This article is from the official accountRan dimension (ID: chaintruth) , author: Larry Yan, editor: Zhao Lei, from the title figure: vision China
In mid-March, according to a report by the Financial Times, Apple warned Tencent and ByteDance not to try to bypass the upcoming app tracking transparency and privacy function, otherwise the app will be taken down. Previously, Internet companies such as Tencent and ByteDance were testing a tool called Internet Advertising Identifier (CAID) developed by the China Advertising Association to circumvent Apple Privacy adjustment.
In June 2020, Apple announced the implementation of new privacy features. Users can choose whether to allow APP to track their information. General users choose whether or not. This is a big blow to accurate advertising push based on user behavior analysis. U.S. Internet companies have expressed dissatisfaction. Among them, Facebook reacted most strongly, and initiated an “antitrust” lawsuit against Apple.
Ran Caijing learned that a technology company that has extensive cooperation with a Chinese Internet technology company stated that they have developed CAID-compatible products for some customers and received warnings from Apple, but soon removed the relevant modules.
“Their (Tencent and ByteDance) are also removed, this tool (CAID) has been discontinued in the market, and the arms can’t squeeze the thighs.” An insider said. “After Apple’s new system ISO14.5, all apps are required to ask users. However, CAID tries to open a new path because it violates the uncollectible user information defined by Apple and violates this rule.”
The China Advertising Association, which developed CAID, responded to Ran Caijing and declined to comment on this matter.
According to foreign media reports, Apple plans to launch app tracking transparency rules starting from iOS 14.5 in the next few weeks. When the application accesses the mobile phone IDFA, iOS 14.5 will pop up a window to remind youUsers, provide the options of “Allow Tracking” and “Do Not Allow Application Tracking”. IDFA(identifier for advertising) is an advertising identifier developed by Apple. In the past, IDFA was enabled by default.
In the entire Internet advertising process, for example, the advertiser is “A Chinese Ghost Story” and voted for Today’s Toutiao. Today’s Toutiao can collect the IDFA of Apple users. If a user downloads and opens it, “A Chinese Ghost” can also see IDFA. Both parties can have a benchmark when used for settlement, confirm that the traffic is not fake, and carry out more accurate and wider delivery in the future.
But after Apple updated the new system 14.5, all APPs are required to ask users whether to enable IDFA. It is generally expected that most users will choose “no”. If this is the case, the entire advertising and settlement ecology will face important tests.
Lan Caijing observed that the current updated ISO14.4.1 version of Apple mobile phones stipulates that: the new “privacy” function improves the transparency of the way the APP accesses location, photos, microphones and cameras to users, and allows users to better Local control, and for this regulation, the future may become more and more stringent.
Lv Jingzhi, senior marketing manager of Beijing Digital Alliance Network Technology Co., Ltd., told Ran Finance that the refusal of users to share IDFA does not mean that they cannot receive advertisements. Users just cannot be defined, so they will receive a lot of things you don’t care about. advertising. Therefore, everyone needs a correct understanding to decide what should be resisted and what should be shared.
According to IDC statistics, in 2020, Apple issued 206 million mobile phones, accounting for 15.9% of the global mobile phone market share, ranking second; this year, its market value increased by nearly 1 trillion US dollars in 2020. It reaches 2 trillion US dollars per month. It constantly wants external companies to act according to their own wishes in order to achieve their vision and mission.
Apple has always attached great importance to protecting user privacy, which is determined by its business model. Apple CEO Cook once said, “Apple’s business model is very straightforward: it sells great products. We will not build files based on your email content or web browsing habits and then sell them to advertisers. We will not use you to store them. The information on the iPhone or iCloud is used to make money. And we will not read your email or information to obtain information from it to sell you related products. The original intention of our software and services is to make our equipment better. It’s that simple.”
Users can also clearly feel that when using Apple products, they receive less advertising harassment, because Apple gives users more control over personal data and allows users to jump out of ad tracking.
But for more Internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Tencent, ByteDance, etc., advertising business is an important source of revenue. Therefore, contradictions are inevitable.
Overcoming the competition for user privacy, Apple and the Internet giants have fought. This may be a landmark event. In the past, the Internet giants can still occupy the majority of interests in disputes over game recharge and reward services. Apple has taken a lot of trouble to pass the point, but this time, Apple has cut into the core business of these giants. From the current point of view, Apple has insisted on pursuing the measures to protect user privacy. Other Internet giants will also use different methods. Fight to the end.
In addition to legal proceedings and delisting protests, all technology Internet companies have to rethink how to get along with the increasingly powerful Apple. After all, Jobs’s harshness and paranoia are deeply embedded in this company. In the company’s genes.
