Safari’s Privacy Feature Costs Ad Companies Millions

Alex Hern, writing for The Guardian:

Advertising technology firm Criteo, one of the largest in the industry, says that the Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) feature for Safari, which holds 15% of the global browser market, is likely to cut its 2018 revenue by more than a fifth compared to projections made before ITP was announced […]

In response, Apple noted that: “Ad tracking technology has become so pervasive that it is possible for ad tracking companies to recreate the majority of a person’s web browsing history. This information is collected without permission and is used for ad re-targeting, which is how ads follow people around the internet.”

This is great news (!) and means that Apple is on point with the implementation details of their new feature. The practices of the ad industry are horrific and should have been addressed years ago. I strongly believe their shady practices have basically killed their own business — people basically hate most web ads — which is in stark contrast to podcast ads.