That setting on iOS refers to iAd, a service that died because it respected your privacy too much, and was therefore not appealing to advertisers. It seems unfair to compare Apple and Google on user privacy. They are poles apart.
> That setting on iOS refers to iAd, a service that died because it respected your privacy too much
That is absurd revisionism: iAd died because Apple stipulated a minimum ad spend of $1 million. They later dropped the minimum spend to $50, but the damage was already done and the platform was in a death-spiral.
iAd died because Apple unsuccessful tried to capture the 'premium' end of the Ad Market, not because it "respected user privacy too much".
"Apple is loathe to use customer data to deliver targeted advertising or personalized recommendations..."
...is false. They are loathe to allow anyone else access to it, and sold ads as many exchanges (like Facebook) do - not sharing user info, but promising they can target the demographic you want with precision.
And just to drive home the point, they will still be using targeted data when they start showing App Store ads in iOS 10. If you think there is no targeting there, you're hiding your head in the sand.
My theory goes like this - Apple gets to still advertise, lose its full iAd sales team, has a captive audience and ad platform and so can set pricing however they want, use native (better) ads instead of banner (worse and dying) ads, and so on.