Privacy dispute
“I believe people are smart, and some people want to share more data than others. Ask them, and ask them every time. If they are tired of your request, let them tell you not to ask them again , Let them know exactly how you will handle their data.”
When Apple’s official website in China introduced “privacy”, it quoted a paragraph from the founder Steve Jobs in a document. Protecting user privacy is one of Apple’s core values, “what you can share should be your decision,” the official website wrote.
Cook once said, “We only have a small part of our business that serves advertisers, and that is iAd. The reason why we build an advertising network is because some APP developers need to rely on this business model… iAd abides by the same privacy policy as all other Apple products.”
Apple’s privacy policy has always been strict, but in June 2020, Apple announced that it will implement more stringent “privacy regulations” in the new mobile phone system iOS14, which will give users the authority to collect IDFA for applications , As long as the user chooses not, then advertisers and Internet companies will encounter setbacks in their intentions to accurately push advertisements.
This was opposed by American Internet companies, whoseIn particular, Facebook reacted most strongly, initiating an “antitrust” lawsuit against Apple. Because advertising revenue is its core revenue, in 2020, Facebook’s total revenue will increase by 22% year-on-year to $86 billion, of which advertising revenue will increase by 21% to $84.2 billion. According to Facebook tests, after the implementation of the above policy, advertising revenue may be reduced by more than 50%.
A person familiar with the matter said that one or two months after Apple announced the new regulations in June 2020, the China Advertising Association began to study CAID, with the original slogan “Replace IDFA.” The China Advertising Association has about 2,000 members, and member units at the vice-chairman level include companies such as Tencent, Baidu, and Alibaba.
The insider also said that although the China Advertising Association later launched the “Technical Specification for Mobile Internet Advertising Signs” in December 2020, the participants included Internet technology companies such as Alibaba and Tencent, but the level of participation may not be so deep. , The possibility of building momentum is greater. He has also attended some meetings of the China Advertising Association, but he has not seen those from the big Internet companies.
“The technical compliance of CAID has some problems.” The above-mentioned person familiar with the matter said. CAID attempts to bypass Apple’s IDFA and collect users’ weak information characteristics to build user portraits and achieve accurate advertising. Once user information is involved, Apple will inevitably adopt the strictest rules to regulate, so prohibition is inevitable.
“Because CAID’s early publicity is free, especially for some large companies, it attracts a lot of people to connect, but if it is implemented, it may adopt a fee system for waist Internet companies.”
As a result, everyone knows that after Tencent and ByteDance tried CAID, they immediately received a warning from Apple. According to the news learned by Ran Caijing, some major Internet companies have given up CAID.
In fact, Apple has been tightening the valve for advertisers to collect user information. Earlier, Apple replaced UDID with IDFA because Apple believes that advertisers collect UDID information and infringe user privacy, and the newly launched switch , Give the user a temporary invisible power.
But Apple may also be unprofitable. “These will force the company’s business model from a free model to a subscription system and other in-app payments, the latter can directly benefit Apple.” A Facebook executive told The New York Times.
The ecology of the Apple mobile phone is like a plain. There are also rivers in relation to cards. According to its charging mechanism, both subscriptions and in-app payments need to be paid to Apple””Tolls”, but the advertising revenue of various Internet products does not have Apple’s share. The huge traffic and operating fees only flow through the plains and only remain in the Apple App Store.
“Restrictions but not prohibitions.” Lu Jingzhi said that the impact is inevitable, but for giants like Tencent and Alibaba, they can always find a way.
The huge intermediary between the publisher and the delivery platform is the largest advertiser. They do not have the right to collect IDFA. Their IDFA is originally collected from traffic. If there is the strength of cloud storage , Then at least the previous user portraits can still be used. If it is not saved, the previous user portrait is completely invalid.
According to the news that Ran Caijing learned, Ali is also testing its own ID, which is similar to CAID, but it is now in the limelight and may slow down. For example, Tencent has accumulated huge private domain traffic through WeChat. It is also a solution to convert the public logo into your own private domain logo. For example, the game platform uses WeChat to log in, etc., to provide settlement decisions for Party A and Party B in the advertising industry.
Can’t get around the apple
Users are paying more and more attention to privacy authority. All Internet companies must adapt to this environment. This is a general trend. In early March, Google announced that it would stop advertising based on personal web browsing records in the future. Google said this was to protect privacy. Apple’s similar move in September 2017, Apple’s Safari browser, will delete all cookies older than 30 days.
The measures of the above-mentioned technology giants show that the traditional Internet business model “free + advertising” is ushering in an inflection point. According to foreign media reports, some technology Internet companies are beginning to try to replace the “advertising model” with “business models”, such as e-commerce , Knowledge payment or user rewards and other models. Twitter is testing “super follows”, which is a way for users to collect user praise. TikTok is promoting e-commerce through partnerships such as Shopify.
