<i>"and Apple has deliberately framed the question such that almost no-one will say yes"</i><p>Translation: Apple worded the question plainly and without deception.
"and Apple has deliberately framed the question such that almost no-one will say yes" ... "We could spend a lot of time arguing about the rights and wrongs of privacy and Apple’s framing and steering and use of its market dominance"<p>Nice demonstration of apophasis there.<p>Regardless, how else should they frame it? The question seems incredibly concise and matter of fact. Indeed, the question simply claims that it will "ask" the app not to track, which seems pretty broad and permissive.
<i>you can target an Economist reader a week later on a different website. If FLoC works, you can still do that.</i><p><a href="https://github.com/WICG/floc" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/WICG/floc</a> won't really let advertisers do that, this is what <a href="https://github.com/WICG/turtledove" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/WICG/turtledove</a> is for<p>(Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)
> Before the internet, that meant car ads in car magazines and watch ads in the Economist. Ads were based on context, and on inferring the audience from the context.<p>You can still do this. Car ads on car websites. Watch ads on the Economist website.<p>Has there been any research on the effectiveness of retargeting?
What I find most telling is that in the article, not a single thought is dedicated to the user.<p>A deep introspection of advertisers, browsers, publishers. Users, the fundamental owners of the data we're talking about, seem to not even be at the table.
I for one am enjoying the new world of random ads I am getting. It feels like being let out of a bubble. I get to see all sorts of products I had never thought about. Not relevant ones, but the personalized ads never worked anyway.<p>Personalized ads were always about showing you ads for diapers just after your child had outgrown them, or ads for a crappy car just after you had bought a good car. Meh.
> When those publishers are in the news business, this is another trade-off - pay walls (and privacy!) conflict with reach and public purpose, and again they tend to work best for the strongest.<p>I think the most interesting "ads are good" argument I've heard is being able to give free tools to people who don't have the discretionary budget to pay for things like premium news. A bit sad about information paywalls over this.<p>At the same time, I'd still gamble that this 'apocalypse' will prove to be created because there wasn't pressure to perform better with a limited ad capabilities. My bet would still be that things will be fine even after the playing board is tamed -- the markets just need some time to react and correct.
> Apple has deliberately framed the question such that almost no-one will say yes<p>Not quoting the question makes it easier for the author to frame the formulation as malicious without risking the reader coming to a different conclusion. Here's the question:<p>"Allow APP to track your activity across other companies' apps and websites?<p>Your data will be used to deliver personalized apps to you.<p>[Ask App Not to Track]<p>[Allow]"<p>(AFAICT, the second sentence can be different, e.g. "Your data will be used to measure advertising efficiency", depending on the app.)
As a small manufacturing company we're really struggling to replace Google Ads now that it no longer works.<p>We've had to start doing horrific things like searching potential customers through the directory and sending unsolicited emails
I think the article misses the point totally. I think the question is how much data is enough for advertisers and companies? The problem I see is that companies like Google/Facebook is that they have too much information gathered about users.<p>I get that all this information is great for targeting me with better ads, but I think there should be a limit to what data is collected and for how long it is kept.<p>Personally, I hope Congress (USA) creates some laws to allow consumers to opt out of all this tracking. If it is truly beneficial for users, then they will opt-in
I'm confused as to what FedEx has to do with this article. It is in the article's title, but is only mentioned in passing in the concluding paragraph.
From the article -- <i>"Ads were based on context, and on inferring the audience from the context."</i><p>This is incorrect. Since the beginning of advertising there have been people who survey those who read a particular magazine, newspaper, watch a particular show. And for those who are willing to share those habits with advertisers <i>PAY THEM MONEY</i> for that. Ever heard the term "Neilson family"? That was a family that agreed to put a special box on their television which recorded which channels you watched, when, and for how long. It would then aggregate that information and send it to advertisers and broadcasters alike. Based on who the "audience" was, they would negotiate advertising rights. And from the very beginning broadcasters try to "game" the results with known desirable content during "sweeps weeks" which were the weeks where the statistics were gathered.<p>Nearly every periodical I ever subscribed too occasionally sent a "marketing survey" with some compensation for filling it out like an extra year of subscription or a branded bag or something. There were, and ARE, periodicals today where the only "subscription price" you pay is giving up your personal data about why you want to read that periodical.<p>So the "apocolypse" here, is that these platform owners found a tasty revenue stream by disintermediating all of the surveyors and poll takers and returning statistics with <i>100% participation</i>. No modelling necessary, here are the <i>exact</i> characteristics of your readers.<p>They didn't give their users a choice, they just took that private data and sold it.<p>And now they are whining, loudly, that OMG that value we were stealing? They want us to <i>pay</i> for that? That could ruin us!<p>Newsflash, it won't ruin you. Does this mean the end of "free" journalism? Maybe, but it was never free to begin with, it only felt free.
