at my local bakery. I trust them with
bread, I guess, and I know when they smile they mean it. Those people have
stature to me, and the bigger a company is, the more pervasive marketing is in
it, the more it resembles a lot of tiny people playing big person. I don't
trust that, and I laugh when those then put out marketing to make themselves
seem 0.1% as cool as random individual people are to me, to whom the thought
of being cool doesn't even occur. True, Apple might be less of a POS than its
direct siblings, but that's still a rounding error in the grand scheme of
things. I'd say we'll outright _settle_ for one or several of them and the
precedents they set at our own peril.

Sorry for the rant, please don't take this as some sort of violent
disagreement with you, I was really just ranting. But it does sicken me how
far we fell.

------
nathanaldensr
I think I speak for many when I say: "Cry me a river."

~~~
tootie
No ad revenue, no free content. Get ready for paywalls everywhere.

~~~
letsgetphysITal
I'm fine with advertising; I see it every day on TV, in magazines, as I walk
down the street.

What the ad networks want, though, is pervasive, persistent, personally
identifiable cross-domain tracking across the entire WWW. Obnoxious and
unskippable autoplaying videos. Obnoxious, garish popups. 1/5 of the on screen
real estate to be advertising often only loosely related to the content, more
often than not totally disinteresting to the reader, and potentially serving
up malware via their active content.

No. Apple is doing the right thing, and the networks brought it on themselves.
I have ZERO sympathy, and anyone who relies on their parasitic behaviour to
exist doesn't really offer any value worth paying for anyway. I bet content
becomes meaningful enough to be worth paying for, as the rest will die.

~~~
geocar
> What the ad networks want...

What _advertisers_ want is a real, credible KPI.

When it's television, and you can show evidence that 2m people watch this
program, so sponsoring gets you 2m of your target audience (or whatever you
want to argue).

With online, there are few web pages that get 2m people to read them in a
day... and surely there's _some_ effect from all those other sites out there.
Some of them are even niche, so they might be a hard audience to get...

Ad _networks_ offer "all those other sites", and since you can't verify that
the 50 people who went to that web page aren't included in the 20 people who
read that _other_ web page without "cross-domain tracking" you can't piggy-
back on that argument being made in Television.

Then you've got the second-screen phenomenon: Few people had two televisions
in the same room, but almost everyone has at least two screens. Did I get this
part of my target audience on their phone or on the desktop. Choices are, buy
everyone twice (halving the advertising budget), or be a little more
efficient: Ad networks know what they'd prefer, so they want that tracking to
personally identify you now. _These_ ad networks are the ones convincing
advertisers they need a super mega cookie to track everything.

And so on.

~~~
pfranz
Amazon has been around for 23 years now (Amazon Prime for 12 years). People
have been heavily using Amazon daily for online retail and wishlists for over
a decade. For most people I know, they've been the go-to place for most
Christmas and birthday shopping for years. They're terrible at recommendations
--they're the best case scenario. Google and other advertisers are worse. No
matter how much information they have, they're just awful.

There's also distrust between ad networks, advertisers, and users. So even if
they collect all this deep information, you can't trust the other group to be
telling you the truth to the other group.

I would love a scenario where I get personalized matches for my needs even if
that means me handing over more info. Podcasts seem to be the only place where
they're a) big enough to get direct sponsorship but b) small enough that the
sponsors are still relevant...and they're using the same techniques as
traditional media like TV/radio.

------
Apreche
It's a shame their revenue only got cut by 1/5 and not 1/1.

~~~
ucaetano
Yeah, that would be great, almost all free content and most free services on
the web would disappear!

Talk about a lose-lose situation.

~~~
white-flame
Free content & free services existed on the web before the online advertising
economy did. Plus, it's stupidly cheap to host stuff now compared to back
then.

~~~
ucaetano
Oh, yeah, I remember how much free video was available on the internet before
YT.

Great times!

~~~
tomc1985
Because all this free video is just so great right? A world full of nobodies
blathering on about themselves?

