
Facebook says Apple’s iOS 14 changes could hurt its ad targeting - nojito
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/30/facebook-says-apples-ios-14-changes-could-hurt-its-ad-targeting.html
======
move-on-by
I am personally hoping this change will generate more evidence that targeted
advertising is not as valuable as everyone believes. _I believe_ contextual
advertising is effective and doesn't come with all the privacy nightmares and
ethical issues like allowing targeting alcoholics with alcohol ads. Of course,
that is just my own personal opinion. I've seen some articles agreeing with
what I just said - but not being a statistician or even in the advertising
industry I'm not qualified to say one way or the other.

~~~
ijidak
I am an advertiser that uses targeted advertising and contextual advertising.

There are some products and services that absolutely require targeting by
preferences to maximize profit.

I'm running such a campaign now and getting wildly high ROI's in the 14X
range.

If I couldn't target by audience interest, I'd be happy to get an ROI that is
a tenth of that.

~~~
ogre_codes
> There are some products and services that absolutely require targeting by
> preferences to maximize profit.

As a normal person who just wants to use his phone without creepy crap going
on, I don't care—and see zero benefit if your profits are maximized.

Your profit seeking wishes are not my concern.

~~~
corin_
They were replying on the subject of whether targeted ads are effective or
not. Whether they should be allowed is a different matter, but while companies
_are_ collecting your data it's not reasonable to ask advertisers to
disadvantage themselves against competition by not using the marketing options
with the highest ROI.

Send your complaints to politicians, not ad buyers.

(Disclaimer: I've spent millions - not my own money - on ads in my career. I'd
support better privacy regulations to prevent some of the targeting I've been
able to use.)

~~~
Red_Leaves_Flyy
Politicians either don't care or can't get changes passed. Until that changes
blaming and shaming does and will continue to work, at least better that my
elected officials who'd ratherdo anything but challenge their largest donors
profits.

------
3pt14159
There is this parable about building a house upon sand versus building upon
rock. When the storm comes the house on the sand gets washed away.

Facebook didn't have to turn into a global ad platform that does tricky shit
like spy on users with blue thumbs up buttons or weird hacks into webrtc to
fingerprint users. They could have done the work to provide more direct value
and charged for it, like Apple did or did something completely different like
building something like Shopify that was still open to the internet but had
first class support in Facebook. But they didn't and my hope is that their
business model will wash away as security and privacy tighten up on our
devices and through our democracies.

Just imagine if Apple had taken a different approach and basically said "we're
going to make phones that we monetize by tracking our users" instead. The
institutional focus would have been warped and—eventually—someone would have
come out with high quality phones and computers that don't track you and they
would have lost in the long run.

~~~
boring_twenties
> "we're going to make phones that we monetize by tracking our users"

Google is doing exactly that and seems to have a market share of 75% vs
Apple's 25% [1]. What am I missing?

[1] [https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-
share/mobile/worldwide](https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-
share/mobile/worldwide)

~~~
bamboozled
I'll also say that anecdotally, I know a lot more people with iPhones and
people who use something else, always complain about their phones.

I was one of those other people, then I just decided I want something that
works and bought an iPhone. It was worth it.

~~~
techsupporter
Along with pb7, I'll +1 this anecdote. I know that Google are going for volume
while Apple are going for margin, and it shows.

I was an ardent Android user until 2014/2015 (can't remember the exact year).
Things like "I have to be able to replace my battery" and "a phone without an
SD card slot is pointless" and "hah, my regular USB cords just work."

But finally, after a year or so of every time my phone spontaneously rebooted
(a circumstance that, looking back, I'm surprised I put up with for so long)
there was a ~20% chance that it would come back up completely wiped. My
employer required that phones accessing work e-mail be encrypted and every so
often, a reboot would simply lose the user data volume encryption key.

The last time it happened, I permanently lost two pictures that were valuable
to me (yes, I know, backups) and it happened while I was sitting in front of a
T-Mobile store and around the corner from an Apple store. I went into
T-Mobile, got a SIM that would fit an iPhone, then went to the Apple store and
loaded up a credit card with a new iPhone 6(?) and all the trimmings and have
never looked back.

I do still have the screenshot of my first text with my wife after I switched.
"So...I did something...expensive." "What did you do? WAIT, this bubble is
BLUE"

