Advertising Groups Ask Apple to 'Rethink' New Cookie Tracking Standards in Safari 11

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

Lesson: Build better, more desirable products.

IMO, an aggressive ad campaign implies a product that can't stand on its own.

Example: I can't remember the last time I paid attention to an Apple ad. I know which products I want because I know they are quality and I go looking for them.

Pull, not push.

Simply not true. Who do you think makes the most desirable products in the world? Many would say Apple. They still advertise. Heck, a Keynote is nothing more than a type of advertisement. Tesla advertises. Everyone does it no matter how amazing and desirable their product is.

Show me a product that doesn't advertise and I'll show you a company that's missing out on HUGE potential sales.

You may claim not to be swayed by Apple advertisement but more everything on this site is an ad for Apple. It touts the features and provides information for people to use in making a buying decision.

We also have lots of studies that show no matter how much you believe advertising doesn't work on you, you're simply wrong. It works on everyone, no matter how much they swear it doesn't.

 

[TheColtr]

The argument you just made if essentially what those against Net Neutrality are proposing. You'll have to pay in order to access the internet and the sites you want.

"I already bought a car, I shouldn't have to pay a cent for the roads I drive it on."

Your analogy doesn’t work. Because you don’t buy internet. You pay a monthly fee to use the internet. You ARE the car, and your paying for the road.

 

[applesith]

I took it as suggesting that "sith" was an appropriate moniker for someone working in paid media.

LOL It's from my Star Wars fandom. I don't know why people view anyone in marketing as evil or a bad guy. Chances are we make the company you work for sell more and employ more people.

 

[axantas]

Very few like ads. Even fewer want to pay a site for content. Ads have been the pact enough people have made with the devil to not have paywalls everywhere. A few people have the knowledge to block/protect themselves from tracking cookies but it's far from common knowledge. Now Apple is providing it to the masses (I'm including myself among the masses) and currently free websites will lose revenue. Big name sites will adapt, small sites may disappear.

As long as they behave politely and do not intrude my online-life in an absolutely inacceptable way as an advertising avalanche, making it nearly impossible to live me online-life, they may live on. Otherwise: to hell with them and not a single tear shall be shed. Some will be more intelligent and survive. (Darwin, you know...)

 

[wescx]

Not that I'm in favor of it, but cross-site data gathering is one of the factors that makes web advertising worth paying for. Block that, and sites will likely see a drop in ad rates.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Umm, how is it not? Ad revenue for sites you visit goes down because advertisers will pay less for less effective ads. OR ad revenue stays flat because advertisers are having to place MORE ads because they can't target as well. Are you pro sites you read making less money?

I'm all for privacy, and cookies are certainly abused in some cases, but there also real consequences to this policy that you can't say are actually pros just because advertisers are against it.
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As long as they behave politely and do not intrude my online-life in an absolutely inacceptable way as an advertising avalanche, making it nearly impossible to live me online-life, they may live on. Otherwise: to hell with them and not a single tear shall be shed. Some will be more intelligent and survive. (Darwin, you know...)

Advertisers who are bad at targeting are already paying a price by paying for ineffective ads. They want to avoid it just much as you don't want to see it.

 

[caesarp]

As someone who works in paid media, this is going to be a pain in the butt. Retargeted marketing is very effective. Plus if you're going to get ads, do you want them to be for stuff you actually like? A lot of the time special deals are offered to people with targeted marketing.

EDIT: For all those quoting and saying targeting ads don't work...

Ad suppression is vital to effective retargeting ads; picking when and what to show ads for and turning them off after purchase or when no interest is shown. Simply showing ads for anything and everything someone looks at forever is lazy marketing that does not work as well.

Nope. Zero interest. Who cares about Internet ads? Ewws "special deals" -- what, I can save $3.00 - big whoop. I don't want them to be there at all, but if they are there, they are just a brief annoyance, the content is irrelevant, whether its what I might want or not. If I want something I can search for it myself. I don't need an ad targeted to me (its creepy anyway).

 

[atikalz]

Just implement favicons like every other browsers and I will think about using safari on my macbook pro.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

You say that like it's a bad thing.

