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Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

economist.com

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Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#551

Post by morelisp »

laurent92 wrote: post #507
yuliyp wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by conflated? The tracking and profile building is how they correlate results with ad impressions. That this data is then also used for training the models and identifying the user coefficients is just a different use of the same correlation data (a website visit is just another type of ad conversion, after all).

We shouldn’t identify the user. We should identify the content. “I want to be shown next to car pictures, because maybe the guy is missing carpets for his car” instead of “We want to be shown to guys 24-30 with interest in cars.” First is tracking the content, second is tracking the user.

This is contextual targeting, but GP is explicitly asking for conversion tracking. You can’t do that with contextual targeting.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#552

Post by easrng »

samwillis wrote: post #94
prasadjoglekar wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. For advertisers with larger budgets, marketing mix models are still the only way to understand the relative performance of FB, Google, TV etc. - each of which is a "walled garden" that doesn't exchange data with others. FB marketing is effective, question is at what price. If those prices drop, ad dollars will flow back. It will take a few quarterly modeling cycles to reflect this though. The contra-contraria…

Exactly, as a small business we are completely dependent on the ad platforms internal attribution tools, if they don't work or can't be trusted we won't use them. It's unfortunate that the incredably invasive tracking and profile building has become conflated with ad attribution. For us attribution is essential and we have little interest or use for invasive tracking. We just want to know from which ad a customer con…

Can you not just point the ad at https://your.website.example/item012628?from=facebookad20210... or whatever and save those from parameters in a cookie or something so you can see at checkout what ads were clicked before purchase? How could ATT possible factor in to this?

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#553

Post by samwillis »

easrng wrote: post #552
samwillis wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, as a small business we are completely dependent on the ad platforms internal attribution tools, if they don't work or can't be trusted we won't use them. It's unfortunate that the incredably invasive tracking and profile building has become conflated with ad attribution. For us attribution is essential and we have little interest or use for invasive tracking. We just want to know from which ad a customer con…

Can you not just point the ad at https://your.website.example/item012628?from=facebookad20210... or whatever and save those from parameters in a cookie or something so you can see at checkout what ads were clicked before purchase? How could ATT possible factor in to this?

Sensible question. See my answer at the link below, but basically Facebook/Instagram IAB don't share cookies with your main browser.

Plus it’s supper useful to feed that attribution data back into the ad platforms management tools.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30205629

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#554

Post by samwillis »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #545
samwillis wrote: post #9

As a rough datapoint, I run a consumer targeted e-commerce site. We ran a campaign before Christmas were we were selling a new product that was only marketed on Facebook, we are certain that (almost) all customers found it though that Facebook campaign. Facebook was only able to attribute about 50% of the sales to the ads, it should have been close to 100%. This then meant that Facebooks estimated CPA was effectively…

If you're so certain, it means you already have reliable data for attribution. Why do you need Facebook's tracking to confirm it to you? I understand it's nice to have fancy reports etc but it sounds like you already know where your customers are coming from. And tracking is very invasive, in this case it doesn't really seem to add much value. You could also ask your customers "where did you hear about us" for exampl…

> If you're so certain, it means you already have reliable data for attribution. Why do you need Facebook's tracking to confirm it to you?

We were in unique situation with this one campaign where, quite right, we knew where our conversions were coming from as we were confident there was no other source. Within a few weeks we had other campaigns running and no longer could have the same level of confidence.

The point it outside of this unique situate of a new product only marketed on Facebook the conversion attribution on their platform is broken. This is affecting marketers decision making process and reducing the spend on that platform.

The interesting thing is we were able to see the affect of Apples change quite clearly. Most people are not able to see that.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#555

Post by NoLinkToMe »

FearlessNebula wrote: post #229
paulcole wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular opinion on HN, but I’m 100% OK with being tracked because it means: 1. I get to use products and services I like without paying money from my wallet. I have plenty of data to share that’s effectively worthless to me. 2. I get exposed to new products and services (through ads) that I’d like to buy. I like buying things!

You want companies to use your personal information to manipulate you into buying products you don’t need?

Manipulate is a big word...

If you're on Netflix, obviously you'll want at least some of the suggested content to be relevant to you. If you love basketball, of course you'd want to be reminded of The Last Dance documentary. The same goes for any other decision in the marketplace, you want relevant products to be presented to you. And that requires information about you.

