The dustup began at the annual leadership meeting for the Interactive Advertising Bureau. This is an ad industry group that includes hundreds of companies like Meta, Google, Adobe, Paramount, etc. Its goal is to develop standards for online advertising and to conduct research to provide best practices to members. In general, it’s the kind of group that exists to bolster the industry like any trade group. As you might expect, Apple’s anti-tracking policy threw a wrench into many of its members’ plans. That led to its CEO, David Cohen, calling Apple out at the recent conference, according to MacRumors.
In his opening remarks at the conference, Cohen was not subtle. “While there is no shortage of extremists attacking our industry from the outside, there are some attacking it from the inside out,” he said, according to AdAge. “Most notably, Apple exemplifies the cynicism and hypocrisy that underpins the prevailing extremist view.”
As an example of this hypocrisy, he says Apple labels the ads it serves its own users as “personalized.” However, if you’re a company that’s not Apple, you have to use the word “track.” Obviously, those two words have very different emotional connotations, leading Cohen to characterize it as “not a fair fight.”
He also takes issue with the company’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) program that allows iPhone users to not allow tracking. The reason why it’s hypocritical, according to Cohen, is Apple is tracking its own users at the same time. This is not true though, according to Apple. None of its native apps will ever ask the user if it wants to be tracked, as they don’t track anything, again according to Apple. However, Apple is currently facing a class action lawsuit over this exact issue.
The lawsuit is based on findings by researchers that Apple was collecting a trove of information on its users when they use Apple’s own apps. Those apps included the App Store, Apple Books, and Apple TV. Even worse, it was collecting identifiers as well, so the data wasn’t anonymous. In the App store alone, Apple would record what you searched for, how long you looked at a page, what you tapped on, and which ads you were shown.
Regardless of how the lawsuit pans out, Apple doesn’t seem to be interested in what the IAB thinks about its policies. Cohen said the company walked out of talks it had about ATT before Apple launched it. He said they implored Apple to not use the binary “track,” or “do not track” language, and the company ignored the request. Cohen said he is calling Apple out because he wants them to come back to the negotiation table. That should work out very well for him and the IAB—we’re sure of it.
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