I feel that the solution to the pay for content problem is micropayments.<p>Why do I have to pay subscription to 10 news papers if i only read 2 articles per month from each? Why can’t I have a button at the bottom that says pay 10 cents to read the whole article where payment happens instantly without redirects and filling credit card info.<p>Why does paypal/stripe have a fixed minimum fee of $0.30 for doing a database update?<p>Here is an example of what I am talking about that is implemented via the lightning network: <a href="https://yalls.org/" rel="nofollow">https://yalls.org/</a>
As someone who works in marketing, I tend to think that traditional mediums like billboards or direct mail tend to be highly underrated specifically because the tracking is not as detailed. As we move to a world with less data for digital ads, I have to imagine the playing field will be levelled out.<p>But really, the winners are Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon, LinkedIn etc. Nearly all of our digital ad purchases have been directly on the big platforms. In-app or network ads have increasingly been absolute dogs for user acquisition anyway.<p>Meanwhile, I can pay Facebook directly to access their users and they don't have to give up any of their valuable data to anyone to do it because it's all in a closed system.
FTA: "One side-effect of this was relocation of value - you can target an Economist reader a week later on a different website."<p>Don't this new tracking restrictions favor content creators at the expense of advertising networks?<p>Let me explain better: If I understand well, now The Economist could sell exclusive access to <i>their</i> readers by selling advertising directly to the advertiser? I believe this gives media with a certain volume of visitors and engagement an entire new leverage over "legacy adtech"
I am always so surprised when I read articles like this by people in the "ad tech" space by the amount of sheer entitlement to people's attention and data. Apple making this move is treated as if they were denying access to a natural resource, like Nestle putting a fence around your local lake and selling you the water.<p>Ads are not inherently good, consumers don't <i>need</i> them, and ad companies don't have any right whatsoever to our attention or data. If it can be abused, it will be, and Google and Facebook have shown you can make tens of billions off of personal data and attention. To me it's fundamentally immoral. To see the terrifying endgame to all this, check out "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by Shoshana Zuboff.
> But it’s also worth stepping up another level again, and asking what advertisers are trying to do, anyway. People say ‘privacy’ so often that one can lose sight of the fact that advertisers don’t care who you are - they just want to show ads to people that might be interested in them, and not to show ads to people who won’t be interested. They don’t want to ‘violate your privacy’ - they want to show diaper ads to parents, car ads to people who want a car and watch ads to rich people.<p>This guy says this like advertisers have an inalienable right to show ads to people. Get the heck out of here.
I’m quite confused by the paragraph arguing that advertisers don’t want to violate my privacy. So if I’m a parent and rather keep that private from everyone, how’s showing me diaper ads by obtaining that information from somewhere I didn’t suspect not a violation of my privacy?
> I think it’s very likely that Apple is looking at offering this in third-party apps and in Safari as well
[browser analyses your behaviour and puts you into (mostly) anonymous, interest-based cohorts]<p>It seems to me very unlikely.
<i>"advertisers don’t care who you are - they just want to show ads to people that might be interested in them, and not to show ads to people who won’t be interested. They don’t want to ‘violate your privacy’"</i><p>Amen!
<p><pre><code> "here’s a bunch of reasons why this might not work, not least that no-one except Google and Apple want Google and Apple to have that much control over publishing and advertising. "
</code></pre>
I've said this previously, if you for a second think Apple is protecting you against evil "Social Media company" or "Evil X Advertiser", you are wrong. Apple is only looking out for Apple. And they want to be the one who controls user data. Plain and simple.<p>The enemy of your enemy is not necesarily your friend.<p>Things SHOULD change. Moving the power from one big corp to another big corp is not the answer. No matter how convenient it may seem.
“Chrome and Safari are turning off third party cookies anyway.” Is that really true though? I though advertisers are getting around this despite browsers’ efforts.
> ... one can lose sight of the fact that advertisers don’t care who you are<p>Companies were literally using Facebook's ad targeting to discriminate against certain groups of people [1]. There is also the Cambridge Analytica scandal to concern ourselves with too.<p>1: <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/03/28/707614254/hud-slaps-facebook-with-housing-discrimination-charge" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/2019/03/28/707614254/hud-slaps-facebook-...</a>
Advertisers may not want to "violate my privacy," but they also don't want to <i>protect</i> my privacy. They will be happy to collect rich information about me inadvertently, and then leak it with total impunity.<p>I'm sure the bull in the china shop doesn't want to break any porcelain, either.
> A version of this essay was sent to premium subscribers to my newsletter earlier this week. Find out more here.<p>The solution is right there on the page, just not in the article itself.