Apple's Ad-Targeting Crackdown Shakes Up Ad Market (theinformation.com) 105
Two years ago, Apple launched an aggressive battle against ads that track users across the web. Today executives in the online publishing and advertising industries say that effort has been stunningly effective -- posing a problem for advertisers looking to reach affluent consumers. The Information reports: Since Apple introduced what it calls its Intelligent Tracking Prevention feature in September 2017, and with subsequent updates last year, advertisers have largely lost the ability to target people on Safari based on their browsing habits with cookies, the most commonly used technology for tracking. One result: The cost of reaching Safari users has fallen over 60% in the past two years, according to data from ad tech firm Rubicon Project. Meanwhile ad prices on Google's Chrome browser have risen slightly.
That reflects the fact that advertisers pay more money for ads that can be targeted at people with specific demographics and interests. "The allure of a Safari user in an auction has plummeted," said Rubicon Project CEO Michael Barrett. "There's no easy ability to ID a user." This shift is significant because iPhone owners tend to be more affluent and therefore more attractive to advertisers. Moreover, Safari makes up 53% of the mobile browser market in the U.S., according to web analytics service Statscounter. Only about 9% of Safari users on an iPhone allow outside companies to track where they go on the web, according to Nativo, which sells software for online ad selling. It's a similar story on desktop, although Safari has only about 13% of the desktop browser market. In comparison, 79% of people who use Google's Chrome browser allow advertisers to track their browsing habits on mobile devices through cookies. (Nativo doesn't have historical data so couldn't say what these percentages were in the past.)
That reflects the fact that advertisers pay more money for ads that can be targeted at people with specific demographics and interests. "The allure of a Safari user in an auction has plummeted," said Rubicon Project CEO Michael Barrett. "There's no easy ability to ID a user." This shift is significant because iPhone owners tend to be more affluent and therefore more attractive to advertisers. Moreover, Safari makes up 53% of the mobile browser market in the U.S., according to web analytics service Statscounter. Only about 9% of Safari users on an iPhone allow outside companies to track where they go on the web, according to Nativo, which sells software for online ad selling. It's a similar story on desktop, although Safari has only about 13% of the desktop browser market. In comparison, 79% of people who use Google's Chrome browser allow advertisers to track their browsing habits on mobile devices through cookies. (Nativo doesn't have historical data so couldn't say what these percentages were in the past.)
Working as intended (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I can tell, there's no reason I shouldn't be cheering this news.
Re:Working as intended (Score:4, Interesting)
I tried to cheer the news, but it turns out I’ve already used up my allotment of free articles.
Seriously though, I have a love-hate relationship with online ads. I hate seeing them, and find the concept of being “tracked” somewhat creepy, but I love not having to open my wallet to access a site. There’s gotta be some way to meet in the middle.
Re:Working as intended (Score:5, Insightful)
a) don't track me
b) don't have sound or video
c) aren't obnoxiously intrusive to the browsing experience.
Sadly google and co have pushed well beyond the boundaries of acceptable behaviour in all 3 of those, therefore I ad block.
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for some time I was actively using adblock plus since it had legitimate advertising. The ad industry just made that more and more difficult with more ad blocker-blockers so I use more brutal technology now (no - this does not encourage me to accept advertising).
The scary thing is that, within a week or two of starting, the web experience is actually better with UMatrix + custom Greasemonkey / Tampermonkey scripts and all the annoying fiddling than the expe
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In the meantime, gotta agree with uBlock. Someone at work was getting a fake tech support site because the clicked on the sponsored result in Google instead of the organic one below. Switched from Adblock Plus to uBlock Origin, now they don't get those ads on Google.
I bet greasemonkey is cool. When userstyles wasn't a compromised extension, I used it to change
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Re: Working as intended (Score:1)
I like advertisers and site operators needing to target their viewers by the types of articles they provide.
I don't want to be part of a category, say "embedded controller developers" who Google has identified and can target ads at by some tracking mechanism. This allows them to target me in general web content.
I would rather have the site publishers need to publish articles of interest to me in order to get me looking at pages with ads on them.
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I like advertisers and site operators needing to target their viewers by the types of articles they provide.
