Apple finally admits what the ad industry will not – consumers loathe online ads
Apple's recently announced plan to curb online tracking on Safari is a wake-up call to the industry. But when are the "leaders" of advertising going to sit up and listen, writes Bob Hoffman
As usual, the tin-eared aristocrats of the ad industry are on the wrong side of an important issue.
Apple is planning to release a new version of its Safari browser with new cookie-blocking technology, called “Intelligent Tracking Prevention.” It will put strict limits on the ability of websites and advertisers to track us across the web.
According to digital expert Don Marti it looks like Safari has built a set of features that will help protect us from the kind of tracking we don’t like, while not screwing up features we like such as single sign-in to favourite sites (my words, not his.)
Apple has said “…users feel that trust is broken when they are being tracked and privacy-sensitive data about their web activity is acquired for purposes that they never agreed to.”
Damn right. I even know a guy who wrote a book about that.
Of course, all the major advertising trade bodies are soiling their shorts at the thought of not being able to know everything we do online. They are not satisfied that people are so disgusted with online ad practices that 600 million web enabled devices are now armed with ad blockers.
Listen to this horseshit from a consortium of ad trade groups including the 4A’s, ANA, and IAB: “Apple’s unilateral and heavy-handed approach is bad for consumer choice and bad for the ad-supported online content and services consumers love…Blocking cookies in this manner will drive a wedge between brands and their customers, and it will make advertising more generic and less timely and useful.”
What planet do these imbeciles live on? Do they really believe anyone is going to buy that crap?
Here is a study published last year that reports that of 13 different forms of advertising studied, the top 8 most disliked were all forms of online advertising.
Furthermore the argument that Safari’s “Intelligent Tracking Prevention” is “…bad for consumer choice…” is laughable. Any idiot who prefers to be followed around the web by assorted squids and slugs is perfectly welcome to download dozens of free web browsers that are more than happy to spy on everything you do.
Every impartial study I’ve ever seen says the same thing: Online advertising is the most disliked and most distrusted form of advertising. One of the primary drivers of this situation is tracking. When are the “leaders” of our industry going to get their heads out of their asses and realise how they are destroying the integrity of online advertising by not supporting initiatives like Apple’s that are trying to establish responsible guidelines for tracking?
Bob Hoffman has been the CEO of two independent agencies and is the author of the Ad Contrarian blog
Bob,
You write “Listen to this horseshit… “Apple’s unilateral and heavy-handed approach is bad for consumer choice and bad for the ad-supported online content and services consumers love…Blocking cookies in this manner will drive a wedge between brands and their customers, and it will make advertising more generic and less timely and useful.””
When was the last time you received an ad for a tampon? Why do you think that is?
Of course most users dislike advertising, however, as you’ll see from a million other surveys, consumers always want more relevant advertising if they have to see it. How do you think the ad industry does that?
I’m not sure if you notice but Fairfax and others are laying off a fair few journos – publishing is not in the best state and ad-supported sites (like the one you are on here) need all the help they can get to survive. Targeting segments and re-targeting consumers based on their previous interactions help these sites make more money and survive.
We need to do a better job of explaining to consumers how we track them and why, and how we try and show more relevant ads, not just turn the ads off. The reason people “loathe” online ads is they notice them more as it is a channel they interact with more and more but they don’t correlate the existence of the content they like with it having to be paid for.
I don’t think there is a single ad-exec who doesn’t understand that we need to change how we communicate with consumers, it’s just a case of working out how. Any suggestions? I’d love to hear how we make advertising valuable, relevant and more integrated if we can’t track consumers??
ReplyThe entire value proposition of DSPs is in tatters.
Replywould it kill you to say demand side platform, instead of spouting of jargon like DSP? No wonder c-suites don’t have a clue what you digital fellows are talking about….
Replyyes because your average CEO reads Mumbrella and has a clue what a demand side platform is
you are making a fair point, but on the wrong platform
ReplyThe average CEO of a non-advertising company reads mumbrella?….youre havein a laugh.
ReplyFirstly, the article confuses two separate issues – ‘protecting’ us from tracking and ‘disliking’ ads.
Secondly, Apple’s research is inconsistent with consumer feedback and is quite self-serving.
I put ‘protecting’ in quotes, because of course the kind of blocking that Safari and Chrome have employed does not prevent you from being tracked by Apple, Google or Facebook. They use tools like ‘single sign on’ to track you, which conveniently sidesteps EU law to claim ‘permission’.
The kind of blocking they implement simply prevents other viable ‘good’ actors from acquiring similar data – and thus establishes a very effective restraint of trade.
They’re not employing thes technologies because they support customers. but because they want competitors to go out of business.
It has a particular impact in areas like South East Asia, where regional start-ups do not have the kind of scale to command SSO privileges. That means that these blocking technologies are a direct attack on the future success of our region.
Second I put ‘dislike’ in quotes, because consumer behaviour is inconsistent with Bob’s claims.
In the digital world, consumer can vote with their feet. They don’t have to suffer experiences they don’t welcome (unlike TV, Press or OOH).
Their behaviour demonstrates that the popularity of sites where advertiisng is MOST prevalent is unaffected by their supposed ‘dislike’ of ads. Unlike TV where your content and advertising can hide behind extremely generalist audience data, in digital every second is accounted for.
Their behaviour is also inconsistent with demands that their data be protected. A quick glance at your Facebook feed [‘What Star Wars character are you?’] will demonstrate ample evidence that people will give up their personal details, friends list, and every comment they have ever made on Facebook for the most trivial and transitory of justifications. This is more personal data than the average ad tracker with collect in a lifetime.
Yes, as Digital Bloke says, as an industry we need to improve.
But the sources you cite may be wolves in sheep’s clothing, and the data may not offer any worthwhile insight.
ReplyThe assumptions made by online tracking models are child-like and laughable in themselves. Im not buying the BS that they lead to better targeting. If you so much as glance at a lewd picture online, you are flooded with ads for sexual stimulants….what makes the tracker assume that they are needed in the first place?
AS usual, the nobodies in media rush in with specious arguments: eg. dislike of tracking is not same as dislike of ads…to consumers it’s all one and the same. The problem is not to do with media….it is to do with the abysmal quality of the messages we are exposed to. Just garbage day in day out.
ReplyInteresting idea – although for the most part ‘trackers’ don’t make any assumptions themselves. They just note the activity.
The targeting assumptions tend to be made by digital planners seeking correlation between certain types of activity. For example they may have discovered that particular content habits make a user disproportionately likely to pay for certain products or services compared with, say, the general public.
It’s important not to confuse this with information about a specific individual.
You may be the exception to the rule, but so long as the rule works in general, then reaching out to people with those habits will result in an efficiency improvement.
ReplyTypical response you’d expect from an ex mediacorp executive.
ReplyMicroanalysing stuff to appear intelligent, and missing the big picture. Consumers don’t see all these functions you’re talking about…all they see is an annoying message multiplied by hundreds, following them around endlessly.
The responses above apart from Camy are so tiresome, the comments are acting like the annoying click-bait following us, you just can’t get rid of them.
Online advertising that uses data to target us is the same as Direct Mail through the letter box, except its been dressed up in a new rectangle hand-held space. Its really really annoying for normal everyday people.
It makes them annoyed with brands, media platforms and tiring marketers and digital execs that think they are clever by whacking them over the head endlessly, with annoying irrelevant dumbed down shit that has a mass reach but low hit rate.
ReplyI have recently discovered Adguard….what bliss….no more ghastly ads that take over my screen.
ReplyHave your say