
Every Major Advertising Group Is Blasting Apple for Blocking Cookies in Safari - animeseinfeld
http://www.adweek.com/digital/every-major-advertising-group-is-blasting-apple-for-blocking-cookies-in-the-safari-browser/
======
submeta
> When Apple first announced the limitations to cross-website tracking in
> June, the company said the changes are meant to improve trust with users,
> explaining that “users feel that trust is broken when they are being tracked
> and privacy-sensitive data about their web activity is acquired for purposes
> that they never agreed to.”

This!

I switched from Windows+Android to the Apple ecosystem in 2015. Because I love
so many things about Apple products. But this alone (Apple taking measures to
protect its customers' privacy concerns) is a huge huuuge selling point and a
competitive advantage for them.

~~~
NicoJuicy
So how would websites earn money?

Is everyone going to pay 3$ / month every website? Apple should have fixed
that first, but is now blocking everyone because their own iAd failed. I think
a lot is going to blow up, eg. Apple users requiring membership for websites +
a subscription.

What if those companies suddenly require an email to read more content, then
their backend syncs all the required data. ( yes, we will submit a fake email,
but a lot of people won't)

Also, i see >1/2 of the frontpage from these "ad supported companies" that
"everyone" hates, i don't want more paywalled articles appearing here...

I can understand blocking the ever cookie. But this is probably a bridge too
far, i don't want to see more paywalled articles on HN.

And yeah, this will not be a popular opinion here... I'd appreciate responding
with arguments instead of down voting :)

Edit: Failed, downvoting begins as expected

~~~
mikestew
Most of HN is probably too young to remember the old brokerage ad, but
websites can earn money the old-fashioned way: they EARN it. And there are
plenty of websites that earn my money: NYT, The Economist, some music-related
websites, a podcast or two. Whatever shall I do should, say, Buzzfeed go away?
Probably make more productive use of my time. I mean let's face it, if a web
page has stuff from Taboola at the bottom, you're probably reading the
equivalent of ice cream for breakfast: make it a little dirty little secret,
but for $DEITY's sake don't make a habit of it. (And that was a general
example, Captain Pedantic; don't bother with the two examples on the entire
internet that don't fit that description.) If it turns out as you say, and I
have to buy a subscription to access a site, I'll do it if I find the content
valuable. Odds are, though, it'll turn out like the sites that want me to turn
off my ad blocker: I'll decide the content isn't that important and just close
the tab.

So, in summary, I'll repeat the ad blocker discussion: I don't care if a lot
of sites that depend on ad revenue go under. I've done just fine without
network TV and cable for the last ten years, I'll do alright if I don't get
the latest from OutBrain.

~~~
NicoJuicy
NYT and the Economist ( the first you mentioned) are both websites that give
content here away for free ( for ads), the others are probably niche related
to your interests from fans.

I don't have cable also and OutBrain / Taboola really suck. Don't visit
buzzfeed and don't pay currently for articles. Because i pay them with ads.

I'd like to see numbers of how much people actually pay for content, before i
believe that "the old way" works on the web 15 years later and with a lot more
competition... I already hate the paywalled gardens that sometimes show up on
HN. The problem will only get worse

~~~
dredmorbius
Buzzfeed actually do, no matter how much it pains me to admit it, produce some
exceptionally high-quality journalism. It's a small subset of their output,
but it's there.

One argument is that they're using the dreck to subsidise this. I don't know
if that's long-term sustainable, but it's an interesting approach.

There's a _long_ (nearly 200 year) history of this in journalism, dating to
the Penny Press of ~1830. See Tim Wu's _Attention Merchants_.

------
mikestew
Were there a publicly-traded company that manufactures small violins
(preferably the one that makes "world's smallest"), I'd go long on their stock
right now.

I mean, who do they expect to persuade with this? Is there anyone not tied to
the adtech industry shouting, "Damn you, Apple, and your assault on open web
standards!" 'cuz me, I'm thinking, "without even reading the article, if the
ad industry is upset about it, it must be good."