~~~
freehunter
For me (as a former Anything But Apple guy), the realization came when I
discovered that every problem I’ve ever had with my phone was caused by me
screwing something up. I put up with this on my computers, but my phone isn’t
something I want to take chances on. It’s got too much data and it’s too
critical to my everyday life to have it broken constantly. I just can’t trust
myself not to install launchers and root the phone and see if I can get Debian
running in a chroot and... whoops bricked it.

I switched to iPhone with the 5s and have’t looked back. I like not being able
to break my phone because of my poor decision making skills. I do my hacking
on my computer where the consequences are lower and its easier to fix.

------
numbers
Great! Can’t wait for the iOS 14 release!

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yjftsjthsd-h
That's... The idea, yes.

> Our view is that Facebook and targeted ads are a lifeline for small
> businesses, especially in the time of Covid, and we are concerned that
> aggressive platform policies will cut at that lifeline at a time when it is
> so essential to small business growth and recovery," Wehner said.

"We need to trample privacy to save small businesses because covid!" is a take
I did not expect to read today. Also Facebook acting like it's altruistically
helping those poor little businesses - how terrible that Apple is making it
harder for them to give Facebook money!

~~~
bryanrasmussen
I am surprised that they didn't turn it into a think of the children thing
instead.

~~~
yardie
"If you take our ads away only the criminals will run ads!"

~~~
classified
One could argue that this is exactly what is happening already. Except that
what FB does is still considered "legal".

------
shirshak55
I think dedicated firewall can help a lot. Like if I use spotify i should be
able to use firewall and tell spotify app can connect only to
[https://*.spotify.com](https://*.spotify.com) if there are other url it
should ask permission for that. I think this would help a lot. Especially when
facebook implants its tracker to most app using sdk

~~~
kube-system
DNS blocking/filtering is a flimsy solution which is only effective if most
people don't use it. If it ever becomes mainstream (which is starting to
happen), trackers will just use CNAMEs or proxies (which is also starting to
happen)

~~~
Terretta
Like pihole, the device friendly NextDNS.io service can follow/block the
CNAMEs.

~~~
kube-system
And some trackers have already sidestepped that and switched to proxying
requests server side.

The only reason anyone is using CNAMEs is because pihole and NextDNS are of
negligible adoption, and adding a CNAME is super easy to do. Once CNAME
blocking is more prevalent, it will become mainstream to proxy tracking
requests as well.

example:
[https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection...](https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1/devguide#using-
a-proxy-server)

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Talyen42
Good. Cross-site ad targeting/fingerprinting is digital stalking.

------
apazzolini
Boo fucking hoo.

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api
Makes me want to buy an iPhone for my next phone.

~~~
jameshush
I work in the ad tech space, spent a lot of time on the publishing side. We've
always had higher CPMs from Android users than iOS users. There's just more
hooks in Android for tracking than their is for iOS, and it'll probably
continue to be that way. If you're not a fan of tracking switching to the
Apple ecosystem is a good in between. A more extreme route would be to have a
rooted Android phone without Google Play Services but the hassle isn't really
worth it for me.

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thoughtstheseus
Great news. It would be nice to have fewer companies stalking me, my family,
and friends.

------
geerlingguy
Good. Targeted ads not only creep me out, they are usually laughably bad in
terms of "I just bought product X from site Y, and now I'm getting lots of ads
for product X, which I don't need now that I bought it."

------
jeremiahlee
Good! Working as intended.

~~~
kgwxd
But what about small businesses? Targeted advertising is their lifeline in
these trying times. /s

~~~
EGreg
What’s this /s ?

/s

~~~
dvtrn
Used to indicate sarcasm on other sites.

