Apple and ads — the ugly truth

Apple, the company that’s been building literal bill-boards to privacy and preaching about not using their customers as products

Apple, the company that’s been standing between Facebook and third-party ad tracking, demanding informed consent

Apple, the company that keeps setting themselves up to be hammered by regulators over pretty much everything they’re doing these days — except for, oh yeah, any of their actual current core products

Apple is rumored to be going… if not all-in on ads, certainly more… inner? And that’s causing everything from complete cognitive dissonance to… renewed accusations of unfair competition

So… why?

🔗 LINKS

🗂 CHAPTERS

🚨 ETHICS & DISCLAIMER

All opinions are my own. This channel does not produce sponsored or paid reviews. Companies occasionally provide briefings or loan sample products to facilitate reviews but provide no payment and get no editorial input, content approval, or advanced previews. They see them for the first time when you do

Links may contain referrals for affiliate programs that provide this channel with a tiny commission should you make a purchase. They likewise receive zero editorial input or consideration

📝 CREDITS

📷 Some video and images via by Getty Images and/or AP Archives
🎸 Some music via by Epidemic

[ReneRitchie]

🤔 How would you feel about more ads on your iPhone?

[alexanderverdoodt]

I don’t want ads. Period. It’s why I use apple products. I’m just so aversive against ads after being bombarded by them my whole life. I suspect there are a lot of people like me.

[WillJBailey]

Apple not being an ad company like Google is one of the main reasons I use their ecosystem. Changing this model would make me seriously reconsider my options

[matthewsjardine]

Agreed. Apple should stay out of the ad business. They make more than enough money making products and services. Don't pollute your messaging. Stay out of the ad business.

[griponreality]

The model of privacy + fancy hardware w/ease of use for higher price is perfect IMO. I pay to remove ads from youtube and hulu, wouldn’t use them otherwise. If Apple starts advertising in obnoxious ways I’ll move on and finally put the time in to main Linux. I remember when google’s motto was, “don’t be evil.” It seems sadly inevitable for Apple to fall to shooting itself in the foot, but at the same time, Apple has avoided doing so every time that sense of inevitability seemed to crop up. So perhaps it’s just cynicism to feel like the comfort I have in their ecosystem will have to collapse to something like ad-a-geddon.

[RichardDelFranco]

Start adding ads on my iPhone or iPad, and, I stop using Apple products forever.

[Gosu]

I always looked at Apple as that slightly "less evil" corpo specifically because they are not knees deep in advertising. The moment you go full in into that space I won't trust you with excessive modeling of user behaviour and thus data mining of everything you get from users. (not that they don't do it now, but with what they do it definitely wasn't on Google's level).
Will see where this goes — definitely not happy with that. That's one of the reasons I pay premium for their services. Why wouldn't I want to simply go for free services where both entail simply paying with data?

[Byte_J]

One of the reasons I chose the Apple Ecosystem was to get away from the lowest common denominator, ads everywhere approach. I see ads in the Wallet app, in the Settings app, and in the App Store. It’s gross. It very much feels like a race to the bottom.

[WhittyPics]

I BUY my phone and I pay for my phone service. Flooding my phone with ads is NOT welcome.

[SurpriseMechanics]

8:16 “any company sufficiently large, is indistinguishable from evil.” As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that this is pretty spot on.

[ANGERINSIDE]

I don’t care for ads on the apps store. But tracking my usage to give me ads that are “relevant” to the things I like is a problem for me. Ads don’t influence my purchasing decisions, if anything they push me away more when they are to on point on things I like cause of tracking. That is why I stoped using Facebook.

[toadlguy]

This video highlights the corrosive nature of advertising, not from anything you said, but from the fact you segued into an ad at the end of your discussion even though you are already paid by YouTube so they can insert their ads and now you are also just paid by YouTube. BTW, I did purchase a subscription to Nebula and Curiosity Stream based on your ad primarily to support you and other content providers. There has to be an incentive to stop just putting in an ad everywhere because you can. If Apple goes full hog into advertising I for one will stop recommending it’s ecosystem.

[halifaxguy]

I would support a class action suite against apple or any company that charges the premium they do for their products and still subjects customers to experience destroying ads. But I do understand that for many of us moving from a system as cohesive as apple’s would be a huge pain point, I also feel that IF apple were to do this, it won’t take very long at all before a jailbreak becomes available allowing that to be shut down right away. I am not paying ‘Pro Max’ pricing to be inflicted with ads. I do everthing in my power to not see any ads or give up any of my personal information. I will not stop.

[charleskra]

Just how much money does Apple need? Talk about trashing your brand. They are so arrogant they think nothing can damage it. Watch me switch to Android

[ciprianadrian]

Paying 1k $ on a phone and receiving adds. That's crazy.

[mohammad.a]

For me if apple start pushing ads, I'm 100% out of apple ecosystem

[ToddBannor]

I remember paying for print magazine subscriptions. Most of them were still about 50% or more ads.

[XoaGray]

The relative lack of ads is one of the main reasons I went to Apple products in the first place, like it was literally a big part of my decision to move into the ecosystem. If Apple goes backwards on this now and starts putting more ads into everything, one of the biggest selling points they had for me is gone. And at that point, there's not much reason for me to stay with it.
I just have no patients for stuff that's slathered in ads anymore.

[vivienseguy]

As an indie app developer, the introduction of Apple Search Ads a few years ago was a nightmare, still going on today.

[denisjm]

Apple wanted to keep all the revenue for themselves. They want to own everything rather than supporting the competition.