Do you also like having to look at 10 times the ads as compensation for targeting ads to the article instead of the viewer? Would you instead prefer that the major news sites adopt paywalls? Or "cost per action" ads, where the price to view an article is putting in your credit card number to sign up for a 30-day free trial of something?
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Cost per action or paywalls would be fine. But for the kind of content that I like, there are vendors who would be happy to pay for targeted advertising. I.e. chip vendors, dev tool vendors.
For general 'News' sites- I already pay for one such site, it was about $100 for a year and got me their print publication send in the mail as well for that price.
The kicker is that if you strictly noscript the New York Times it blocks their paywall script, so you can just read the articles on the site. The extra crap
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Tracking is NOT a necessity for advertising. No matter how much google tries to convince people it is essential it isn't.
Of course it's not essential. But what it does is raise the value per ad, which in turn reduces the number of ads per page that are needed to generate a given amount of revenue for the site. Perhaps you're too young to remember what web advertising was like before Google, but it made the worst of the clickbait progressive article pages we have now look tame. In order to get user attention ads flashed, jumped, consumed an enormous percentage of page real estate and were generally horrible.
Re: Working as intended (Score:1)
You are blaming the general immaturity of banner ad creation on targeted ads. Web content in general 'back then' was rougher and more flashy presentation was used in general.
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Of course it's not essential. But what it does is raise the value per ad, which in turn reduces the number of ads per page that are needed to generate a given amount of revenue for the site.
Which does nothing to reduce the number of adds, it just increases the sites revenue.
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Actually Google has a new API in Chrome that allows for ads to get paid for impressions without tracking. A new HTML tag tells the browser to note that the ad was viewed and at some later time, perhaps a few days later, send notification along with the minimum data required to identify the ad (but not the user).
Apple has a new API for Safari that does basically the same thing.
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I don't know what APIs you're talking about, but after reading that, my first thought is wondering how advertisers can determine the effectiveness of such an ad campaign. The most important thing about most ad campaigns these days is not whether the ad was shown, nor even whether the ad was clicked on, but rather whether that click resulted in a purchase on the advertiser's website. If you can't identify the user, how can you tie that ad view to the purchase?
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If it's a click-through they can just encode an ID in the URL. It doesn't affect that, it's only for ad views.
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"Don't be Evil" left the building shortly after Google acquired Doubleclick - that was a Poison Pill takeover of a company which should have been left to die - which ended up taking over Google.
Re:Working as intended (Score:5, Informative)
I can think of one. Say you're running a website. You get 20% of your traffic on iOS and 5% on macOS. Now let's say that, hypothetically, the value of Safari ads drops so much that those 25% of your users only generate 5% of your ad revenue. You're about to deploy a really complicated new feature on your website, and have limited resources to spend on coding and testing. Do you spend 25% of your effort making it work well in Safari, do you spend 5%, or do you say, "This site works best in Chrome"?
I'm not saying that this is likely to occur, mind you, because Safari users do tend to be relatively high spenders relative to the average, which likely cancels out some of the losses due to lack of tracking, but it isn't out of the realm of possibility.
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You already know 25% of your users are on iOS and macOS.
Re: Working as intended (Score:1)
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Re: Working as intended (Score:2)
Slashdot? Absolutely. How familiar are you with this site? The operators are outright hostile to user concerns.
Re: Working as intended (Score:2)
The site that went out of its way to make a less functional mobile version for over 25% of its users?
I definitely don't think they care about the UX.
The "back" button on the mobile site is a literal browser back button, why? Why not have to go to where I came from in /. Or up one level?
Instead it often closes my tab.
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It's more complex than that. Sales patterns need to be considered. The iOS 20% may be generating a much larger volume of income. Same applies to the macOS 5%. Small brick and mortar retailers often refer to such customers as whales, because they consistently spend much more than the average customer, and tend to buy high ticket, high mark-up products. Spending 20 percent of your time and resources to accommodate 40 percent of your gross income is a no-brainer.
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So you are saying that being on an Apple device doesn't protect you and in fact advertisers will target you even harder than the general public. Good to get that confirmed.
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You're losing users and money.
