[gruez]

>and therefore effectively stopping users from "tracking" the advertisers.

I guess that's the nefarious explanation, but there's a more benign one: if you want to correlate user behavior, you need some sort of normalization, otherwise [e-mail] and [e-mail] would show up as different "people" and cause match rates to suffer. Sure, getting tracked isn't great, but it's not exactly the hypocrisy rage-bait that the OP is implying.

[marcus0x62]

Why would a person want advertisers to correlate their behavior? What’s in it for them?

[fluidcruft]

In a logical world it would mean that you see fewer ads. If your matches increase, your price per ad goes up so the service needs to show you fewer ads to hit their ad revenue target for you.

But if you think that will happen I have an East River transportation startup in New York that is seeking an angel investor.

[mdale]

Revenue targets are certainly dynamic but avoiding user churn is important too.

So you want to keep cost per impression up. You would not want to saturate and devalue.

Better to play 10 ads at 10c each vs 20 ads at 4 or 5c, as high ad load impacts users propensity to return to the service.

[rchaud]

> the service needs to show you fewer ads to hit their ad revenue target for you.

In a logical world, yes.

In a capitalist world, that revenue target goes up every year. Apple became the richest company on earth selling hardware, yet here they are now drowning their software with ads.

[fluidcruft]

We really should just cut out the middle man here and ban ads entirely. If an ad broker wants to pay me to watch an ad, pay me directly.

[kelnos]

I've come to the conclusion that we should just ban all advertising, completely. Any possible positives to allowing advertising are entirely dwarfed by the negatives.

[daveguy]

I would love it if there were no ads. Seems like a dream though. Has any government tried it? If so, what kind of sneaky ads posing as content emerged? "Native ads" posing as content already exist. At least it's easy to tell the difference when the ad is out in the open and marked clearly.

[jeffhuys]

> drowning their software with ads

Where? I use Apple hardware basically exclusively. Are they that good in hiding the ads, or are you exaggerating a bit?

[thewebcount]

GP is exaggerating, but they definitely do seem to be increasing the number of ads in apps. Apple News (even the paid News+) has tons of ads, often after a single sentence in an article. In AppleTV+ (a service I love!) they’ve removed the image cards of shows in your up next queue on the “What to Watch” page and replaced them with a big auto-playing audio and video preview of one of their shows that’s not in your list. There’s no way to get the old functionality back. I’ve stopped using the app other than from the Home Screen where I have it set to show my “Up Next” queue. It’s really disgusting that they’re making these changes and it’s really turning me off of their services which I loved until recently.

[rchaud]

off the top of my head:

- App Store (biggest offender)

- Apple News

- Stocks

This year they'll be rolling them out into Apple Maps as well.

[SSLy]

Open the AppStore app and look how much ads are stuffed there.

[mthoms]

While that's true, the questions was specifically about the claim they are "drowning their software with ads". Providing a single example doesn't really support that claim.

[lokedhs]

Ostensibly it's so that the user can get more relevant ads.

In practice, it's not of course, but that's the answer you'd get if you ask them.

[nerdponx]

Of course that's the goal. The IAB isn't an NSA front. The problem with advertising is not the primary goal, but all the secondary things that can happen.

[michaelt]

lokedhs said "ostensibly" because the internet advertising industry has long maintained the pretence that tracking users and showing them relevant ads is helpful to the user, when the truth is the advertising industry cares about the opinion of users like the thanksgiving industry cares about the opinion of turkeys - which is to say, not at all.

There's a reason these things are opt-out rather than opt-in.

The answer to marcus0x62's question - why would a person want advertisers to correlate their behavior - is that they wouldn't, and if they want to advocate for their own self-interest they should install an ad blocker.

[a4isms]

> the truth is the advertising industry cares about the opinion of users like the thanksgiving industry cares about the opinion of turkeys

Nobody asks for the steak’s opinion when planning a BBQ.

[lokedhs]

If it's the goal, you'd expect ads to be actually be more relevant and useful to users.

They don't, which has been shown in studies. What has been shown is that showing the same things people already bought give people regret which increases total amount of purchases.

In other word, the goal is to not to give users a good experiences watching ad's. It is to make them buy more, which is an orthogonal goal.

[nerdponx]

Oh, I see what you mean. I guess it depends on whose definition of "relevant" you follow.

[wiseleo]

Let’s say you’re DHS. You contact some person and have a conversation like this

Govt: “I need IP addresses, ideally cellular and known public wifi, of a person using this email address”.

Data broker: “Here’s the list including the most recent cellular IP address associated with that person at this timestamp and their most used public wifi locations.”

Govt: “Hey, cellular provider, where is this subscriber right now?”

Provider: “Here’s the lat/long, last seen 1 second ago. Happy hunting!”

[gruez]

How does that contradict what the parent poster is saying? Even though ad-tech companies make tracking individuals easier, it doesn't change the fact that it's still largely funded by advertising itself, not through some shady government shell company.

[account42]

I disagree: The main problem with advertising is with its primary goal, which is manipulting people into excess consumption. There are of course other secondary issues as well, but even without them ads are already a net negative for society.

[danaris]

Yeah; that's not benign. I don't want my behavior being "correlated" by a shady group of companies whose sole purpose is learning how to better manipulate me for their own profit.

[gruez]

I never claimed as such. From the comment you replied to:

>Sure, getting tracked isn't great, but it's not exactly the hypocrisy rage-bait that the OP is implying.

[yellowapple]

> if you want to correlate user behavior

That in and of itself is nefarious.