The Arts of Ads
It’s become second nature to hold your thumb in the top right corner of your screen and wait for the impossibly small “x” button to appear so whatever poorly animated, childish phone game or luxury apartment for rent can get out of the way of the intended entertainment, whether it be a magazine article or one of those games themselves. With an entry fee for apps becoming scarce, app developers shifted towards “freemium” apps in the last several years: Apps that generate revenue from selling advertisement space on their servers rather than charging fees directly to the user.
In an article from the Financial Times, a study conducted at Oxford University found that the median app sends data to 10 different third parties. So all that precious time being spent hovering over the x is information being sent to third parties. Did the user click on the advertisement? How long did they spend (after the minimum required time) viewing the advertisement? Which products are they most interested in? All the answers to these questions are distributed constantly from the source to third parties that include, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, etc. This explains why that coincidental appearance of a printer advertisement on Instagram right after you clicked on the advertisement for that printer on Snapchat occurs.
The article reminded me of the conversations we had in class about Google’s sponsored search algorithms. The article outlines the supply chain that leads to Google’s targeted advertising. This study also reminded me of the conversations we’ve had about network effects in class. However, this application of the Power law almost applies behind a steel curtain, as the entity gaining popularity is personal information and tendencies, rather than a song or a TV show.
https://www.ft.com/products?location=https%3A%2F%2F%2Fmobile-app-data-trackers%2F