Confessions from an ad-guy

Apple just released Safari 11 alongside iOS 11, and with it, anti-cookie-tracking measures to limit user tracking across sites, putting a stop to re-marketing. The significance of this update has been debated quite a bit. Users have been very positive while the ad industry has been less than excited.

I have worked 10 years in the industry of which roughly 5 of them has been in my own ad agency. I’ve used an ad-blocker for the majority of my ad career. I’ll try to give you some insight into how I see the industry and why they are concerned.

Are ads bad?

Ads sustain the internet as we know it today. Without ads, we’d have to pay to communicate, pay to socialize, pay to get informed on politics, pay to discuss. The internet would be reserved for the people who could afford it.

Ads are a necessary annoyance, at least until micropayments become a reality

In the perfect world, we’d have a mix of micropayments and ad-supported services. In an upcoming post I’ll go deeper into how that could work and why we’re not there just yet.

Is the industry evil?

Contrary to the common perception, the people who work in ad agencies are not manipulative masterminds who are trained in the art of subliminal messaging. Most of them detest the idea of manipulation when asked. Banner ad creation is generally considered the shitties part of advertising.

In my experience, ad workers genuinely want to do good. Designers want to create beautiful designs, UX’ers want to create seamless, enjoyable experiences, developers want to make perfect code with edge technology, concept people want to make unique and fun ideas, and sales people are excited to fulfill clients needs.

The only cases of “evil” have been from clients.

“Evil” acts typically came from desperation, lack of knowledge about local laws, or simply incompetence. Rarely did I see clients intentionally aim to misleading consumers.

Most common “evil acts” are newsletter signups: E-mails are collected without permission, language is knowingly misleading, checkboxes are placed maliciously, etc.

In general, clients were easily persuaded to follow legal and best practices. In cases where clients intentionally tried to mislead, I personally refused to comply.

In general, businesses always push for more revenue each year. The competition has gotten out of hand. The EU has stepped in with mandatory cookie warnings (which they admit don’t work). Adblockers were the first mainstream lash-back at the agressive tracking practices and now Apple is getting more people on board.

What might happen without cookie tracking?

Ad industry revenue would likely fall.

• Re-marketing will become impossible or difficult enough that it won’t be worth the effort. Re-marketing is currently one of the most effective methods because people simply click them.
• Irrelevant banners would be the standard. They’d have little context and could only target you based on the site you’re visiting, your country, or language
• More banners would appear to keep up revenues.
• More “sponsored content” would be required to keep up revenues.

Conclusion

Despite the potential issues, I don’t find Apple’s privacy update worrying from an ad industry perspective.

Privacy is about control of what you share, not absolute anonymity

The update puts the user back in control of privacy-related cookies for the first time since third party cookie settings. I welcome this update from Apple.