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Every Major Advertising Group Is Blasting Apple for Blocking Cookies in the Safari Browser (adweek.com)
The biggest advertising organizations say Apple will "sabotage" the current economic model of the internet with plans to integrate cookie-blocking technology into the new version of Safari. Marty Swant, reporting for AdWeek: Six trade groups -- the Interactive Advertising Bureau, American Advertising Federation, the Association of National Advertisers, the 4A's and two others -- say they're "deeply concerned" with Apple's plans to release a version of the internet browser that overrides and replaces user cookie preferences with a set of Apple-controlled standards. The feature, which is called "Intelligent Tracking Prevention," limits how advertisers and websites can track users across the internet by putting in place a 24-hour limit on ad retargeting. In an open letter expected to be published this afternoon, the groups describe the new standards as "opaque and arbitrary," warning that the changes could affect the "infrastructure of the modern internet," which largely relies on consistent standards across websites. The groups say the feature also hurts user experience by making advertising more "generic and less timely and useful."
The idea that "consumers" want ads, much less that they want "timely and useful" ads is mistaken.
Ultimately though, I imagine it is good for Google, Facebook, and other advanced tracking providers; they can easily evade any tracking avoidance strategies... unless Apple decides to proxy everything via iCloud.
Google used to. Google used to be famous for unobtrusive, text only ads.
Then they bought DoubleClick.