And that's a great trick - calling it "privacy" without reducing your own data collection/telemetry/spying, only your competitors. If I want privacy, Apple is included in the companies I want to stay private from!
Just like the idiotic arguments about app store rules being there to ensure quality, etc.
Apple is really good at putting a spin on these kinds of moves, taking anything they claim face value is extremely naive.
I imagine these ads to just be keyword-based.
Apple ought only be allowed to reduce iOS data exposure if they also take steps to assure the market that they are not gaining undue advantage over their competitors. Apple customers should be aghast at the blatant move to harm legitimate companies such as Facebook and Google. With iOS data opacity, as opposed to data transparency, we have a less competitive marketplace.
But few have been asking these question since mid 2020 when Apple started a war against Data Collection. No one seems to care much.
[1] https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/1387130787510751239...
[2] https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/5/13/apples-ads...
[3] https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/8/27/understand...
So geo-targeting, and targeting via fine-grained (5k people in the same segment) advertising profiles built from data such as your age, name, address, gender, what other apps you've installed, what content you've consumed in Apple products, etc.
1. It's deceptive - by packaging privacy as a "service", Apple is trying to sell the idea that user data collection is ok again as long as it is done by Apple.
2. It takes away user's choice - Apple is now clearly telling you that if you use their platform you have to allow data mining by Apple. But Apple will be kind enough to show an icon informing you of the same, as a "privacy" feature. /s
Apple argues that’s what they do, too. I haven’t delved deep into that, but think that, technically, they’re right.
Now question is whether Apple’s “whatever data they have on their logged-in users” is on equal footing with what the other big players have. Many iOS users are permanently logged into Apple (¿maybe not even when using a browser?). I guess many also are almost permanently logged into Facebook or Google.
Its ok to trust your data to an advertising company because it just happens to sell a hardware device, but its not ok to trust your data to advertising company if they don't sell hardware devices?
On MacOS, (last I heard) they use Bing to deliver results you see in spotlight. On iOS, I believe it’s Google by default, for which Google pays billions of dollars each year. Mine is set to DuckDuckGo.
Then there’s the in-app searches, which yield a lot of what you need without ever going to a proper search engine. Apps and push products, travel services, etc. through spotlight search results that take you directly into the app.
Believe it or not, Apple presents a big challenge to Google’s search business, which is why they pay so much to remain on Apple’s platform.
This is 100% gonna get litigated by the EU, and I really hope they lose, because the principle is really really important, regardless of what we think of adtech.
The only real comparator here is Google, who have similar information available to them on Android.