...

There was a lots of video on the web before YT. Video was better before YT,
you actually had to put some effort into it. Now YT is cheap, shitty, my-
first-VFX projects as far as the eye can see.

~~~
ucaetano
> Because all this free video is just so great right? A world full of nobodies
> blathering on about themselves?

Just because that doesn't appeal to your taste doesn't mean that it is bad.
Stop judging what other people like to watch.

You argument is essentially "people who make videos that I don't like should
be pushed out".

~~~
tomc1985
Before entertainment was so easy to make, there certain bars of quality one
had to meet in order to get access to publishing. There is no such metric now,
no hurdle of quality or notoriety to jump, and you would argue that nothing
has changed?

How does taste render the observations of an individual invalid? Are you so
genius that you can make such ...judgments... yourself? But I can't judge
because I have tastes???

~~~
ucaetano
> How does taste render the observations of an individual invalid? Are you so
> genius that you can make such ...judgments... yourself? But I can't judge
> because I have tastes???

Here's the difference: I'm not judging. I don't believe in a "quality bar".
I'm not judging which content should be created, sponsored or paid for.

Let people create and publish content, and let people vote with their clicks,
eyes and wallets.

But you, no, you think that only content that passes _your_ quality bar should
be funded.

Don't like content or ads? Don't watch/view them. Nobody is forcing you to.
But you want to force others _not_ to view them.

I hate ads, but they pay for a lot of the content and services I use, and I'd
rather view them than pay for them.

Don't like them? Don't use those services and content. Your call.

------
AdmiralAsshat
They said the same thing when browsers started blocking pop-ups.

The advertising industry will survive.

~~~
sabman83
It will survive but what it needs is to re-think how they show ads and make
them less intrusive. So this is a good thing.

------
nullroute
I'm quite happy with Apple; they are providing a needed service.

Ads are one of the top vectors for malware and have been for years. I have a
right to not be tracked, my data sold for money (and I get no profit), and
generally my privacy invaded. I don't allow it and have not since I was able
to understand the threat and mitigate.

I run a Pi-hole on my home network and I also run one at work, as I work for a
small business. Works like a charm. I also use uBlock Origin, Decentraleyes,
Privacy Badger, No Coin and a couple of others on every machine I control. I
disallow my browser from sharing data like fonts installed, visited history,
etc. I disallow HTTP/S referrer, geo location, network prefetch, and more. I
use a proxy server and sometimes a VPN. I prevent WebRTC from leaking my
private address schema. What ads? I also run only unix-like operating systems
running fully open source software.

You can even take advantage of a Pi-hole by passing your phones traffic
through your home network even when you're away. Defense in depth to avoid the
dreck.

------
MaysonL
_" Advertising technology firm Criteo, one of the largest in the industry,
says that the Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) feature for Safari, which
holds 15% of the global browser market, is likely to cut its 2018 revenue by
more than a fifth compared to projections made before ITP was announced."_

Wow! A feature which doesn't block ads, in 15% of the browsers, is going to
cut over 20% of this poor company's revenue.

------
hardwaresofton
I wonder if it's possible to make an opt-in ad network that could take the
place of what existed before. Is there any way ad-supported monetization
strategies and the free/open web can co-exist? While the current system is
indeed terrible (buggy, overbearing ads taking valuable bandwidth and screen
space, pervasive tracking, etc) is what we want really an arms race between ad
companies and the rest of the internet?

As much as I dislike overbearing ads and marketing, a "free" web should enable
enable monetization strategies I like as well as ones I don't like.

Could an opt-in ad network work?

Let's say you like the work of some content creator -- is there no ad network
currently that you can go into, register preferences, allow/add the cookie
(maybe download a browser plugin that inserts it for you on registered sites),
and enable you to pay the content creator by way of watching an ad from time
to time? Even something that did a monthly fee (like twitch) for just any kind
of content? Surely this exists already and I just haven't heard of it yet --
the only thing similar I can think of is Flattr/Patreon.

