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Apple Finds Its Next Big Business: Showing Ads on Your iPhone

(www.bloomberg.com)
115 points miles | 3 comments | 14 Aug 22 18:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.707s | source
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tailspin2019 ◴[14 Aug 22 19:04 UTC] No.32461939[source]▶
Apple needs to be very careful that they don’t erode the things that most differentiate them from their competition.
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random314 ◴[14 Aug 22 22:08 UTC] No.32463463[source]▶
You are very mistaken if you think Apples recent "privacy" push wasn't about taking over advertising revenue from Facebook, Google, snap and tiktok
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rising-sky ◴[14 Aug 22 22:13 UTC] No.32463515[source]▶
They could have done that without a so called "privacy push", they "own" the device and if they chose to, could provide advertisers a level of targeting that the mentioned entities cannot match without resorting to privacy as a red herring
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1. NBJack ◴[15 Aug 22 01:44 UTC] No.32464988[source]▶
They can't compete with the big ad players and they know it. They tried. It's another classic example of "if you can't beat them, use your other enormous industry leverage to change the game to your advantage." Truth is, I don't think Apple realizes yet how critical that tracking data is to keep advertisers happy and informed. I predict that they will enter the ad market in full 3 years from now, and the existing players will push for an antitrust lawsuit in 5. If they survive that is.
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2. disgruntledphd2 ◴[15 Aug 22 10:52 UTC] No.32468076[source]▶
> Truth is, I don't think Apple realizes yet how critical that tracking data is to keep advertisers happy and informed

I think they do. Note that Apple can still track conversions on apps (gaming apps is where the money is), which basically no-one else can without getting ATT agreement. Note additionally how Apple (and Google's) business are conveniently excluded from ATT concerns (because they track installs differently).

Like the gaming advertisers on iOS have nowhere else to go now that Apple have hobbled the competition, which they tried to do with App Store ads about 5 years ago.

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3. random314 ◴[17 Aug 22 00:27 UTC] No.32490849[source]▶
Further, Apple will now do it's own tracking while observing privacy by keeping the tracking data inside the device [1].

It has already disabled the ability of 3rd party apps to perform tracking locally while preserving privacy by "disabling the ability of apps to share data locally within a device". If you click an Amazon ad on Facebook and open the Amazon app, Apple will not allow Amazon to report a successful conversion locally (thus preserving privacy) to the Facebook app.

However the same restriction won't apply to Apple as they are the operating system.

Note that Apple is always complaining about "privacy", not Ads. They are going to go all in on Ads.

[1] I suspect law enforcement will still be able to access the local data from the phone, so the privacy preserving tracking might not work when you need it the most.