“A top advertising executive at Apple has left to help lead Drawbridge, a fast-growing startup that helps marketers track user identity across mobile devices,” Douglas MacMillan and Elizabeth Dwoskin report for The Wall Street Journal. “Winston Crawford, the former head of Apple’s mobile ad marketplace, has joined Drawbridge as its first chief operating officer, he said in an interview.”
“Crawford’s experience overseeing ads on iPhones and iPads lends credibility to Drawbridge’s business of monitoring users as they move between mobile devices,” MacMillan and Dwoskin report. “Crawford said he joined Drawbridge because he saw an opportunity to expand this tracking technology to other areas.”
Crawford’s departure from Apple comes at a time when the iPhone maker’s chief executive, Tim Cook, has grown increasingly critical of companies harvesting user data to make money from advertising. While Apple’s iAd service does let marketers advertise within apps on iPhones and iPads based on users’ age, gender, home address, iTunes purchases and App Store downloads, it has been unwilling to push the envelope in how much data it will share with advertisers. ‘I don’t believe they are interested in this capability because they have a strict policy around what they do with user data,’ Crawford said. ‘iAd has great assets and great capabilities, but they are going to follow Apple’s policy to the letter of the law,'” MacMillan and Dwoskin report, “That’s an opportunity for Drawbridge.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: iAd might be hamstrung by Apple’s strict privacy policies, but would you rather have less relevant ads, many of which you might not be interested in, but which allow you to maintain your privacy, or more relevant ads via user tracking like Drawbridge’s? Do users even get to opt in or out of Drawbridge’s type of tracking?
iAd might not offer much in the way of granular user tracking to advertisers, but at least iAd advertisers know they are getting access to the world’s best customers; those who can recognize quality and have demonstrated the means and will to pay for it.
“but they are going to follow Apple’s policy to the letter of the law,”
. . . TO . . THE . . LETTER . . OF . . THE . . LAW,
This is scary. It is intentional.
Apple’s intention and Crawford’s obvious statements means that he sees ways to exploit the data while staying within “legal” wording. Dangerous!
Wrong. “To the letter of the law” means strictly following Apple’s stringent privacy policy mandates.
We believe in telling you up front exactly what’s going to happen to your personal information and asking for your permission before you share it with us. And if you change your mind later, we make it easy to stop sharing with us. Every Apple product is designed around those principles. When we do ask to use your data, it’s to provide you with a better user experience.
A few years ago, users of Internet services began to realize that when an online service is free, you’re not the customer. You’re the product. But at Apple, we believe a great customer experience shouldn’t come at the expense of your privacy.
One very small part of our business does serve advertisers, and that’s iAd. We built an advertising network because some app developers depend on that business model, and we want to support them as well as a free iTunes Radio service. iAd sticks to the same privacy policy that applies to every other Apple product. It doesn’t get data from Health and HomeKit, Maps, Siri, iMessage, your call history, or any iCloud service like Contacts or Mail, and you can always just opt out altogether. – Apple CEO Tim Cook
http://www.apple.com/privacy
Wrong on you.
Yes, Apple’s policy says that.
Of Course it does.
And Of Course, Apple strictly means what their policy says!
No Argument There!
The argument is with Crawford’s wording hints directly that he will stay within the letter of the law – but it means he has found loopholes to exploit Apple policy while staying “legal”.
If you don’t understand that – then let me point you to Samsung. They knew and know the US law system so well that they knew they could pull the wool over Apple and even Steve Jobs himself and they did. And Samsung knew that the “law” would not protect them until too late.
I am not lambasting Apple by any means. But I have been in the real world long enough and to recognize that when someone says they will “operate within the ‘letter’ of the law”, it means that they have something up their sleeve – so to speak to be legally right but morally wrong.
To say, “we will honor and follow Apple’s policy” is one thing,
. . . to say “within the letter of the law” is a 180° turn on intent.
“Letter of the Law” is a statement that far more often than not, states that someone intends to follow “legally” – but not in intention or morally. It is not Apple that is doing wrong, it is Crawford that is heading in that direction with his legalese mumbo jumbo.
Working for Drawbridge, he no longer needs to heed Apple’s “letter of the law.” He can do whatever he can get away with. I doubt he gives two shits about what Apple’s policy is now. He knows how it limits iAd and he’ll work to circumvent that at Drawbridge. Right?