Of course there's a limit to this. I'd always want at least some content to be atypical, to let me get exposure to things outside my bubble. But it doesn't change the notion that I mostly want content relevant to me.

Now if you ask me: do you want to see ads? I'd say no, most of the time. Because I don't enjoy being distracted by people trying to sell me things when I'm doing something else, e.g. checking my friends' summer pictures.

But if you're showing me ads anyway, making them more relevant is a net benefit than to be spammed with garbage. And if that runs much of the web otherwise for free, that's great, too.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#556

Post by scarface74 »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #547
Brendinooo wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdata, but I'm teaching a coding class for 10-12 year olds and most of them don't know their way around a laptop. Most of their work has been done on tablets or maybe phones. It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that huge chunks of demographics don't really use desktops or laptops all that much.

Doesn't that make them really inefficient? I couldn't imagine efficiently coding on a phone or even tablet without adding a keyboard, mouse and larger screen (eg Samsung DeX) which will basically make it a laptop or desktop.

I think he meant before entering his class they didn’t know their way around a computer.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#557

Post by scarface74 »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #546
scarface74 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no problem with targeted ads based on what I specifically told Facebook. It’s when I’m shopping on Amazon and see the same products advertised on FB that there is a problem.

No, this is when you notice there's a problem, that you're being tracked. The problem is the tracking itself, whether you notice it or not. At least that's my opinion.

People set up their profile and they basically tell them everything about themselves.

Just like I doubt that people mind that Netflix gives you recommendations based on what you watched on Netflix.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#558

Post by clarge1120 »

nonameiguess wrote: post #411
ksec wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cant upvote you enough. This single comment contains many of the contrarian view against HN. It is nice we have these real world stories on HN to balance the ideological fight against ads, where All Ads are evil.

While there are plenty of people annoyed by any ads at all or who believe any form of marketing is inherently evil, that is not at all a majority view. Yet almost everyone hates the way Facebook does it except sellers. The problem isn't the ads. It's the level of surveillance required to make them as effectively targeted as they are. People don't want everything they ever do to be recorded, catalogued, and studied to…

And that’s the key issue: constant surveillance coupled with machine learning used to identify our desires and appetites.

It’s creepy for one thing. It reminds me of why we sometimes have to let go of a certain kind of relationship: they know too much, and are too effective at getting you to buy into action that is not ultimately in your best interest.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#559

Post by jen20 »

dwaite wrote: post #537
clarge1120 wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have an income it’s because of economic activity, most likely derived from advertising. I pay for YouTube Premium to avoid ads because I hate ads. But I also like robust economic activity. So, I’m happy to pay a fee instead of seeing ads.

> I pay for YouTube Premium to avoid ads because I hate ads. But I also like robust economic activity. So, I’m happy to pay a fee instead of seeing ads. Yep, and I drastically limited watching YouTube on-site because their advertising became untenably invasive. The last straw was when they tried to get me to pay money to back-track how much they made their product suck, rather than actually providing me value over th…

Likewise - I am not entirely opposed to paying for Google products. I pay for G-Suite, for example (for now). However there is not a hope in hell I will ever pay for YouTube - they go out of their way to disable native OS features like Picture in Picture video, and the experience of ads is so shitty I’ve just added it to Pi-hole and moved on.

There’s some good content on there, but it’s not good enough to subject myself to that, or to reward such behavior with money.

Re: Apple's privacy push cost Meta $10B

#560

Post by morelisp »

iamadiggo wrote: post #203
samwillis wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is almost exactly what UTM url parameters are [0]. We use these and via them our other tracking collaborates our theory on Facebooks tracking. There is actually a real problem with tracking via cookies on Facebook ads when the destination is a website. The ad click will open in a Facebook "In App Browser", any cookie that you (or any analytical service) sets will be within that IAB. If the user then uses the "op…

This is interesting. Are you saying because some user switch to safari during checkout and tracking lost here? Since cookie will be cleared. But how about these special query param as you mentioned? That still can be maintained for tracking?

UTM parameters can be identifying but not generally considered private - rather the opposite - so while you can link your cookie to UTM parameters and join with other UTM-keyed traffic data for useful results, you can't do the inverse and use knowledge of UTM parameters as sufficient proof to recover a session cookie.
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