------
beezischillin
Sounds great. The amount of dodgy and creepy stuff Facebook does on tge daily
shouldn’t be rewarded. Remember when they kept crashing their Android app For
some users just to AB test their reaction or when they tried to research how
to algorithmically manipulate peoples’ mood? I’d be glad they allowed this to
go on this long...

------
josefresco
> Our view is that Facebook and targeted ads are a lifeline for small
> businesses

LOLOLOL - I service only small businesses (hundreds of them) and 90% of them
could give 0 fucks if Facebook disappeared from this planet tomorrow.

The whole "targeted advertising" pipe dream sold to small businesses is
tiring. Highly targeted Facebook ads work for a small percentage of business
models - if you don't fit one of these models it's a giant waste of money or
at least on par with print/radio/tv/un-targeted digital ads.

~~~
wil421
Most small business owners I know have had more success maintaining a
FB/Social media page than doing targeted advertising. Or even just doing
simple SEO to get on googles results page.

~~~
josefresco
Organic Facebook (not paid) is still a viable marketing channel for many of my
clients. However Facebook is decreasing organic reach to force these
businesses to purchase ads. The ideal targeted-ad-scenario that Facebook and
ad agency talking heads promote just does't apply to most small businesses.
Unfortunately most are still FOMO'd into purchasing these ads.

The same could be said about SEO/Google Ads. Google is essentially a paid
search engine now so while SEO will work for _some_ sectors, for most they
will never be #1 because the top 3-4 results are ads disguised as organic
results (hence why I say Google is a paid search engine)

~~~
freehunter
I ran a business where the target audience was on Facebook and the numbers
were just shocking. We had about 3500 followers. If I didn’t run any ads, our
posts would only be shown to maybe 200-300 people total, out of the 3500
people who actively make the choice to follow our page. As soon as I turned on
$1/day ads (the lowest FB allows), those numbers skyrocketed to about 1000
people seeing each post. Still far short of the number of people who went out
of their way to tell Facebook that they wanted to see my posts. Every dollar I
spent per day increased that number.

That convinced me that Facebook won’t give business pages the traffic they’ve
earned unless that business pays Facebook to let that page’s followers see
that page’s posts. It’s a racket and you have to pay to play.

------
RockmanZero
"Our view is that Facebook and targeted ads are a lifeline for small
businesses". BulSht!

------
RichardHeart
I love privacy, but if seeing worse ads is all that's been won, seems
weaksauce.

~~~
m12k
Seeing worse ads (or none if you install an adblocker), but there's less info
about you floating around the web, beyond your control. I'll take that any day
of that week.

------
newscracker
Good riddance, I say. Small businesses can continue to focus more on what they
tend to do better in general, like having closer relationships with customers,
really listening to feedback, etc., instead of believing in an illusion that
Facebook ads will bring them more customers and throwing money that will make
Facebook richer and them poorer while they get misled by engagement analytics
numbers that don’t translate into a better conversion rate.

I hope Facebook’s relentless and shameless intrusions get more beatings that
it truly deserves.

~~~
bjtitus
I like this take. It's not like hyper targeted ads are the only thing the
internet provides us with now. It's also MUCH easier to build and stay
connected with your community. Focusing more on that could be much better
overall than ads.

------
foobiekr
My only question is: when will they bring this to the Mac.

------
vijaybritto
So if this continues Facebook is gonna evolve into something like Etsy or
Shopify?!

------
yalogin
So good news? That is awesome.

------
PedroCandeias
Do they mean the ad targeting that shows me ads to help build a religious
building (I'm an atheist) in NYC (I live in Europe)? That ad targeting is
going to work less well? How?

In all seriousness, good. Facebook is creepy enough as it is, and this kind of
protest is disingenious at best.

------
crawsome
I don't install any social media "Apps" into my phones. I use Firefox, ublock
orogin, privacy badger, duckduckgo essentials, and facebook fence. It's
overkill, but damn, it's trivial to setup, and platforms don't follow me
whereever I go.

------
tehabe
I think that is the point.

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WesolyKubeczek
Facebook can cry me a river while listening to me play a tiny violin.

------
tempodox
So, good news all around. Even FB themselves acknowledge that their predatory
model is going to take a hit.