Which is deeply concerning, lets hope Apple keeps a close eye on what they are doing and how they may be using gathered inside information to do that. This is a very grey area I suspect and we shall perhaps see where the law lies in the matter.
What web advertisers (and advertisers in general) do not understand is that NO ONE wants ANY advertisements EVER. It doesn’t matter whether these ads are “relevant or not relevant”. They are ALWAYS intrusive. ALWAYS. That means that ANY data collection on users is ALWAYS a violation of privacy. The user NEVER benefits.
In a large sense, what people who sell web advertisements are always obscuring the above. We users of sites like this understand the necessary evil of such ads, but ads should ALWAYS be designed NOT to violate the user’s privacy. Companies like “Drawbridge” are designed just to violate people’s privacy. I’d never work for or invest in such a company. I certainly won’t believe their BS.
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
I recently found a hard drive at a great price and I found it through an ad (here on MacDailyNews, in fact). Wouldn’t have known about it except for that ad. Also, for a more dramatic example, my cousin is likely alive today due to an ad for a cancer treatment center that she loves, believes saved her life, and now even works for!
Be careful about using the words ALWAYS and NEVER (especially in all-caps), you’ll likely ALWAYS be wrong and you’ll likely NEVER be right if you use those words.
Smart people actually want relevant ads. Ads give people free access to content and can provide them with deals and product discovery. Ads are not “always” intrusive. (See my examples above.) Data collection can be approved by users. Users do so in order to increase the relevance of ads, which minimizes their intrusiveness. Irellevant ads are the ads that annoy. I suggest that you’re so annoyed precisely because you do not allow yourself to be served with relevant ads that might communicate useful information for you.
I agree with you about Drawbidge. It sounds sneaky. I prefer Apple’s method. Let us opt for some relevance tracking if we desire to improve our ad experience and minimize irrelevant and therefore annoying ads.
“Smart people actually want relevant ads”
That is ignorance speaking. You know, kinda like “Always, and Never”.
“Smart people.” As opposed to you. If I’m “ignorant,” then you’re brain dead.
If you and your ilk had your way, this site would not exist. Ads support this site.
I assume you are one of the 20% who are hurting MacDailyNews by blocking their ads and not whitelisting them even as they work to minimize ads and have told us that they are struggling? If so, shame on you.
In both of your examples a simple search for a harddrive and a cancer treatment center would have been both quicker and more effective.
Specifically about your cousin’s cancer treatment: I’m glad she is doing so well. If I had cancer, I would stop at NOTHING to IMMEDIATELY find the best treatment options. There is NO WAY that I would EVER rely on a web ad to find one. There are those capitals again.
What you say about data collection is totall BS, you can only help those who invade your privacy. Advertisers want you to believe what you believe.
I stand by my words: advertising is ALWAYS intrusive for EVERYONE at ALL times without exception. 😀
Enjoy your irrelevant ads then. And, if you’re blocking them, know that you’re only creating more of them and more intrusive forms of them.
The end game is that you’ll either have no sites to visit, unless you pay directly for them (and virtually nobody does that), or you’ll have ads mixed so thoroughly into the content that you won’t even know that you’re seeing advertising.
You REALLY couldnt shop for a hard drive? Really? In 2015?
Good god…..
I ignore and despise ads because they are n my face and not wanted. Like most here at MDN. What they do to YouRube with their unwanted ads (aren’t they all unwanted?) is a travesty. Don’t try to con us. Money doesn’t talk, it swears. And sh**s.
Advertisers don’t know what is relevant to me. The bad ones don’t need to know and there are so few good ones that nobody knows who they are.
MDN, from what I have read this linking and tracking is performed using available data. Companies aggregate data through web site data and user searches and cookies and every other possible source to attempt to reliably link users with all of their devices, habits, preferences, etc.
As a result, users do not have an opportunity to opt in or out of this type of statistical tracking and linkage of users and devices. The best that you can do is to limit your footprint by patronizing companies and services that promote user privacy (e.g., Apple, DuckDuckGo), avoiding known aggregators (e.g., all Google services, Facebook and other social media services), utilizing anonymizing internet access methods, and attempting to limit the data that you provide as you utilize the internet (forms, cookies, etc.). But your best efforts are probably not going to be good enough in these days of big data – eventually you and your friends and family will inevitably leave enough pieces scattered across the internet for these companies to fit together and associate them with you as an individual.
I’m with TIm Cook’s policy on user privacy. This is why I am an Apple customer. (that and their great products)