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No, you misunderstand me. I'm not talking about sites that sell goods. Sites that sell goods almost always support every browser that they can (though to be fair, it has been only three days since I found a website that wouldn't let me add items to the cart in Safari, but worked correctly in Firefox, so maybe it isn't entirely safe to make that assumption).
I'm talking about sites that do useful things, and earn money by selling ads. If the ads for a given platform become less valuable, then those sites g
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I'm not saying that this is likely to occur, mind you, because Safari users do tend to be relatively high spenders relative to the average, which likely cancels out some of the losses due to lack of tracking, but it isn't out of the realm of possibility.
Except that is assuming that targeting and tracking actually works. I'm skeptical. I'm one of those Apple product users that spends a lot of money online. I some times choose to get email ads from companies I buy from. "Oh-it's an email from TechBargains." I can keep or delete. But they know for a fact that I'm interested.
side note, the get erased and eliminated and never bought from again if they ever sell my email address to other companies.
So here is someone that would seem to be exactly suited for t
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Except that is assuming that targeting and tracking actually works. I'm skeptical. I'm one of those Apple product users that spends a lot of money online. I some times choose to get email ads from companies I buy from. "Oh-it's an email from TechBargains." I can keep or delete. But they know for a fact that I'm interested.
You're right that targeting and tracking as currently implemented is useless 90% of the time, but that's the fault of the advertisers doing their targeting in all the wrong ways. Most advertisers seem to think "You were looking at Apple laptops, so I'll use a ridiculous premium bid and try to convince you to buy your Apple laptop from me." This is, of course, an exercise in futility, because by the time the advertiser knows that I'm considering replacing this defective piece of junk with 6+ bad keys, I've
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Except that is assuming that targeting and tracking actually works. I'm skeptical. I'm one of those Apple product users that spends a lot of money online. I some times choose to get email ads from companies I buy from. "Oh-it's an email from TechBargains." I can keep or delete. But they know for a fact that I'm interested.
You're right that targeting and tracking as currently implemented is useless 90% of the time, but that's the fault of the advertisers doing their targeting in all the wrong ways. Most advertisers seem to think "You were looking at Apple laptops, so I'll use a ridiculous premium bid and try to convince you to buy your Apple laptop from me." This is, of course, an exercise in futility, because by the time the advertiser knows that I'm considering replacing this defective piece of junk with 6+ bad keys, I've already probably placed the order.
What the advertisers should be doing is saying, "This person probably just bought a new Mac. I bet he/she needs a new Time Machine backup drive," then advertise that with a significantly elevated bid because of the strong likelihood of that follow-on purchase.
Yes - that would make sense. One of the silliest things I've seen is ads for something I already bought. Also, what got me blocking ads and scripts was one time I bought some new tires from Tire Rack. Must have been some bad scripts for ads in use at the time, but the next several pages I went to had all the same Tire Rack ad, in every ad space on the pages.
Re:Working as intended (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Working as intended (Score:4, Informative)
Yea that's cause you're using OAuth2 which is a horrible protocol to be using for SSO that requires third party embeds to work properly.
OAuth2 is meant for granting Service A API access to Service B while you're logged into Service A but need to authenticate with Service B to provide Service A with a token to access Service B.
It is NOT designed for authentication.
Switch to a real authentication protocol like SAML 2.0 and stop playing games.
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So you're complaining that a web browser doesn't let you get away with implementing a broken authentication system in a way that it was never intended... Good to know.
Which company do you work for again?
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There's also another problem with the CNAME solution - it's one Adobe have been using for some time with their analytics product)
In short, your website/app or whatever sets cookies in the root of your domain. You then CNAME a third party's server into your domain, and whoosh! your visitors browsers happily sends them all the cookies you set in your domain. Thus, a third party gets cookies you didn't intend them to get. In many cases, there simply isn't a way around it - if you want a cookie that's available
Re: Working as intended (Score:3, Funny)
Allow vs. didn't realize they could block (Score:5, Interesting)
79% of people who use Google's Chrome browser allow advertisers to track their browsing habits
Lets get real here - the percentages break out like this because 79% of Chrome users do not realize you can block these things, and Google has a vested interest in them not really figuring that out. They are not really "allowing" anything, as that implies they made a conscious choice.
