Apple will deploy advertising dedicated to privacy on television and on social networks. It shows an auction during which several actors fight to acquire the data of an iPhone user.
Usually, it is not really in the editorial line of Numerama to talk about advertisements. We occasionally talk about it, for example when brands compete in a video, but we are mainly used to dealing with advertising from the point of view of personal data. Our objective is not to give free promotion to a builder.
However, the new Apple ad, which will be broadcast in 24 countries from May 20, 2022, has several interesting aspects in our opinion. It highlights a fake auction during which several actors, who could easily be associated with Facebook, Google, Amazon or TikTok, are fighting to acquire the personal data of a teenager at the best price. Apple praises its privacy initiatives there, but that’s not necessarily what we liked the most.
A perfect illustration of the problem
Apple’s new ad is perhaps the best illustration of tracking available on the Internet. If you are not comfortable with this concept, as well as with the terms “cookies” or “web beacons”, this video is for you. By staging an auction during which are offered the history of messages, open emails, geolocation data, the last purchases or the contacts of a simple teenager, Apple has found a simple way to popularize the question of ad tracking. Yes, it’s more complicated than that, but it’s still well summarized. This is indeed the game that advertisers engage in to obtain information about you. And the ad is pretty funny!
If Apple is not perfect, we must all the same recognize that it is undoubtedly the one who makes the most efforts among the tech giants, at least from the point of view of personal data (it’s normal, its economic model does not depend on it). Its advertising therefore does not exude hypocrisy, an iPhone indeed allows you to prevent an application from following you or to deactivate the sending of notifications when you open an email (at the end of the ad, all advertisers are transformed in Thanos-style dust thanks to the settings of the iPhone). This ad serves both the cause of privacy and Apple, while being quite fun to watch. It’s typically the kind of ads that can make us want to watch TV for a few seconds when it’s on.
Throughout the summer, Apple told us that it will be running numerous privacy ads (with “Privacy, that’s iPhone” for slogan), including in the street. A few days before its big WWDC conference, where iOS 16 will be announced, the Californian brand is preparing to stuff the skulls with its pro-privacy messages. Hard to see a bad thing there.