Peloton Says Apple's Privacy Rules Limit Its Ability to Gain Subscribers

[toph2toast]

Of course, their financial woes have nothing to do with the fact that their bikes cost FAR more than they should and their monthly subscription fees are ridiculously high.

It's all Apple's fault, you see.

I love the irony of these comments on an Apple forum.

The iPhone 13 Pro goes for $1000. If you max out the storage space, the iPhone is now more expensive than a Peloton.... and I bet one of those products will be in your house 3, 4, 5 years from now while the other has been turned in and more money spent on the latest and greatest version.

Then there are subscriptions with Apple Arcade, Apple TV+, iCloud, One...

 

[gregmancuso]

Do you prefer non-targeted ads? Are they better or something?

I prefer no ads. Generic ads are easier to ignore. And a lot less creepy.

 

[bushman4]

Privacy = dollars
If Pelaton wants to sell my info I want no part of them regardless of how good they claim there product is and they should realize that if selling info is more important than selling product people don’t want to deal with them.

 

[spinedoc77]

Negative, the reason isn't Apple, it's your reliance on making tracking the default without ever asking the user. You can't base marketing off fooling your consumers, one day it will catch up to you.

 

[MacAddict1978]

Boo hoo. You can't market me by spying on me, my heart bleeds. What did companies do before digital spy tech existed? They must not have been able to sell anything to people....

 

[TTTedP]

Seems more like they've saturated the market for people willing to pay $39 a month for a video workout service. That's the US average gym membership. Without a place to workout or equipment included.

this. Or their product has matured. Or people are catching on to the pricing. Or the Covid lockdown buying peak has ended. Seems to be more potential reasons than just blaming Apple.

 

[topdrawer]

That established clientele doesn't remain static, it's always decreasing a little at a time. Some customers leave for a competitor, some quit, others leave for other reasons.

Even to just tread water, businesses need to always seek to attract new customers.

i get that you need new customers to maintain a status quo. but that's not what i'm talking about, i'm talking about expansion. a business success seems to be measured in growth year after year instead of just revenue and sustainability. success based on expansion is not very sustainable

 

[toph2toast]

Privacy = dollars
If Pelaton wants to sell my info I want no part of them regardless of how good they claim there product is and they should realize that if selling info is more important than selling product people don’t want to deal with them.

Nothing in the article mentioned Peloton selling their user info. The more likely scenario is they used to targeted ads on social media/websites based on the data these services provided, which they can no longer do due to Apple's policies.

 

[sparkinstx]

"Peloton blamed the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) rules Apple introduced in iOS 14.5 for making it more difficult to add new subscriptions to its services by targeting online shoppers based on their interests."

This is like cold calling, or going door-to-door, except they don't actually have to do anything. Aren't they running enough TV commercials, and other ads? Why do they have to track peoples' activity to gain subscribers? If their service is that good, customers will come to them,

 

[deeddawg]

i get that you need new customers to maintain a status quo. but that's not what i'm talking about, i'm talking about expansion. a business success seems to be measured in growth year after year instead of just revenue and sustainability. success based on expansion is not very sustainable

There you get into some complexities of expanding market share vs maintaining market share within a growing market, as well as things like expanding pocket-share vs market/market-share, or increasing revenue through operational efficiencies, or even maintaining dividends at a particular level within a static market.

Largely it comes down to what the shareholders (investors) think the company's leadership ought to be accomplishing based on their view of what opportunities exist with the marketplace. This view will be different for different companies / businesses / markets. Certainly in some segments where the market is mature or even declining the expectations are different than in segments where there's potential for growth of market and/or pocket share.

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

Seems more like they've saturated the market for people willing to pay $39 a month for a video workout service. That's the US average gym membership. Without a place to workout or equipment included.

Yeah, and with lockdowns ending, all the people who can't go to a real gym, and who aren't spending their money on other things like travel, are drying up...

 

[dogslobber]

They sell treadmills to consumers. That is their business model, not their webpage stealing your personal data.

 

[btrach144]

Yeah, it’s not targeted ads. It’s the fact that the pandemic artificially drove up their business and the world is now adopting to the pandemic.