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
"We routinely send you malware without an iota of shame or responsibility, but
how _dare_ you not store for us the tools we need to track, productize, and
sell you like livestock!"

Is there any reasonable response to this besides, "yeah, go fuck yourself"?

This is bullies crying that their victim didn't show up by the flagpole at 3pm
for his beating.

I sincerely hope they go out of business -- these companies are toxic and
canerous. But that's a rant long enough to fill a book.

~~~
pas
There is money in "creative communications", money in semi-captive audiences.
(Every time you want to read an article that has a hundred ads around it.)

There will be people exploiting that.

AdBlock works pretty well though.

The real problem is that people don't have the intrinsic need of blocking
those fucking ads, because they are dumb as fuck :(

But we have YouTube and a lot of sites that live off ad revenue. (That search
engine thing too, you might have heard about it.)

------
outsidetheparty
What's especially infuriating about the advertisers' spin here is that Apple
appears to have gone to a lot of effort to _not_ destroy their business model.
They're not simply blocking third-party tracking cookies, they're expiring or
partitioning them more rapidly based on how infrequently the user interacts
with a given website.

[https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking-
prevention...](https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking-prevention/)

~~~
tinus_hn
Conveniently, some parties like mostly Google but also Facebook and Twitter
have both a big presence in the tracker space and also a site users often
visit directly. Their information is going to get much more valuable.

~~~
alethiophile
Do Google ad tracking cookies actually live on the google.com domain? Seems
like an ethical violation of some kind if so.

~~~
slackoverflower
None of these changes really affect Google, since users typically use their
services every day. It's almost like Apple is helping Google get more
powerful. It's the smaller ad networks and exchanges that will suffer a lot.

------
Steko
> In an open letter expected to be published this afternoon, the groups
> describe the new standards as “opaque and arbitrary,”

Funny, "opaque and arbitrary" is exactly how I'd describe the web of 3rd party
tracking of consumers these companies engage in. When all of these groups
agree to openly disclose everything they do to track users, see the databases
they maintain on us and allow easy opt outs like agreeing to follow the wishes
of users who enable Do Not Track ... then I'll consider reenabling 3rd party
cookies, etc.

~~~
MrMorden
If the ad networks actually honored "DNT", Apple wouldn't need to implement
this mitigation. For that matter, what are they smoking to make them believe
I'll purchase $PRODUCT any second now when I still haven't clicked the
123489th retargeted ad?

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Sometimes you can judge the merit and effectiveness of an action based on who
is complaining about it. It seems that what Apple is doing is effective in
limiting tracking. Kudos to Apple!

------
ballenf
I really hope advertisers are unrelenting in their attack on Apple over this,
at least until Streisand hears about it. How dare Apple give users the tools
to staunch the flow of their data?

We all know that newspapers could never have existed without all that tracking
of which ads readers saw. And broadcast TV was a universal failure in reaching
consumers with advertising. The idea of advertising without tracking is just
unprecedented.

The advertisers arrogance and tone deafness here is just unfathomable.

From the outside, it appears tracking benefits aggregators more than these ad
agencies. Without tracking, it makes a good agency even more important as they
keep track of which sites generally have which audiences and target ads based
on those trends instead of relying solely on doubleclick's data. Google and FB
have a lot to lose here, not advertisers nor ad agencies, imo.

I think the end of pervasive tracking would not kill internet advertising, it
would just make value-add middlemen more valuable. I know I'm ignoring re-
targeting, but gawd the reason I didn't buy your widget while I was on your
site is not because I forgot to put in my CC info. Re-targeting is not
something humanity should be proud of (even though it's hard to run certain
internet businesses and be competitive without it as long your competition is
using it).

It almost feels like a luxury that when you examine an item at Best Buy and
decide against purchasing that a store clerk doesn't jump in front of your car
asking you to reconsider as you're trying to pull out of the parking lot. Or
follow you home...

------
pavel_lishin
> _They argue it 'll hurt user experience and campaign targeting_

Uh, it's the ads that are hurting the user experience. And I don't
particularly care if your targeting suffers.