If we want this stuff for no out-of-pocket cost (a better term than "free"), then a drop in revenue for the sites is a bad thing. Either they try to make up for it by packing in more ads and revenue sources, or their revenue drops and they start laying off staff, etc. Sites that are already marginal go away - maybe that's a good thing, but many sites are small because their natural audience is also small - that audience may lose a valuable resource.

Sure, it's likely that the web deserves a shakeout, but considering which sites pull the most revenue today, I'm not sure we'll be happy with what's left after that shakeout.

 

[jhfenton]

LOL It's from my Star Wars fandom. I don't know why people view anyone in marketing as evil or a bad guy. Chances are we make the company you work for sell more and employ more people.

I don't consider the business evil, but I believe that was the joke.

I do have a philosophical problem with the mass proliferation of trackers and data-hogging ads, especially on mobile, where data is limited and metered, so I block ads and trackers on sites where they cross a threshold where they bother me, consume data excessively, or appear to slow the site down.

 

[ThisIsNotMe]

Apple should just buy Ghostery, integrate it as default into Safari in macOS and iOS, and call it a day....stop pussyfooting around the issue.

 

[CatalinApple]

When they pay for my internet they can have an opinion of the ads I see.

Agree. I will do anything just to get rid of ads. Sometimes I use 2 adblockers. As long as advertisers won't stop with their stupid ads I won't stop blocking them either. I don't care if they lose money because they don't care either about me.

 

[IJ Reilly]

The fact is that retargeting has a MUCH higher ROI than traditional digital advertising. There's a reason marketers are so invested in it. If it didn't work, they wouldn't do it.

You might not believe it works on you but piles of data says otherwise and billions of dollars in sales thanks to retargeting backs up that data.

Again, your example shows a poor execution by an advertiser, not by the ad network itself. Ad networks don't setup the ads. They provide a platform and advertisers setup their own ads and targeting. Very few setup the ads for brands themselves. Sounds like Skoda didn't set up their campaign correctly. That's their fault, not that of the advertising network.

Targeting might well be more effective than random, I will grant that, but I won't grant that targeted advertising products aren't being oversold by the industry. Pretty clearly they are. I am not the only one to notice the amount of randomness in the ads I see, and this is not down to the advertisers. They are buying a product.

 

[wescx]

Agree. I will do anything just to get rid of ads. Sometimes I use 2 adblockers. As long as advertisers won't stop with their stupid ads I won't stop blocking them either. I don't care if they lose money because they don't care either about me.

Those ads pay for the site you are visiting.

Baffling amounts of naivety in this thread...

 

[VanNess]

Because they have become intrusive, overbearing and obnoxious.

Amen.

The problem with web advertising isn't the ads per se (although a lot them are just plain moronic and/or tasteless) it's the ongoing issue of ignoring users and deliberately treating them like sh*t.

First it was pop ups which were universally hated and reviled. Technologists finally came to the rescue with browser based pop up blocking because pop up ads became so pervasive and ad serving companies were just relentless. You would think ad serving companies would get the message but no, they responded by using JavaScript as a workaround. JavaScript pop ups abound to this day. It couldn't be a more blatant middle finger to all web users.

Then tracking and privacy became an issue. Everyone complained, advertisers and ad serving companies ignored the complaints, so once again technologists had to come to the rescue with browser based limitations for ad tracking. The ad serving companies response? You guessed it, requests to limit tracking were completely ignored.

It just goes on and on and left unchecked it will eventually kill the web. And it's completely needless. No one cares if unobtrusive ads are placed on web pages, but we're way beyond that now. Advertisers and their ad serving company partners have, as a result of their past behavior, lost the right to negotiate a deal. They are proven to be untrustworthy, they are poor citizens on the web, and whether they acknowledge it or not (mostly not) users, not advertisers, are ad serving companies most important asset. Too bad they seem hell bent on treating their most important asset like crap and appear to be completely oblivious to the fact that a day of reckoning is inevitable.

 

[jonnysods]

Who the **** loves ads!?

Call me a bigot but there hasn't been an ad I've met that I've ever liked.

 

[CatalinApple]

Those ads pay for the site you are visiting.

Baffling amounts of naivety in this thread...

There are other ways to ask for money/help. I would rather donate money than seeing stupid ads. Why are we naive? Because we don't like to see 75% of the page covered in ads? Sorry, I don't agree with you.

