“Apple doesn’t trust the benevolence of Google, developers, and other third parties involved in the iOS platform. Apple wants to control the flow of user information. They may use more detail in targeting iAds than they are going to allow others to use for their own ads and other analysis, and that’s a competitive advantage, but it’s a fair competitive advantage for them to maintain on their own platform,” Barnard writes. “Apple hasn’t said AdMob can’t advertise on iOS, just that they must get written permission from Apple for ANY user and/or device information that is sent back to AdMob servers.”
Barnard writes, “For reference, here’s a story about Amazon not allowing third parties access to user’s purchase history to prevent them from usurping Amazon’s incredibly valuable recommendation engine.”
“But this goes way deeper than just screwing Ad Mob/Google and having a competitive advantage for iAds, it’s about Apple taking back control of how user and device information is accessed on their platform,” Barnard writes. “At the end of the day, when someone buys an iPhone, they are putting a certain amount of trust in Apple. And Apple is positioning the App Store as a place where users can trust the apps that they buy.”
“If Apple allows 3rd party apps unmitigated access to user data, they’ve essentially passed that trust and responsibility down a level to developers and other 3rd parties,” Barnard writes. “If Apple is going to position the App Store as a walled garden of apps that are safe to buy and use, they MUST control these aspects of what’s going on under the hood.”
“If Apple didn’t do this, a year from now a self-conscious woman would look down at her phone and see an ad promoting weighloss products to overweight 41 year old women with thinning blond hair who live in a blue house and drive a black Ford Tauras. And that’s going to scare the crap out of her,” Barnard writes. “Who’s she going to blame? What product is going to trashed in the press for enabling this kind of eerily specific advertising?”
Barnard writes, “By controlling the flow of information and how targeted the iAd platform becomes, Apple is taking back control so that it can decide what is appropriate. And I trust Apple in that regard a hell of a lot more than I trust Google, Facebook, etc. The thing is, Apple is a hardware company, that’s where they have and will continue to make their money. Google, Facebook, and others trade in information. The more detailed and specific, the more valuable that information. For Apple, the better the overall experience of the device, the more valuable that device becomes. They can throttle ad targeting and the specificity of 3rd party analytics according to the taste of users. Trusting 3rd parties to do so would be incredibly foolish…”
Full article – with the highest of recommendations – here.
MacDailyNews Take: What David wrote. Please read the excellent full article.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “jax44” for the heads up.]