I own a Bike+ and it’s great. Love it. But they misunderstand that they were going to go back to a small thing after the pandemic.

 

[deeddawg]

They sell treadmills to consumers. That is their business model, not their webpage stealing your personal data.

How'd you get that from the Bloomberg article? Which paragraph mentioned that activity?

All I saw was this quote, thus I'm curious just what in the Bloomberg article I missed? "Like several other companies, Peloton also blamed Apple Inc.’s ad-related privacy changes, which have made it more difficult to target shoppers based on their interests."

(I'm not a peloton user so I've not used their website or other stuff, thus my curiosity)

 

[MBAir2010]

Trek never Trak'd me!

 

[nitramluap]

Just goes to show how valuable your private data is...

 

[ikramerica]

Idk there were plenty of successful companies before targeted advertising. Peleton, perhaps instead of blaming Apple you need a new marketing team.

They run that woke apartment house ad constantly. To me it comes across as orwellian, not inspiring.

 

[UBS28]

Peloton sucks. That is why. There much better (and cheaper) alternatives.

 

[steve09090]

One Peleton website. Safari prevented 3 trackers (Australia) & 9 trackers (USA)
Apple One website. Zero trackers.

 

[johnediii]

Incompetent companies: Let's blame Apple for our inability to protect peoples privacy.

I think it's worse than that. Let's blame Apple for protecting their customers from our invasion of their privacy. Bad look all the way around.

 

[newellj]

An absolutely ridiculous BS excuse for a bad product that's overpriced. There's a lot of that going around recently. "We fouled up totally, but we can blame Apple on the earrings call, brilliant idea!" Nonsense, or actually a lot worse, but I don't need a mod strike.

 

[Apple_Robert]

I hope the Peloton bleeding continues.

 

[thefourthpope]

What I find most aggravating about this, is that they are also charging a monthly fee. I can at least appreciate the argument that ads are a way to make a service free; the ads (our data) ARE the subscription fee. But here peloton is just trying to make money off of users both ways: subscriptions AND selling data.

 

[ninecows]

Ad buying often occurs at the national, regional, or other macro level that doesn't account for outliers. It can sometimes be more cost effective to buy a blanket coverage which includes inapplicable areas than to subdivide the buys to target only the applicable areas. Just how it works at present, though perhaps the system will enable better segmenting going forward.


Increasingly we're seeing content providers offer ad-free experiences, though you need to pay for that benefit - in part to make up the lost revenue (and I imagine in part just 'cuz they can).

Even MacRumors is getting in on the game.

View attachment 1903422

Yeah… and I kind of like that idea. But we need to talk about pricing. From several perspectives:
-What is current add income per user on mac rumors?
-What does it actually cost to keep Mac rumors running and put sufficient butter on the bread on owners and employees?
-What’s the value for users of not seeing a webpage cluttered with adds?
- Paying $25/year is not crazy as such, but multiply with 20 websites and we’re getting closer to crazy. I can get a lot of add-blocker for that money and that would bring us back into the “stealing business”

So I do add-blocking. Is it stealing? Sort of, but since I would never click and buy anything from these adds without the blocker I don’t see the difference. I’m the annoying type (for add industry) that only buy stuff I need and want and not because it’s presented to me in an add

 

[ericwn]

Yeah… and I kind of like that idea. But we need to talk about pricing. From several perspectives:
-What is current add income per user on mac rumors?
-What does it actually cost to keep Mac rumors running and put sufficient butter on the bread on owners and employees?
-What’s the value for users of not seeing a webpage cluttered with adds?
- Paying $25/year is not crazy as such, but multiply with 20 websites and we’re getting closer to crazy. I can get a lot of add-blocker for that money and that would bring us back into the “stealing business”

So I do add-blocking. Is it stealing? Sort of, but since I would never click and buy anything from these adds without the blocker I don’t see the difference. I’m the annoying type (for add industry) that only buy stuff I need and want and not because it’s presented to me in an add

I guess most regular users here have ad blockers installed. On the forums the paid Tapatalk app also rids you of any ads.