 

[wescx]

There are other ways to ask for help. I would rather donate money than seeing stupid ads. Why are we naive? Because we don't like to see 75% of the page covered in ads? Sorry, I don't agree with you.

If a site could make as much or more money with a donate button than they can with ads I'm sure there would be more sites doing it.

I just really don't think you would like an ad-free internet. I know it sounds great, but I promise it would be pretty terrible.

 

[vmachiel]

This is good news! This means apples feature is significantly effective!

 

[JRobinsonJr]

That's poor campaign and targeting management. Ad suppression is vital to effective retargeting ads; picking when and what to show ads for and turning them off after purchase or when no interest is shown. Simply showing ads for anything and everything someone looks at forever is lazy marketing that does not work as well.

Can't say I disagree, but that's not the point. The fact is that advertisers DO these things... and I don't care if they get blocked. Treat consumers with more respect and we'll respect the advertisers.

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

Targeting might well be more effective than random, I will grant that, but I won't grant that targeted advertising products aren't being oversold by the industry. Pretty clearly they are. I am not the only one to notice the amount of randomness in the ads I see, and this is not down to the advertisers. They are buying a product.

AdWords is by far the largest online advertising platform and it's self serve. If you're seeing lots of retargeting ads, it's because advertisers are choosing to set them up and offer budgets to them which exceed those of other ad types.

Advertisers aren't being oversold. They're choosing to put their money there.

If you're seeing randomness in these ads, again, it's because the advertiser is setting them up incorrectly or not targeting them correctly. That's not the fault of Google. It's a failure on the advertisers behalf for wasting their money and not understanding the product they're investing in.

 

[2crazy]

I hate Ads, I really do. I don't have regular TV only streaming. When I encounter a clip that I first wanted to watch and it starts with an Ad, I will close it right away. Needlessly to say I have been using AdBlock since it first came out. I am putting Ads on the same level as a solicitor knocking on my door wanting to sell a vacuum cleaner. That being said I feel very strongly about mechanisms to shield myself from this crap

I do realize that advertisement is necessary for many companies to let us know of their new products. However, everything that I am interested in I will find on web sites. Like this one. I don't need for instance Apple to blast me with distracting Ads, because I already know what I want.

Web sites like MacRumors and others need to find a new business model. Something like Netflix for web sites would be nice. I think more and more people are unwilling to put up with the ad bombardment on the Internet.

 

[stevet]

Well, judging by the comments in here, I would say Apple hit a homer with this feature

 

[EdT]

If we want this stuff for no out-of-pocket cost (a better term than "free"), then a drop in revenue for the sites is a bad thing. Either they try to make up for it by packing in more ads and revenue sources, or their revenue drops and they start laying off staff, etc. Sites that are already marginal go away - maybe that's a good thing, but many sites are small because their natural audience is also small - that audience may lose a valuable resource.

Sure, it's likely that the web deserves a shakeout, but considering which sites pull the most revenue today, I'm not sure we'll be happy with what's left after that shakeout.

You're correct but most here who are adamant against ads won't see it until sites that they like either disappear, move behind a paywall, or the site forces the removal of blockers to view the site.

Your big and intrusive sites/ads will figure it out. The small sites probably won't survive.
When people as a collective whole decided that ads were better way to pay for the internet than subscriptions earlier in the 2000's there were people who said that this would happen.

 

[imaynotbearobot]

Who the **** loves ads!?

Exactly. Sounds bad for them, but great for us. Do they really think people WANT the ads?

 

[wescx]

I do realize that advertisement is necessary for many companies to let us know of their new products. However, everything that I am interested in I will find on web sites. Like this one.

Sites like this one exist because of ads. Ads aren't just necessary for advertisers, they are also necessary for most websites to exist.

Web sites like MacRumors and others need to find a new business model. Something like Netflix for web sites would be nice. I think more and more people are unwilling to put up with the ad bombardment on the Internet.

I suspect you are in the minority. However, many sites are exploring this and it's a growing topic of conversation. Either way, having a website isn't free. At least you acknowldge that.

So far in the history of the internet, the go-to solution has been ads. In that regard, the internet as it exists today exists because of ads. Perhaps you're right and it's time to on from that model, but there is no denying that it has worked. Generally speaking, the internet is pretty much the greatest thing of all time.