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faab64@diasp.org
Farhad šŸ†“šŸ‡µšŸ‡ø ā˜®ļøNow

For the last 18 months or so, Saudi Arabia and Iran have been engaging in a process of rapprochement. The two signed a Beijing-brokered roadmap to de-escalation in early 2023. The Kingdom reopened its embassy in #Tehran in autumn 2023. Since then, a series of symbolic steps, including state visits and the opening of consular services, have taken place. Not that you'd know from reading the prestige press in the UK and US. The #FT, #Bloomberg, the #WSJ, the #WaPo and the #NYT hardly report on this story. So, yesterday, Saudi Arabia and Iran conducted joint naval exercises in the Gulf of Oman. Given the situation in the Middle East, this would seem important. Who's reporting on it? Let's look at #Google News.

#Iran #KSA #PersianGulf #Media #Censorship #Politics #China #WestAaia

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faab64@diasp.org
Farhad šŸ†“šŸ‡µšŸ‡ø ā˜®ļøNow

The #US plans to send tens of millions of dollars worth of #ammunition to Israel despite the #Biden administration's calls for a #ceasefire, the #WSJ reports.

The US will supply Israel with approximately 1,000 MK-82 bombs as well as KMU-572 precision guidance kits.

Isn't he just lovely? He is like a friendly Grandpa that everyone would love to have. Except for Palestinians, they can blow up in pieces with #GenocideJoe provided weapons.

#SaveGaza #StopIsrael #SaveTheChildren
#palestine #Israel #Occupation #Apartheid #Politics #PeaceNow #StopTheWar #CeasefireNow

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faab64@diasp.org
Farhad šŸ†“šŸ‡µšŸ‡ø ā˜®ļøNow

The United States could send a second group of aircraft carriers to the coast of Israel, The Wall Street Journal said, citing #Pentagon representatives.

Gaza has no air force, not tanks, no armored vehicles, no air defense and nothing but home made weapons.

Israel is the 6th strongest military in the world and US is now sending a second Aircraft carrier to support them?

This is the country that tells the world, they stand for the weak, against the aggressors in #Ukraine.

But in Israel, they side with the occupation power and the apartheid regime.

So does #France, #UK, #Germany and #Italy #WSJ

Pa. Image of USSGW unrelated to the story just for the reference of what they are sending.

#palestine #Israel #Occupation #Apartheid #Politics #Gaza #PeaceNow #StopTheWar

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bkoehn@diaspora.koehn.com
Brad Koehn ā˜‘ļø

Lifted from #WSJ:

#Appleā€™s #Privacy Change Is Hitting Tech and E-Commerce Companies. Hereā€™s Why.

Restrictions on user tracking drive up advertising costs and pose a problem for #Snap and #Facebook, ad execs say

By Patience Haggin and Suzanne Vranica

Loose-leaf tea seller Plum Deluxe used to gain a new customer for every $27 it spent on Facebook and #Instagram ads. Then, Apple Inc. introduced a privacy change restricting how users are tracked on mobile devices.

Now, the company spends as much as $270 to pick up a new customer. ā€œThatā€™s a huge jump and one that we just canā€™t absorb,ā€ said Andy Hayes, founder of Plum Deluxe of Portland, Ore., which is now cutting its spending.

Appleā€™s change, rolled out in April, is beginning to disrupt the online ad market, hurting e-commerce players and creating challenges for tech companies including Facebook Inc. and Snap Inc.

Snap on Thursday cited Appleā€™s change as one reason it expects its growth to slow in the current quarter. Snap shares fell 20% in after-hours trading after it made that disclosure in its earnings report. On Friday, Snap shares fell 27% to $55.14.
Appleā€™s new policy requires apps to ask users if they want to be tracked. Many users have opted out of tracking by popular apps, including Facebook and Snapchat. As a result, those apps are getting less data on consumersā€™ habits and interests, and canā€™t target ads at users as effectively.

Advertisers are finding it harder to reach potential customers, according to the executives, and ad pricesā€”which were already risingā€”are going up further because of Appleā€™s change. MuteSix, a digital agency that works with direct-to-consumer online brands, said its clients have seen their Facebook ad prices rise about 25%, on average.

Facebook, which publicly opposed Appleā€™s change, has warned that the change might hurt its financial results. A range of small online businesses, from clothing retailers to office-furniture suppliers to protein-powder sellers, rely heavily on Facebook and Instagram ads to reach new customers.

Many of those companies are struggling to cope with the Apple change and some say they are pulling back ad spending, according to interviews with two dozen e-commerce and ad-industry executives.

ā€œSmall businesses could launch their pajama websites and advertise on Facebook because Facebook could identify users who most likely would buy those pajamas based on their activity on the web,ā€ said Nii Ahene, chief strategy officer at digital ad firm Tinuiti. ā€œIt has become a lot more challengingā€ for Facebook to do that, he said.

Fļæ¼acebook reports quarterly results Monday. Its ad business, which brought in $84 billion in revenue last year, has been resilient over the past 18 months through an advertiser boycott and the pandemic, and Facebook might work through the Apple change without a problem.

A Facebook spokeswoman said Appleā€™s changes will benefit its own growing ad business. ā€œAppleā€™s policy is benefiting their bottom line at the expense of businesses who rely on personalized ads to reach customers and grow their operations,ā€ the spokeswoman said.

An Apple spokesman said its change was meant to let users decide whether to share their data and with whom. ā€œThese rules apply equally to all developersā€”including Appleā€”and we have received strong support from regulators and privacy advocates for this new feature,ā€ the spokesman said.