In January 2020, Facebook founder Zuckerberg said that the three areas that he “will focus on the next chapter most” are private information, virtual reality, commerce, and payments.
This may have returned to the cage designed by Apple, such as the 30% Apple tax. Although Apple has tightened and relaxed in specific implementation, Apple, which has a large number of high-end users, has always been unable to get around open.
According to the statistics of Aboveavalon, the number of Apple mobile phone users reached 1 billion in 2020. Although the sales growth rate is slowing down, it is still the most eye-catching player in the world’s mobile phones. According to Apple’s official statistics, in 2020, the number of developers of Apple’s system will exceed 23 million. The Apple mobile phone has become a terminal device that any Internet company and entrepreneur can’t avoid. Anyone or company tied to this chariot has to accept more rigorous scrutiny while reaping huge benefits. The impermanent fate of being replaced and abandoned.
The new privacy regulations are just a new problem that Apple has fallen into. Both the government and cooperative enterprises have expressed dissatisfaction with this increasingly bossy enterprise.
Recently, Apple was fined nearly 2 million U.S. dollars (approximately RMB 13 million) by the Brazilian State of Sao Paulo for not giving away chargers for violating Brazil’s Consumer Law, October 2020 , Apple announced that it will buy Apple mobile phones in the future and will no longer give away chargers; in August 2020, it fell into a game sharing dispute with Epic, the game giant that developed “Fortnite”, and the two sides are still fighting in court to this day.
Among these, the most criticized is the “Apple tax”, which is also the source of the dispute between Epic Games and Apple, which is Apple’s 30% rake.
Apple users will pay about 30% more when people pay for membership on the familiar video platform Iyuteng. This includes in-game recharge behavior, but does not include physical e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and JD.
How big is the income of this part? According to statistics from data agencies, the total revenue of Apple’s App Store in 2020 will exceed $64 billion, an increase of 28% over 2019. This also makes Apple the world’s fourth-largest gaming revenue company in 2019, followed by Tencent, Sony and Microsoft.
Shortly after its launch in 2008, Apple’s APP Store has been called the world’s developer’s paradise. People call it a more perfect system than Android and Windows, and it’s a paradise for entrepreneurs. But not long after the good days, Apple asked these developers to pay “tolls.”
In July 2017, Apple wrote the Chinese localized innovation “reward” into its terms and stipulated that in-app rewards must use Apple’s official payment channel-in-app purchases, and pay Apple to share; and Related apps must not use other buttons, external links, or other methods to allow consumers to use payment channels other than Apple. That is, Apple will take a 30% commission from the appreciation function, and if it refuses to implement it, it may cause the application to be removed.
This covers the “appreciation” of platforms such as WeChat official account and Zhihu. WeChat finally chose to turn off the official account appreciation and QR code transfer functions, and some Zhihu authors also chose to close Apple users’ tips.
But after two months, Apple chose to compromise in September 2002. Apple allowed personal “financial gifts” to bypass Apple’s internal transaction payment system. However, Apple also stipulated that mobile software developers must not Directly benefit from the payment of these virtual gifts or receive a commission.
The greater resistance is to get rid of the shelves voluntarily. In August 2020, game giant Epic removed the game “Fortnite” from the Apple App Store because it was dissatisfied with Apple’s 30% rake policy, and the two sides are still fighting in court to this day.
However, starting from January 1, 2021, Apple announced the launch of a new developer program. Developers who earned less than US$1 million (equivalent to RMB 6.55 million) in the previous calendar year will be eligible to participate in the program , Enjoy the commission rate reduced to 15%.
“Apple’s one-stop business decision from development to production is a very correct decision of the decision-making level. This decision has led to the greater their efforts, the higher the right to speak. Just like IDFA, tightening Sooner or later, UDID restrictions on collection were also caused, and finally did it. This will be a continuous game process.” An industry source said.
Is Apple’s decision the best? Is it the most correct?
“This can’t be evaluated. As a third party, whoever plays with is obeyed by the rules, without judging the rules. Since you want to play the game, you must abide by the ecological rules.” Lu Jingzhi said, Apple published skd itself Network is an attribution tool, collects hardware information by itself, performs box-sealing operations, and provides statistics to developers. Currently, there is no charge. In the future, she said, after IDFA is fully implemented, this tool will most likely be charged. “Is this a kind of side monopoly? This is also the point where Facebook confronts Apple.”
This is very similar to the era of large American companies in the industrial age of railroad oil in the early 20th century. A few companies hold the right to develop an industry. The New York Times once said in a commentary that monopoly in the economic field is inevitable. Because monopoly means efficiency and innovation, an industry always gathers companies with high efficiency and rapid technological innovation. This time, information has become oil, and Internet giants have become Rockefeller and so on.
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