Ad Providers Containment Chamber

No application is really free; it is always paid from either yours or somebody else's pocket.

You pay for paid apps; advertisers (usually) pay for free apps. Last year's explosion of cheap Android phones brought to Market many people who are not willing or able to pay for application. Logical solution for developers was to introduce in-applications ads, but now iOS owners would like some stuff for free, thank you. With ads came privacy issues.

To make adware (advertising-supported software) model workable, ad-providers need data for better user targeting, so almost all free applications start to ask for network, location and private data. But how you, the user, can be sure that data is used just for the intended purpose? Application may track you physical location and upload your private data as well. And are you willing to give it for intended purpose in the first place? Security experts and anti-malware application advise not to allow access to personal data and Internet access at the same time. But that just doesn't fly for adware. How to make both sides happy?

With such high number of ad-supported applications, it would make perfect sense to introduce generic Ad API. This would have multiple benefits:

• Authors could remove all ad-related dangerous permissions from their software and replace them with single regular permission: ad permission. This would make their applications more trustworthy and less frightening for users.
• Users will get option to configure privacy settings for ads at the single place, like providing location info or some other personal data. Disabling location info here will not make main application less functional (it either doesn't need it or it asks for its own permission). However, ad providers may decide to pay less for ads without full user info and application authors may decide to limit functionality (API just become much uglier).
• Market/Store will have less work with reviews because application will declare lower number of dangerous permissions. It will improve overall user's perception of the platform.
• Ad providers will become less infamous and get more data as security conscious users will be less reluctant to give data, if it's done in controlled way.

This will ask for consensus between ad providers not just now, but also for future extensions. In the end, it will make mobile world safer and nicer place to be.

For some other ideas, check this blog by ZDNet's Adrian Kingsley-Hughes.