~~~
DannyB2
Here's a better euphemism:

> “Blocking cookies in this manner will drive a wedge between brands and their
> customers, . . ."

How about: . . . will drive a wedge between brands the those who they want to
exploit.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I don't think brands are the ones doing the exploitation. They just want me to
buy their new doodad. AdTech is doing all the exploiting here, it seems to me,
on both sides.

~~~
Rumudiez
In house marketing can be just as aggressive as third party, so I don't think
we can fault one more than other.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I disagree, we absolutely can. Bounty and Charmin don't aggressively shove
cookies onto my machine, or execute arbitrary javascript on anywhere near the
same scale that ad networks do.

------
tomc1985
Of course it will hurt campaign performance and targeting, which is exactly
why they need to block those cookies.

I have never seen such a group so spoiled as marketing peeps. These guys and
gals demand blood from stones to justify their "spend", and have been single-
handedly responsible for so much of the web's dark patterns and annoyances.

Anything to cast these louts back to the stone age is a good innovation. Once
advertising goes back to products selling you on themselves, and not this
emotional "lifestyle" BS, we can throw the marketeers a bone. Until then, piss
off!

------
shruubi
Honestly, it tickles me pink to see ad companies having a public sook about a
company standing up for the end-user.

What is amazing is the level of arrogance these ad companies have to accuse
apple of damaging the "infrastructure of the modern internet", and speaking as
though they care at all about the consumer when if it meant that these ad
companies could make even a single dollar more or could track people even a
little bit more they would burn the internet to the ground to achieve that
goal.

------
deweller
This is coming. Chrome is implementing a built in ad blocker.

Advertisers and content providers can either start getting used to the idea
now and get ahead of the trend. Or they can watch their business model suffer
and scramble to catch up later.

~~~
bpicolo
When their main revenue is ads? Will there be "acceptable ads"?

~~~
jicks
If I remember correctly, the idea is to block ads that don't conform to the
standards set by the Coalition for Better Ads [0]. Google is (as you can
expect) a member of this coalition (just like Facebook and many other
companies [1]).

[0]:
[https://www.betterads.org/standards/](https://www.betterads.org/standards/)
[1]: [https://www.betterads.org/members/](https://www.betterads.org/members/)

~~~
MichaelGG
I get Google ads on mobile that flash and mislead. Virus Scan! Battery Scan!
Clean Your Phone! With yellow and red. So at least on Android, Google serves
tons of shit deserving blocking.