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Unfortunately the controls available in Chrome on Android are very limited. At most you can block 3rd party cookies. It doesn't support extensions so no ad-block (although you can use DNS66 or similar to do domain level blocking it's not as effective).
The desktop version is a lot better but still has some major gaps. For example there is no API for clearing site data on a per-site basis, so while you can clear cookies automatically you can't clear the other stuff the site stores.
Good (Score:5, Informative)
Fuck them all right in the pooper without lube for all I care. When I want to buy something, I'll find it myself.
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How would you know, it even exists? Exists, and has the features you find desirable?
Advertisers make money, because what they do is useful... You may not find the efforts of any benefit, but those paying them do — because you buy the advertised products...
We hate intrusive and irrelevant ads, but the advertisers' knowledge of our habits — however creepy — does make the advertising more relevant. Amazon's suggestions, for example, are usuall
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes exactly. Advertisers today *create* demand. They are therefore responsible for poverty, the destruction of the environment and kicking puppies.
Seriously. Letting me know about your product is one thing. The reason modern advertising creeps people out is because it pulls out all the psychological stops to try to manipulate you into doing something you otherwise wouldn't.
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Bzzzz, hold it right there. There is nothing special — uniquely good nor bad — about advertisers today.
They've always done it...
Wow, what an impressive abdication of responsibility for your own (mis)behavior... Advertisers made me do it! Seriously?
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Full of confidence, you know not of what you speak.
You may have noticed we know one or two things today that we didn't in the past? Marketing is no different. Advertisers got interested in psychology at some point, then started actively pushing psychological research. Modern marketing, not just ads but everything down to the architecture of the store, is carefully designed to have the desired p
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For most of humanity's history, the next generation knew more than an earlier one.
And always has been...
Yes, you did — when you claimed, people are being "manipulated" (by marketers) into doing, what they otherwise wouldn't.
Re: Good (Score:4, Interesting)
And why should I care about that? Sure, people make money by advertising to me. That sounds like a net negative to me, not a positive.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
How would you know, it even exists? Exists, and has the features you find desirable?
Maybe I can do a search at the time that I'm looking for something, researching specifically the features that I'm interested in? But that's not what the advertisers want. They want us to think about buying something that we're not thinking about buying. Since none of us like being told to do something, the marketers also want us to believe that these suggestions are benevolent and that we should thank them for watching out for our needs.
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Thank you. I don't get how people don't realize this. Advertising almost never is about informing you. It's about manipulating you.
It's never, "Here's a map of our locations in your area, and here's the menu." It's catchy jingles to stick in your head, attractive people eating impossibly perfect food, "limited time deals" that you must absolutely not miss out on, all the cool people are doing this, etc.
I do a pretty damn good job blocking most advertising from my life, and I have not run into any problems k
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Maybe I can do a search at the time that I'm looking for something, researching specifically the features that I'm interested in?
Without advertisements, how would you learn that "something" exists in the first place?
In addition, since October 2017, Google has allowed paywalled websites to appear in Google Search results alongside free-to-view websites, with no indication in the search results that they are paywalled. Should your web search turn up a bunch of product comparison sites that happen to be behind a paywall, how would you afford $4 per site per month?
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Maybe I can do a search at the time that I'm looking for something, researching specifically the features that I'm interested in?
Without advertisements, how would you learn that "something" exists in the first place?
Ads guess that I need/want something, and these guesses are almost always wrong at the time that I see an ad and also mostly wrong even later in time. In the improbable case where an ad guesses right about my need/want at the right time, the ads by definition never ever try to inform me about the range of choices and how the different characteristics and features benefit me. Ads are not intended to be public service announcements but propaganda intended solely to steer me in a direction that benefits the
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product comparison sites that happen to be behind a paywall
I'll let you know when I actually encounter such a site.
The one I had in mind was Consumer Reports.
Re:Good (Score:4, Interesting)
If they are so amazing, why do I buy something on Amazon, only to have my browser filled with ads for the product THAT I JUST BOUGHT?
If I was paying for ads I would be screaming at the vendors until they stopped showing my paid-for ads to people who have just bought my product and have no intention of buying it again in the immediate term.
