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The goal of the announcement is purely to make the EU look stuffy and bureaucratic. "Look, we got rid of those annoying cookie pop-ups THEY forced on US!" Tori

The goal of the announcement is purely to make the EU look stuffy and bureaucratic. "Look, we got rid of those annoying cookie pop-ups THEY forced on US!" Tories need this because of two reasons: 1. Brexit is hurting the UK economy 2. They need to distract from the Partygate scandals[0] As for Google Analytics... I've talked with multiple clients who have wanted to improve site performance on their stores. The first thing I usually point out is the multiple overlapping analytics packages downloading multi-megabyte JavaScript files. Those are, of course, absolutely untouchable for whatever reason, and we just have to work around the most obvious performance flaws in their site. The reasons why someone might tank their site performance with a bunch of conflicting ad trackers is not just because "data is valuable". We're conditioned to think of ad tracking as solely interest targeting[1] and remarketing[2], but a huge part of it is also just attribution. Advertising is paid for on a per-click or per-conversion basis, and nobody trusts nobody in this industry, so everything needs to be tracked or the people buying ads get gamed out of their money by the people they buy ads from.[3] So even if you just want to buy ads, you often also need to have tracking on your website purely so that the ad network can either protect you from click fraud, or if you're paying per conversion, actually track how much you owe them. [0] For those who are not in the UK, like me: The scandal is the fact that the PM and his staff were running a bunch of illegal parties while the whole country was on COVID lockdowns. [1] When ad networks track your interests to serve more relevant ads. As the ad buyer you can purchase ads based on these specific interest categories; i.e. "I want this ad to be served to 40-year-old men with an interest in cars" [2] When ad networks track your history to serve ads based on what sites you've visited recently. This is actually a different thing from interest-related ads; it's more like "I want this ad to be served to anyone who has just gone car shopping". [3] This is also why on-domain advertising will never be a thing outside of the big social media networks.

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phh 4y ago
> The reasons why someone might tank their site performance with a bunch of conflicting ad trackers is not just because "data is valuable". We're conditioned to think of ad tracking as solely interest targeting[1] and remarketing[2], but a huge part of it is also just attribution. Advertising is paid for on a per-click or per-conversion basis, and nobody trusts nobody in this industry, so everything needs to be tracked or the people buying ads get gamed out of their money by the people they buy ads from.[3] So even if you just want to buy ads, you often also need to have tracking on your website purely so that the ad network can either protect you from click fraud, or if you're paying per conversion, actually track how much you owe them. Thanks. I think this is severely understated. Ad people managed to force the debate to "customized ads" vs "privacy", saying that websites could make money exclusively with customized ads. We've seen here on HN a lot of examples of people realizing that was bullshit (I would guess there are some cases where customized ads can be beneficial, but overall they seem little). Apple showed how to make attribution privacy-friendly (I have no idea whether there implementation works and scale), yet debates still manage to ignore that totally. That being said, solving attribution doesn't actually... solve attribution problem. The reason being for the case where I search Nokia D3500 on Amazon, then I go on random website, which will show me ads for Nokia D3500 on Amazon, and I click on this ad to buy what I already planned to buy. In that case, the random website will get money, with current unprivate ads, while they won't with the private one. I didn't change my consumption based on that ad, so the ad has literally 0 value, "private-friendly ad" properly reflects that, however the migration from not private to private ad will reduce the revenue for websites (even though this didn't have any impact on my purchasing behavior). Edit: It does solve attribution for "proper meaningful" ads: If I'm reading camera reviews on some websites, and they have affiliated links for those reviews, then they'll rightfully get money for it, whcih is good!
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  The role that remarketing played in poisoning the well can't be forgotten either. Targeted ads were sneaky (and, arguably people preferred them to untargeted), while remarketing ads made you feel seen. It was almost waving in the user's face how much data you have on them. "You like to watch Netflix's Castlevania!"

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phh 4y ago

> The reasons why someone might tank their site performance with a bunch of conflicting ad trackers is not just because "data is valuable". We're conditioned to think of ad tracking as solely interest targeting[1] and remarketing[2], but a huge part of it is also just attribution. Advertising is paid for on a per-click or per-conversion basis, and nobody trusts nobody in this industry, so everything needs to be tracked or the people buying ads get gamed out of their money by the people they buy ads from.[3] So even if you just want to buy ads, you often also need to have tracking on your website purely so that the ad network can either protect you from click fraud, or if you're paying per conversion, actually track how much you owe them. Thanks. I think this is severely understated. Ad people managed to force the debate to "customized ads" vs "privacy", saying that websites could make money exclusively with customized ads. We've seen here on HN a lot of examples of people realizing that was bullshit (I would guess there are some cases where customized ads can be beneficial, but overall they seem little). Apple showed how to make attribution privacy-friendly (I have no idea whether there implementation works and scale), yet debates still manage to ignore that totally. That being said, solving attribution doesn't actually... solve attribution problem. The reason being for the case where I search Nokia D3500 on Amazon, then I go on random website, which will show me ads for Nokia D3500 on Amazon, and I click on this ad to buy what I already planned to buy. In that case, the random website will get money, with current unprivate ads, while they won't with the private one. I didn't change my consumption based on that ad, so the ad has literally 0 value, "private-friendly ad" properly reflects that, however the migration from not private to private ad will reduce the revenue for websites (even though this didn't have any impact on my purchasing behavior). Edit: It does solve attribution for "proper meaningful" ads: If I'm reading camera reviews on some websites, and they have affiliated links for those reviews, then they'll rightfully get money for it, whcih is good!

kmeisthax 4y ago
The role that remarketing played in poisoning the well can't be forgotten either. Targeted ads were sneaky (and, arguably people preferred them to untargeted), while remarketing ads made you feel seen. It was almost waving in the user's face how much data you have on them. "You like to watch Netflix's Castlevania!"