~~~
JKCalhoun
Yeah, a little surprised FB would be helping Apple sell iOS 14.

~~~
tempodox
> FB … helping Apple sell iOS 14.

That's exactly the right way to put it.

------
booleandilemma
And here I was about to get an Android!

------
fabiofzero
Good.

------
illumanaughty
Good.

------
diogenescynic
Oh, no. Stahp. Please.

------
wiether
Yes please

------
deedubaya
Good.

------
bfrog
Good

------
sarora27
Good.

------
coldtea
That's excellent!

------
hallihax
Oh no

------
saos
Good!

------
northisup
good!

------
bastardoperator
GOOD!

------
supernova87a
Well, well, well. Some months from now, let's revisit all the sentiments here
and see if they still apply when Apple/Google/etc make a change that hurts
some startup's bottom line. I'm guessing not so much praise and enthusiasm
when it happens to someone else, instead of a big bad company like FB, right?
We'll see...

~~~
goalieca
I’m very happy with less targeted advertising. I realize the predominant model
right now is free with advertising. It’s not a happy place.

~~~
bilbo0s
So true. Even if Apple kills a small company dependent on targeted
advertising, I would cheer.

I'm not cheering because it's FB, I'm cheering because it strikes at targeted
advertising. If you're a small company out tracking people to try to sell them
an Oklahoma City Thunder dart board, I'm gonna cheer just as loudly when Apple
sticks it to you.

------
marketingtech
Not just Facebook, but the entire $80 billion mobile app advertising industry.
[edit] To clarify, I'm referring to Apple crippling ads that drive net new app
installs, not the ability to monetize your app via ads.

The privacy angle is completely justified, but I think Apple is
underestimating the second order effects here. Significantly fewer apps will
be installed, harming both the developer ecosystem and Apple's App Store
profits.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/24/apple-j...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/24/apple-
just-made-idfa-opt-in-sending-an-80-billion-industry-into-upheaval/)

~~~
tinus_hn
Apps that Apple profits from, the paid apps, do not rely on ads. Apple does
not profit from free apps that are monetized by ads.

~~~
marketingtech
I'm referring to the ability of paid apps to drive installs. These are ads
that drive TO the App Store and generate paid app installs that are being
crippled. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

~~~
tinus_hn
Perhaps it’s my profile but all ads I get for apps is pay to win scam games.
Surely Apple profits from these but I don’t think that’s the kind of profits
Apple is after.

~~~
marketingtech
Those are the apps that will run more ads if targeting is crippled. They take
a spray-and-pray approach by buying up all the cheap, untargeted inventory. If
you see a lot of them, that means you probably aren't being tracked by the ad
network.

~~~
zepto
That’s an excellent incentive to stop using the apps that are displaying the
bad ads.

~~~
tinus_hn
The apps that fail to track me?

------
hiram112
> With the update to its mobile devices, Apple will ask users if they want to
> let app developers track their activity across other apps and websites.

I'm getting so tired of the bullshit coming out of tech companies. Listening
to these tech CEOs lie and give non-answers to every question asked by
Congress this week was disgusting.

Would any user EVER want apps to be able to track them across the web and
within other apps? Why would this not be off by default?

I used Android for years until enough was enough with the blatant theft of my
data by Google. So I opened up my wallet even wider to go with Apple, as I
thought they took users' privacy seriously.

Apparently not.

~~~
Someone
_“Apple will ask users if they want to let app developers track their activity
across other apps and websites.

[…]

Why would this not be off by default?”_

How does that _not_ describe “off by default”? Even if that doesn’t, FTA: _“In
iOS 14, each app that wants to use these identifiers will ask users to opt-in
to tracking when the app is first launched.”_