U.S. users opt into tracking only about 16% of the times they encounter the Apple privacy prompt, according to mobile app analytics provider Flurry.

Pregnancy and fertility tests startup Get Stix Inc., which does business as Stix, was spending between $50,000 and $100,000 a month on Facebook ads earlier this year. The company saw its customer acquisition cost triple as the digital ad market boomed and Appleā€™s change began to roll out.

ā€œWe donā€™t have the capital to weather that,ā€ said Cynthia Plotch, Get Stixā€™s co-founder. ā€œWe needed to pull back.ā€ Stix cut its Facebook ad spending by roughly half and shifted dollars to other types of ads, from TikTok to email marketing.
Stix has begun to ramp its spending back up on Facebook and has managed to keep the ad costs down by improving the creative content of its ads, so they will get a boost from Facebookā€™s algorithms.

Tļæ¼he rise in ad prices is due to an old-fashioned supply crunch. Facebookā€™s ad targeting relies partly on a piece of code, called a pixel, embedded on more than eight million websites. When someone visits a site, the pixel collects the userā€™s information and sends it back to Facebook. For Apple users who opt out of tracking, that information isnā€™t sent to Facebook. This shrinks the number of potential users advertisers can target, driving up prices.

Get Smirk.com, a U.K.-based company that sells teeth-whitening products online and spends roughly $2,000 a day on Facebook ads, has seen its Facebook ad prices jump roughly 45% since April, said Joseph Kent, a creative director at Get Smirk. The company has shifted some of its ad budget to email marketing.

Office-furniture maker Steelcase Inc. uses Facebookā€™s pixel to track when users visit the companyā€™s site, then targets those users on Facebook to lure them back to the site. That approach isnā€™t possible if a user has opted out of tracking.
ā€œThe smaller the pool of users, the higher the cost to reach them,ā€ said Rob Poel, general manager of Steelcaseā€™s work-from-home division. Steelcase has seen its cost-per-click on Facebook ads increase 90% over the past six months, thanks in part to Appleā€™s privacy changes.

Tļæ¼he revenue the company generates from Facebook has also been cut in half, Mr. Poel said. Steelcaseā€™s response has been to spend more on Facebook to boost revenue, he said.

When a user opts out of tracking, Facebook can still keep targeting that user with data it collected before the opt-out. But that data quickly loses value, said digital-ad consultant Eric Seufert.

Another effect of the Apple change is that Facebook is having greater difficulty giving advertisers detailed information about how well their ads work. It is harder for Facebook to take credit for driving a user to make a purchase, said Josh Henry-Hicks, vice president of paid social at MuteSix.

Sports-nutrition company Ath Sport said it has scaled back its ad spending on Facebook. ā€œThe big thing about it is that weā€™re not able to attribute the sales to Facebook,ā€ said Stuart Kam, the companyā€™s owner and founder.

Facebook, along with many of its advertising customers, says its ads are still driving more sales than its analytics show. A Facebook executive wrote in a Sept. 22 blog post that due to the Apple privacy change, Facebook is undercounting how often campaigns are driving conversionsā€”when Apple users visit a website and take an action like making a purchaseā€”by approximately 15%.

Write to Patience Haggin at patience.haggin@wsj.com and Suzanne Vranica at suzanne.vranica@wsj.com
Tļæ¼he revenue the company generates from Facebook has also been cut in half, Mr. Poel said. Steelcaseā€™s response has been to spend more on Facebook to boost revenue, he said.

When a user opts out of tracking, Facebook can still keep targeting that user with data it collected before the opt-out. But that data quickly loses value, said digital-ad consultant Eric Seufert.

Another effect of the Apple change is that Facebook is having greater difficulty giving advertisers detailed information about how well their ads work. It is harder for Facebook to take credit for driving a user to make a purchase, said Josh Henry-Hicks, vice president of paid social at MuteSix.

Sports-nutrition company Ath Sport said it has scaled back its ad spending on Facebook. ā€œThe big thing about it is that weā€™re not able to attribute the sales to Facebook,ā€ said Stuart Kam, the companyā€™s owner and founder.

Fļæ¼acebook, along with many of its advertising customers, says its ads are still driving more sales than its analytics show. A Facebook executive wrote in a Sept. 22 blog post that due to the Apple privacy change, Facebook is undercounting how often campaigns are driving conversionsā€”when Apple users visit a website and take an action like making a purchaseā€”by approximately 15%.

Write to Patience Haggin at patience.haggin@wsj.com and Suzanne Vranica at suzanne.vranica@wsj.com
Fļæ¼acebook reports quarterly results Monday. Its ad business, which brought in $84 billion in revenue last year, has been resilient over the past 18 months through an advertiser boycott and the pandemic, and Facebook might work through the Apple change without a problem.

Aļæ¼ Facebook spokeswoman said Appleā€™s changes will benefit its own growing ad business. ā€œAppleā€™s policy is benefiting their bottom line at the expense of businesses who rely on personalized ads to reach customers and grow their operations,ā€ the spokeswoman said.

An Apple spokesman said its change was meant to let users decide whether to share their data and with whom. ā€œThese rules apply equally to all developersā€”including Appleā€”and we have received strong support from regulators and privacy advocates for this new feature,ā€ the spokesman said.

U.S. users opt into tracking only about 16% of the times they encounter the Apple privacy prompt, according to mobile app analytics provider Flurry.

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