That is theft. Plain and simple.
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why do I buy something on Amazon, only to have my browser filled with ads for the product THAT I JUST BOUGHT?
For consumables. Or for another to wear while this one is in the laundry. Or for a gift.
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But when you do, you will choose to buy the one that you have seen advertised. That is the entire point.
Re: Good (Score:2)
And that, as opposed to me finding the options and choosing one in my own terms is a good thing for me how?
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You search for products which solve your problem.
Which presupposes awareness of your problem and solutions thereto in the first place.
Go back to old 'targeted' advertising. (Score:5, Insightful)
There are sites that I actually don't mind the ads. For example EEVblog forums [eevblog.com] have ads based on what people that visit EEVblog would buy. Slashdot used to have a bit better ads.
Then ads started following you everywhere. I don't need an ad for something I search for on google to follow me to Slashdot. Just because I wanted to comparison shop snowblowers doesn't mean I need to see ads for them everywhere. (I don't know how people live without ad blockers).
Or, you know, spam a bunch of ads based on bad criteria to a niche of Facebook users. Spend $150k doing it and go out of business.
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Re:Go back to old 'targeted' advertising. (Score:4, Informative)
Beware of EEVBlog though, the site owner Dave Jones doxxes people he doesn't like. If you use the forums be careful not to reveal your identity, e.g. by buying any of his merchandise or using a firstname.lastname email address.
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Citation needed. I've enjoyed Dave's content for several years and never got the impression he would do something as petty or reactionary as doxing a user, however I don't hang out on the forums much so I may have missed it. I would legitimately like to see examples of this happening, so if anyone has links I would appreciate it.
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Obviously I'm not going to post screenshots of the doxing because that would just be repeating the same crime.
He posted their name and home address on his forum and they got bombarded with spam email and calls, some of it containing child pornography. They were on another forum I was using and I tried to help, even tried contacting the police in Australia, but didn't get very far.
Apple's killer app (Score:5, Insightful)
If they every start selling user data to customers, there's a fairly good chance they'd lose me. Till then, ipads and iphones for me baby.
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I'm pretty sure they are selling your data to customers. You wouldn't know either way. It is entirely closed to you.
Re: Apple's killer app (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Apple's killer app (Score:4, Interesting)
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It would be impossible to keep secret. Even if they sold stuff to only the NSA and by some miracle they managed to keep it secret, the NSA would have to pay them billions to make it worth it ... not going to happen. Trust in greed.
Same as conspiracy theories of them having backdoors, they have no monetary incentive to put them in and government can't force them (at the moment). At most they'll push a backdoored app update to a specific phone because a NSL tells them to do it.
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By the way, what do you mean by "compatibility perks", do you mean compatibility with other Apple's devices and services? Because they aren't exactly known by playing nice with others.
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allow advertisers (Score:2)
A Secret (Score:2)
Iâ(TM)ve never bought ANYTHING based on a web ad. Ever.
Re: A Secret (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:A Secret (Score:5, Informative)
Iâ(TM)ve never bought ANYTHING based on a web ad. Ever.
That is highly unlikely. Ad's aren't just about getting you to click and buy, it is about recognition, association and bias on a sub-conscience level. i.e. so when you need widget X and go into a store you gravitate towards brand Y because you recognize it. I have never bought anything directly based on an Ad, but I would not be so bold as to say one has never influenced my buying decision.
Nope I can confirm the op - me too (Score:4, Interesting)
That's funny :) (Score:2)
If you let the decision bet
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OK, let me rephrase OP.
I don't believe I have ever bought anything based on a web ad. Ever.
BUT.... I have definitely chosen NOT to buy something based on a web ad.
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That is highly unlikely. Ad's aren't just about getting you to click and buy, it is about recognition, association and bias on a sub-conscience level.
Only if you see them. I've been blocking pretty much all ads for two decades now. I can honestly say that it's very, very unlikely that a web ad has even sub-consciously influenced me. Maybe the ones on TV have a little as I fast forwarded through them, but at x60 speed pretty much all car ads look the same.