------
jcfrei
If I understood the workings of the intelligent tracking prevention correctly
( [https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking-
prevention...](https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking-prevention/)
) then this looks painful for ad networks which don't serve their ads from a
domain with lots of organic traffic. Google and facebook should be fine given
that lots of users go there at least once a month.

~~~
javajocky
Actually though it blocks all the targeting. So, for example (and you can try
it yourself now -- it's live in the High Sierra beta that you can download
right now), when you go to Facebook, you will no longer see ads that are
targeted to your interests/sites you've visited. Facebook makes it's money off
of ads that are personalized -- generic ads don't sell. Same with Google's Ad
network -- it's targeting you based on demos that it will no longer be able to
track. Yes, Apple may be protecting its users but this is a direct hit at
Google and Facebook's ad revenues, particularly on mobile, where Safari has a
much higher browser share. Download it yourself and try it out; it really is
fascinating to see the difference.

------
bdibs
Glad to see it happening, props to Apple actually standing up for their
customers.

Then again, I'm sure it's fairly easy for a company that doesn't rely on
scraping data from their customers.

------
basseq
A translation of the open letter from advertising companies to Apple:

    
    
      September 14, 2017
    

We're just now realizing what this means.

    
    
      An Open Letter from the Digital Advertising Community
    

"Community" means we're down to earth and neighborly.

    
    
      The undersigned organizations are leading trade associations 
      for the digital advertising and marketing industries, 
      collectively representing thousands of companies that 
      responsibly participate in and shape today’s digital 
      landscape for the millions of consumers they serve.
    

We sell ads. Lots of ads. So much money. We're "responsible" for certain
definitions of responsible. Like your teenager is "responsible" for crashing
your new Porsche into a ravine. Speaking of Porsches, have we mentioned how
much money we make selling ads?

    
    
      We are deeply concerned about the Safari 11 browser update 
      that Apple plans to release, as it overrides and replaces 
      existing user-controlled cookie preferences with Apple’s own 
      set of opaque and arbitrary standards for cookie handling.
    

That 99% of users think a cookie is a type of desert is neither here nor
there. And by "user-controlled", we mean "defaults that benefit us".

We're also annoyed they didn't ask us. We're a bit hit at parties.

    
    
      Safari’s new “Intelligent Tracking Prevention” would change 
      the rules by which cookies are set and recognized by 
      browsers. In addition to blocking all third-party cookies 
      (i.e. those set by a domain other than the one being 
      visited), as the current version of Safari does, this new 
      functionality would create a set of haphazard rules over the 
      use of first-party cookies (i.e. those set by a domain the 
      user has chosen to visit) that block their functionality or 
      purge them from users’ browsers without notice or choice.
    

"Haphazard" meaning "we disagree". Also, we 100% agree with user notice or
choice, unless the user chooses to block ads or desires notice on how we're
using their data. That's, uh... proprietary.

    
    
      The infrastructure of the modern Internet depends on 
      consistent and generally applicable standards for cookies, 
      so digital companies can innovate to build content, 
      services, and advertising that are personalized for users 
      and remember their visits. Apple’s Safari move breaks those 
      standards and replaces them with an amorphous set of 
      shifting rules that will hurt the user experience and 
      sabotage the economic model for the Internet.
    

Can we talk about innovative advertising for a minute? We're piloting this
pop-up that completely replaces boring content and downloads an awesome new
app automatically. That app then opens with videos on housewife inventions.

We've put a lot of hard work into sandwiching ourselves as the economic model
for the internet, and it really _grinds our gears_ that anyone would suggest
there are other ways to make money besides working with us.

    
    
      Apple’s unilateral and heavy-handed approach is bad for 
      consumer choice and bad for the ad-supported online content 
      and services consumers love. Blocking cookies in this manner 
      will drive a wedge between brands and their customers, and 
      it will make advertising more generic and less timely and 
      useful. Put simply, machine-driven cookie choices do not 
      represent user choice; they represent browser-manufacturer 
      choice. As organizations devoted to innovation and growth in 
      the consumer economy, we will actively oppose any actions 
      like this by companies that harm consumers by distorting the 
      digital advertising ecosystem and undermining its 
      operations.
    

For example, how will users know which #brand to choose without advertising?
How will our customers survive without us? Might as well shut down this whole
internet thing.

    
    
      We strongly encourage Apple to rethink its plan to impose 
      its own cookie standards and risk disrupting the valuable 
      digital advertising ecosystem that funds much of today’s 
      digital content and services.
    

It's not like Apple's ever forged ahead with risky new business models or
economic decisions before, and open letters are really effective, so we're
confident this will work.

    
    
       Signed,
    

A whole bunch of acronyms.

~~~
vinceguidry
Is there really that much money in online advertising? My impression was that
they're all scrambling to protect their piece of a rapidly shrinking pie.

~~~
stirlo
The market is still growing rapidly, while Google and Facebook are increasing
their share there's still plenty of money to go around.

~~~
dredmorbius
Google and Facebook see 99% of all growth.

[http://fortune.com/2017/04/26/google-facebook-digital-
ads/](http://fortune.com/2017/04/26/google-facebook-digital-ads/)

------
Smoosh
To quote this fine article:
[http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm](http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm)

"Advertisers will tell you it has to be this way, but in dealing with
advertisers you must remember they are professional liars."

------
Ajedi32
If this their reaction to mere cookie blocking, I wonder how they'll react
next year when Chrome starts blocking certain types of ads entirely.

~~~
doe88
I'm waiting to see how it plays out, because if they whitelist their ads while
blacklisting third party ads for arbitrary reasons edicted by them, while
being an ad company themselves I can foresee some legal challenges/complaints.

