This means people tell it exactly what they want. Who cares what your relationship status is when I can see you type in "wedding ring" into a search box? Who cares where you like to eat in the past when you searched for "chinese food" on maps, and potentially even clicked on an ad for a restaurant?
This is called "intent" and it's incredibly powerful because you can advertise for exactly what a person is actually looking for at that moment. Inference (like Facebook likes and profile details) will never be as good for real-time targeting.
Your random searches are not that valuable from a monetization standpoint. Searches that lead people to buy things are. Those searches are easy to pick off on a category by category basis. I had no idea that Google actually took up most of the screen on mobile with ads for products for sell until this thread. I’ve had Ad blocking on for just that long.
In fact it's the opposite happening with Google now pushing into searches for flights and hotels with far better UX, even though those verticals were dominated by other vendors.
Nobody cares about some app that gets 0.001% of the usage and probably doesn't even have any strong identity link. "Shopping data" isn't magical nor is it of interest to every advertiser. Purchase data is also already processed by specific companies with their own properties or in aggregate by many ad networks. And, in case you missed my first comment, Google recently closed a deal to get purchase data directly from Mastercard which is far more than any single retailer could provide.
If you actually have an example of a specific app that is delivering much greater ad performance then perhaps you should share it.
I’d argue Google’s data is 100x more accurate of who I am as a person than the data I provide FB. As a theoretical example, based on my search history, Google knows I have hemorrhoids, am paranoid about pancreatic cancer, looking for a SMS API provider, am a borderline gambler (because i check betting odds every day), and pondering the benefits of a divorce.
FB on the other hand has all the “shallow” information. It knows I like Game of Thrones, NBA basketball and paintball. It knows I like to eat ramen. It doesnt know all the other stuff because I dont tell my friends I have hemorrhoids. I dont tell my friends I might be getting a divorce.
Does FB know the needs/wants/fears of me as a person compared to google? I think not.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/14/facebook-relations...
Data mining is incredibly insightful in aggregate, but my searching for "Cheetos" is a difficult path to (a) my being hungry for snacks, (b) my wanting to see the mascot, (c) seeing if they have a new flavor, etc. etc.
Google knows where you eat because when you leave the restaurant it offers you to review it for google map.
Google analytics does know the same user across sites and devices but this is of course not exposed to the site, it's used by Google for ad targeting.
Browser fingerprinting is not necessary because people log in (to apps and sites) and will never be possible to fully reduce unless Apple can somehow make identical computer chips down to the atom.
Apple's cookie war also only helps Facebook and Google who maintain active 1st party cookies with every user, and meanwhile hurts all the independent networks and publishers who have to get people to keep logging in. This is why it helps to actually have some adtech expertise and industry cooperation instead of creating silly browser rules and turning Safari into the new IE.
How does that help unless they are sharing the data with Google?
Apple's cookie war also only helps Facebook and Google who maintain active 1st party cookies with every user, and meanwhile hurts all the independent networks and publishers who have to get people to keep logging in. This is why it helps to actually have some adtech expertise and industry cooperation instead of creating silly browser rules and turning Safari into the new IE.
If you haven’t noticed, Apple isn’t trying to help the adtech industry. Apple has a built in framework that allows third parties to submit ad blocking rules into Safari and (some) embedded webviews.
I didn’t know how bad Google’s search results were with most of the page taken over by shopping results on mobile until I started loading results with content blocking turned off to post on this topic.
For the really paranoid, you can completely turn off most sharing with Apple, disable iCloud backups and backup to your PC with iTunes.
Do you know how many people check in every single time they work out?
People don’t use Google Maps when they know where they are going, but they will check in.
As far as adblockers blocking contents “in the DOM”, that doesn’t help if you’re using the FB app - one of the most popular apps in the store and most people aren’t going to install network based ad blockers.
Only geeks use Google’s DNS. Most people use whatever DNS the DHCP settings on thier router tell them. If you are using cellular data can you even change your DNS?