------
retSava
Fun anecdote: my friends christmas gift for his wife was revealed pre-
christmas. He bought a trip to London and a particular theater visit that had
some special significance to her. But, he was doing all the planning on their
shared computer so it started showing ads for this, so she added A, B, and C
and in the end wasn't very surprised on christmas eve (still happy though).

~~~
scarface74
So private browsing isn't just for porn?

~~~
ascagnel_
That wouldn't matter -- there are ways to fingerprint a browser/PC across
sessions and into private browsing modes.

[https://medium.com/@ravielakshmanan/web-browser-
uniqueness-a...](https://medium.com/@ravielakshmanan/web-browser-uniqueness-
and-fingerprinting-7eac3c381805)

~~~
user5994461
Last I recall, it requires javascript or flash to generate unique fingerprints
reliably.

Noscript or umatrix should protect you.

------
paulus_magnus2
Can someone from the AD industry list a few (3 or more) legitimate uses for
‘pervasive’ tracking.

~~~
ucaetano
Improving ad targeting and therefore reducing non-productive ads, generating
more revenue for creators.

The better ads are, the more revenue they will generate for content creators.

~~~
sp332
That's true to a point. If ad targeting gets too good, users "find this
creepy" and start using more ad blocking.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Targeted_advertising#Controver...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Targeted_advertising#Controversies)

------
innocentoldguy
Fuck advertisers. The last thing in the world I want to do is pay thousands of
dollars for a device/OS/other product, only to have the company not only sell
me out to advertisers, but also turn around and waste my time peddling me shit
I don't want.

------
rhizome
I think a more-accurate title would be "Ad companies can make millions with
web bugs."

------
makecheck
These features cannot “cost” ad companies something, any more than my higher
fence “costs” thieves in lost opportunities.

Ad companies survived with basic magazine-style ads. The only reason they
complain now is that they are being forced to shift from “absurd money grab”
to “ordinary company profit” for the first time in _years_. And there are
small violins everywhere playing for these whiners.

------
Animats
What can we do that would cost ad companies billions?

~~~
blub
Stop working for unethical companies like Google, Facebook, Criteo and the
thousands others that make money by spying on people.

Or at least stop defending those practices, like a certain ucaetano does in
this thread.

I'm looking into what can be done politically though. Talking on forums
doesn't get very far...

------
gnicholas
> _Criteo, one of the largest in the industry, says that the Intelligent
> Tracking Prevention (ITP) feature for Safari, which holds 15% of the global
> browser market, is likely to cut its 2018 revenue by more than a fifth
> compared to projections made before ITP was announced._

If Safari is 15% of the browser market, how is this causing a 20% drop in
revenue?

~~~
tomjakubowski
Maybe Safari users, in aggregate, are more valuable than the average browser
user is to advertisers, on account of Apple device owners leaning wealthier.

------
dogweather
I like ads that are targeted to my interests. Far, far better to see ads for
SaaS tools on Facebook than the standard generic or offensive crap. I help
Facebook every chance I get, via the UI to signal when I like an ad vs. when I
don't.

Same with Carbon ads. If all Internet advertising looked like that I wouldn't
care at all.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I dislike targeted ads as they are most likely to influence my behavior.

------
supreme_sublime
I think (well, hope) that internet content creators will start to figure out
different monetization strategies. Do online ads even show any kind of ROI? I
suppose they must, but I'm curious what kind of numbers they actually get.

It seems a lot of the tracking that is happening is in an effort for ad
network companies to show their value. I'm hoping that eventually advertisers
will realize that it isn't really worth their money to continue throwing money
into the black hole that is internet ads.

------
Torn
We really need a new model for the ad economy. Brendan Eich is making some
promising steps in the direction with Basic Attention Token (BAT)

------
un_montagnard
I'm wondering how long we'll have to wait before iAd 2.0 is launched as the
only ad service offering tracking on Apple devices.

------
lanevorockz
Why would The Guardian be against privacy?

------
krutzger
I helped a friend set up his new Samsung phone and was surprised to see the
browser nagging us about a installing adblockers and anti-trackers. Looks like
Samsung too is taking privacy seriously.

Happy to see things are improving, it was a wild west for a while...

------
hackbinary
>> Internet advertising firms are losing hundreds of millions of dollars
following the introduction of a new ...

Was this number calculated by the same people that calculated that media and
software companies loose billions due to piracy?

------
m3kw9
It costs them nothing, because there was never any data Apple was sharing.
They should look at the differential privacy data Apple was talking about, and
maybe that will be better than nothing.

------
asasidh
No one owes these ad companies their business model. They took advantage of
the inherent insecure nature of internet and preyed on users all the time.

------
holydude
I am very much against regulations a la what EU is doing but at the same time
I acknowledge that monopolies are evil and bad. There is a reason countries
have antimonopoly laws and it puzzles me why we do not have a solution yet to
fight against the global monopolies like Google. I mean this is something that
obviously free market cannot solve on its own.

------
geuis
I find some irony that my content blocker app blocks the guardian’s article
about ads.

------
zouhair
What would happen if ads were illegal?

