4% is level with the Lizardman constant, i.e. the threshold of noise in the data:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...
I'm not advocating this for anyone, but yeah some apps don't take money or donations, ads are how they make money, so I shoot my tiny pistol at the tank that is sustainable app development and enable *targeted ads.
Again, not saying you should, not saying you're bad if you don't. It's just I've been that guy with a free app who thought ads were the only way celebrating a 10 dollar ad revenue check, so sometimes for smaller apps I might opt in. It's silly but at the end of the day I'm getting tracked on all my other devices anyways so...
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One day we need people to retrain their concept of value. Google's revenue per user is like 10 dollars a quarter.
40 dollars a year could replace their ad revenue stream with simple subscriptions.
But people will not pay for email.
People will not pay for world class maps.
People will not pay for search engines
Hell people won't pay 99 cents for an app with thousands of hours of development, but they will pay 99 cents for extra cheese.
The way I see it is people pay with data because they won't pay otherwise. I don't know any developers who are thrilled about integrating crappy advertising SDKs that tend to crash, slow down startup times, and leave you at the mercy of a second business unit for your livelihood. They'd all much rather take your money directly. But people will take an ad laden half assed app over a tracking free one for a dollar any day.
Don't they earn only if people actually buy through the ads?
The new ad-tracking method seems like a concession to ad companies, IMO with only a 4% user uptake, apple should have just ripped out any ability to track users in apps and told app developers to deal with it.
a) it’s great PR.
b) it may reduce the quantity of low-quality apps on the App Store
c) most importantly by far, and almost certainly why they went through with it, this will push apps away from making money from Ads, and towards making money from payments, which Apple can then take happily take their 15-30% cut of and profit
As usual, it’s Apple abusing their dominant market position to boost profits. In this case, I don’t mind because it’s a general win for consumer choice, but it’s a symptom of a larger problem.