~~~
plopz
I thought they were just adding the functionality to block ads but they
weren't creating a filter list. So I would assume adoption would be similar to
how it is now, but with the actual blocking being much more performant for
users who add filter lists.

------
bpicolo
Seems awesome. Hope Firefox does something similar.

~~~
kibwen
Firefox's private browsing mode has been doing this for a while now, so
they've got the tech in place and tested; I get the impression that they're
waiting for other browsers to start the ball rolling on turning this on by
default so that ad-supported websites don't just start outright blacklisting
Firefox in retaliation. Safari doesn't have to worry about that, because of
Apple's platform effect. Makes one wish that FirefoxOS worked out...

------
marlokk
[https://adnauseam.io/](https://adnauseam.io/) for safari when

------
benologist
I wonder if advertising companies will end up fighting for decades to protect
their parasitic ways like big tobacco, oil companies etc.

------
javajocky
You know who's not? B2B publishers. Because if this spreads, if you want to
buy a niche market, you have to buy directly from that niche seller (for
example, if you want to reach pig farmers, you'll need to buy ads on a pig
farmer site -- it's the only way). So the ad networks hate it; direct sellers
LOVE it.

------
PeachPlum
The Law of Unintended Consequences may yet have the next laugh.

~~~
flukus
I fear you're right. There are already techniques like canvas fingerprinting
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canvas_fingerprinting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canvas_fingerprinting))
on top of what the browser already shares
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_fingerprint](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Device_fingerprint)).

You aren't safe from tracking unless you disable javascript entirely. The only
winning move is not to play.

~~~
PeachPlum
Even without JS, my browser scored "only 5 browsers out of the 481932 observed
browsers (0.00 %) have exactly the same fingerprint as yours."

[https://amiunique.org/fpNoJs](https://amiunique.org/fpNoJs)

With JS turned on [https://amiunique.org/fp](https://amiunique.org/fp) I got :

"your full fingerprint is unique among the 481933 collected so far."

------
dep_b
The thing about third party cookies that I really love is getting "targeted"
ads, that make all banners all of a sudden have the appearance of saying
something about you or what you have been doing, even when they don't.

Like the present you just secretly bought already for your wife being
plastered all over your screen every site you visit. Or even better:
"Ukrainian women want to meet you!". Yep yep. Must've searched for that,
right? Didn't ya?

------
nikkwong
So.. I'm assuming Apple is not full on ignoring the `Set-Cookie` http response
header, or persistent sessions as we know it are gone. ..Right?

~~~
paulgb
I'm guessing they aren't messing with first-party cookies, just third party
ones.

~~~
jcfrei
Isn't disabling third-party cookies common already? Are advertising companies
alarmed because this "Intelligent Tracking Prevention" is on by default?

~~~
wingworks
Common for tech people maybe, doubt it for the vast majority of "normal"
users.

------
Reason077
I think targeted ads are boring. Or at least, the way they're often used is
boring.

What benefit is there to keep showing me the same ads over and over for
products I already use, websites I once visited, and products I once shopped
for?

Show me quality ads for products and services that are new and interesting!

------
smegel
If these guys are pissed off, you know someone is doing something right.

------
warrenm
hahaha - they're only just _now_ getting upset?

------
dredmorbius
Who are the members of the Advertising Bureau, American Advertising
Federation, the Association of National Advertisers?

------
dwighttk
sounds like Apple is doing something right!

------
donohoe
As someone who works partly in the ad ecosystem, all I can say is: YESSS!!!!

------
andy_ppp
Why can’t the ad companies just use localStorage instead? Is that blocked too.
I’m guessing this fucks up the Javascript paywall I’ve been building.

------
whipoodle
Good.

------
dang
Url changed from [https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/09/14/1739234/every-
major...](https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/09/14/1739234/every-major-
advertising-group-is-blasting-apple-for-blocking-cookies-in-the-safari-
browser), which points to this.