~~~
ucaetano
The vast majority of content providers would go out of business, and product
discovery would largely disappear.

~~~
chopin
For the first one, that might be a net win. For the second one, it would be
more inconvenient. But there has been an era before the internet and I was
doing just fine then.

~~~
ucaetano
> For the first one, that might be a net win.

Yeah, I'm sure that reducing economic output and driving a lot of creators out
of business reducing in increased unemployment and poverty will be a net win
for everyone!

Wow, can't believe what I'm actually reading...

> But there has been an era before the internet and I was doing just fine
> then.

With ads.

------
tomc1985
Good. We need an ad apocalypse

------
egypturnash
Good.

------
pasbesoin
Good

------
golergka
Once again, free market solves the problem more efficiently than any
regulation would: Apple sees that users needs privacy, uses it's position to
capitalize on that, everybody's happy and users who don't care about it that
much (like me) are free to choose other phone manufacturers and pay less.

------
londons_explore
I used to work for an ad company, and a frequent thing missed in these
articles is that the ad company isn't the only one who looses out.

Ad companies take some percentage of revenue as a fee. If they're loosing out,
then three other people are also loosing out:

* The advertiser, who no longer gets their ad in front of the right audience. Now they're stuck advertising their potentially excellent product to people who have no use/desire for it. Selling their product now costs more, and it might make an otherwise profitable product not work out.

* The content producer. The person who made that webpage/video/funny meme. They only did it for ad revenue. Now that revenue is reduced, they'll have to make do with a shittier camera or will have to get a side job.

* You. You now have to put up with _more_ lower value ads. They tend to be less useful to you (you might think normal ads aren't useful, but these are even more annoying and even less useful). That on top of the shittier content and fewer worse products available to buy from the above two reasons.

~~~
inetknght
> _They only did it for ad revenue_

Most only did it for _revenue_ and ad revenue just happens to be the _easiest_
for many.

I, for one, have never built a website for the ad money. I get my money
through value-add services such as showing what I can do, by showing what I
have done; providing software and services to other people so that they can
also create their own things and provide help and input.

> _You now have to put up with more lower value ads_

No I don't; I use adblockers, like everyone I know. Everyone as in not just
developers or tech weenies. Everyone as in normal people with social lives or
claim they don't worry about privacy because they have nothing to hide. People
don't want their bandwidth (precious bandwidth these days) wasted, they don't
want their battery wasted, they don't want their privacy violated.

Let's build and promote platforms that empower content developers to get paid
for their work through means other than advertisements. Patreon is a _great_
example of that (and I wish I knew of other similar services).

~~~
user5994461
Sure, the personal site is for selling your services and writing about
whatever you like. The thousand dollars of yearly revenues is just a nice to
have side effect.

~~~
inetknght
The thousand dollars of yearly revenues is not worth the impression of me
being unprofessional by having advertisements plastered on my online persona.

