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While we design, build and test these new solutions, we plan to support existing ads platform features for at least two years, and we intend to provide substantial notice ahead of any future changes.
So it’s being built and tested. Android users will still be subjected to ads tracking for the next two years.
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Spotify is making more podcast acquisitions. The company announced today it’s acquiring both Chartable and Podsights — two of the most prominent podcast marketing and ad attribution companies. The deal price hasn’t been disclosed, but this marks the first major acquisition the company has made this year in a long line of audio purchases.
We’ve seen how Spotify has been strengthening its position in the podcasting world.
Spotify has been on a podcasting acquisition spree in recent years, spanning across advertising technology, audiobooks, and top creative talent. Last year, the company bought Whooshkaa, Podz, Findaway, and Locker Room to offer and promote more spoken audio content, which followed its purchase of the major podcast ad platform Megaphone in late 2020. At the same time, Spotify has been scooping up major talent and shows to run ads on, including Joe Rogan’s podcast, as well as Gimlet, Parcast, and The Ringer.
While it is great that good content creators get to benefit from this, it is also important that podcasting remains an open ecosystem. Remember what Google did to RSS?
Independent publishers and loyal readers have kept RSS feeds alive, but it is a shadow of how vibrant the ecosystem was. I hope RSS would recover and become used more widely as people start to move away from closed platforms. Likewise for podcasting.
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Until now, apps have been able to rely on Apple’s Identifier for Advertiser (IDFA) to track users for targeting and advertising purposes. With the launch of iOS 14.5 this week, mobile apps now have to ask users who have upgraded to iOS 14.5 for permission to gather tracking data. With opt-in rates expected to be low, this change is expected to create challenges for personalized advertising and attribution, impacting the $189 billion mobile advertising industry worldwide.
The numbers so far is 96% opt-out in the US, 88% opt-out worldwide.
I’m curious to know which countries have the highest opt-in rates.
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As a way to convince users to enable tracking across other apps and websites, Facebook is deploying the tactic of telling users that they must enable tracking as part of the App Tracking Transparency framework in iOS 14.5 if they want to help keep Facebook and Instagram “free of charge.”
Are they threatening to charge people if they don’t allow Facebook to track them? Please do your friends a favour and remind them to opt out. If you know anyone who might be misled by this, especially the elderly and less tech-savvy, please take the time to help them out.
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We created a multi-variant targeted ad designed to show you the personal data that Facebook collects about you and sells access to. The ad would simply display some of the information collected about the viewer which the advertising platform uses. Facebook was not into that idea.
Maybe everyone should try Facebook’s advertising platform at least once so they can understand the kind of data that’s being collected about them.
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Yahoo and AOL, kings of the early internet, saw their fortunes decline as Silicon Valley raced ahead to create new digital platforms. Google replaced Yahoo. AOL was supplanted by cable giants. Now they will become the property of private equity. Verizon, their current owner, agreed to sell them to Apollo Global Management in a deal worth $5 billion, the companies announced Monday.
In 2002, Yahoo had the chance to buy Google for $1 billion; they hesitated and walked away when the price went to $3 billion. (Same story says they nearly bought Facebook for $1 billion in 2006 and could’ve had it for $1.1 billion.)
In January 2000, AOL acquired Time-Warner for $182 billion to form a mega media company then valued at $350 billion.
What a decline.
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Zoom:
Zoom Rooms weekly system restart functionality will restart your computer weekly with the following conditions:
- Between the hours of 2:00-4:00am based on local time on PC or Mac
- When there is no meeting currently in progress in that room
By default, the Zoom Rooms computer will restart on Saturday, but you can also select a day for the restart.
Instead of trying to deal with the memory leaks, Zoom decides to just force you to restart your computer weekly.
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The marriage of carmakers PSA Peugeot and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is built on the promise of cost-savings in the capital-hungry industry, but what remains to be seen is if it will be able to preserve jobs and heritage brands in a global market still suffering from the pandemic.
This is a stark contrast to the Chinese market where new car companies and brands keep popping up.
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A billion people now have iPhones. According to my estimate, Apple surpassed the billion iPhone users milestone last month. Thirteen years after going on sale, the iPhone remains the perennial most popular and best-selling smartphone. Competitors continue to either shamelessly copy iPhone or, at a minimum, be heavily influenced by the iPhone. Looking ahead, Apple’s top priorities for the iPhone include finding ways to keep the device at the center of people’s lives while at the same time recognizing the paradigm shift ushered in by wearables.
Staggering.
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More than five weeks after release, iOS 14 adoption is set to overtake iOS 13 as the most installed version of iOS, according to data obtained from Mixpanel’s iOS 14 adoption tracker.
Incredible feat.