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Remove bad apples from the advertising industry (Score:2)
Like the ones that :
- target me based on some health issue I looked up on Google for my dad. Ad targeting based on health issues is a no-go area.
- keep chasing me down about $2 pink my little ponys because I looked at one on an auction site once. Criteo is just behaving like a retarded online stalker.
- cover my SlashDot article with a double leaderboard advertisement. Yeah, that's you, Google!
Give me button to have some control and give some feedback.
And then I'm pretty fine with targeted ads about computer
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Like the ones that : - target me based on some health issue I looked up on Google for my dad. Ad targeting based on health issues is a no-go area.
I think you should see this differently. Your web browser gave away your ID to a company providing a web site which then effectively sold your medical information. All the advertisers have done is tell you about this fact. A more unscrupulous person could use medical information to do you actual harm, for example trying to send fake medicine / identifying some way to influence you based on mental illness / creating drugs shortages in your area to push up prices etc.
Based on what happened here you need
I miss hosts file adblock in Android. (Score:3)
I really miss Android's ability to root, mostly for the ability to efficiently block ads with your hosts file (and the ability to record calls, which came in handy with a car warranty dispute.) Android's major advantage used to be its empowerment of power users and the technically minded -- your phone was basically a computer in your pocket, not a toy. You had full system-level access, sd-card support, the works. Lately, between changes in Android and increasingly onerous manufacturers, you're no longer allowed to really own a phone you spent up to a thousand dollars on. It surely won't be long before Android disables blocking by Blokada.
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Rootable Android phones are still out there - from major manufacturers too, even though there are less and less of them.
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Blocking advertising I can't help you with. It has to be a change of attitude to bypass most ads.
In the call recording I found an app that does it on Android 9 and 10. Cube ACR. Follow their instructions and it works. It does at least on my Pixel 2 and 3aXL.
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I really miss Android's ability to root, mostly for the ability to efficiently block ads with your hosts file (and the ability to record calls, which came in handy with a car warranty dispute.) Android's major advantage used to be its empowerment of power users and the technically minded -- your phone was basically a computer in your pocket, not a toy. You had full system-level access, sd-card support, the works. Lately, between changes in Android and increasingly onerous manufacturers, you're no longer allowed to really own a phone you spent up to a thousand dollars on.
There are rootable phones out there... just not recent phones that can be rooted effectively by exploiting security vulnerabilities. The reason rooting has gotten hard is that Android security has gotten very good. You need to buy a phone with an unlockable bootloader. All Google Pixels are unlockable. I think most (all?) Motorolas are unlockable. OnePlus devices are unlockable. There are others. If this is important to you, please vote with your dollars. That's the best way to convince other manufac
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Blokada works by setting up a VPN that routes all of your traffic through a Blockada server, which filters requests to ad-serving sites.
Er, this makes it sound like the server in question is off-device, which would expose your traffic to a third party. The VPN server in question is local, on your device, which eliminates this problem.
Sorry for the misleading description; I should have re-read it before posting.
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Question for those more knowledgable.. (Score:5, Interesting)
2 years! (Score:1)
wow, apple is 'cracking down' on ads for 2 years! all thanks to them it's shaking up the ad market.
i don't know how long i've had got ad+track blocking on my OSS browser (firefox), but it's mostly as long as i can remember.
but noooo, it's because apple, that since 2 years is blocking ads/trackers in Safari, the least used browser of the 3 (chrome, ff, safari), right.
Bullshit 13% (Score:2)
There's no way in hell Safari is 13% of the desktop browser market. I assume the other numbers are bullshit too.
How is this a success? (Score:2)
Setting aside websites that are selling products (which generally have less advertising).
So now safari users on your site cause you to make about 1/4th as much money. Sites like /. aren't doing super well these days.
So this will cause businesses to add more ads, or more aggressive (sound/music/etc.) to offset the lost money.
Also, personalized ads are better. If I am going to be seeing ads (pretending no ad-blocker), I would rather they show me ads on products I may want, verses products I would have 0 int
Not shedding any tears. (Score:2)
At home I use Safari on OSX. I search Google for an item related to my hobby, and none of the websites I visit (same ones) display any ads related to that item.
As long as the latter remains the same, I will gladly be an Apple customer.