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0 pointsksec4y ago0 comments

>I disagree.

I dont think we disagree.

Like I wrote in another post, most on HN couldn't understand the difference between placement ad on Google Search Engine and Google Ads Network. And suggested we should ban all "tracking ads". And later all ads. I explicitly ask them and suggest what you just wrote. That there could be good ads, and they, by majority disagree. This isn't just on HN, it is pretty much across the whole tech industry. Benedict Evans wrote a lot about this [1] and on Twitter. We even went to ask people offline to make sure we are not in an online bubble. But so far the results suggest otherwise. Especially with Tracking [2].

[1] https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2021/5/13/apples-ads...

[2] https://twitter.com/benedictevans/status/1387414650443141120...

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GekkePrutser4y ago

I think it's just a reaction to the adtech community's total disinterest in user's objections to tracking. They keep invading our privacy and only really consider our wishes when it starts hurting their bottom line for real.

I'm sure that's what inspired my hard line against ads. I block ads and tracking where I can. And I've become so used to an ad-free web that I don't think I'll go back anymore.

If they'd only listened to us this before things got totally out of hand this could have been avoided.

hn_throwaway_994y ago

> 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.

I still don't understand your point. The only reason Facebook's ability to properly attribute went down drastically is specifically because of the iOS privacy changes that require user opt in to track across different sites.

Fine, I don't doubt there were other HN commenters who were arguing different meanings of "tracking", but that's all a moot point. In this instance, we know exactly why Facebook's ad effectiveness went down - it went down because they could no longer track all your interactions across the majority of the web. Tough shit.

oconnore4y ago

Why does ability to attribute an ad depend on the ability to track individuals?

IIUC, you can do attribution with a very basic ad: <a href="website.com/ad-34" ping="fb.com/my-product/ad-34/ping"><img src="fb.com/my-product/ad-34/img.jpeg" /> Come buy my product, you'll love it!</a>

Then you sum up all the "/ad-34" hits, and figure out how many of those user sessions (which are now on your own site -- single domain, but perhaps leveraging a script supplied by the ad network) went and actually bought something. The ad network can correlate those sessions with the "ping" it receives to determine clicks vs. conversions.

yuliyp4y ago

Not all purchases come immediately after clicking through an ad. They may come days later, even. Knowing that "this user who purchased this product saw this version of the ad" and "this user saw the other version" is what attribution is.

CrazyStat4y ago

You do not understand correctly.

Facebook (and other ad networks) want credit if someone clicks on your ad, spends time on your site, but then doesn't actually buy anything until a couple days when they enter the URL directly (i.e. not clicking on an ad). This is the problem generally referred to as attribution. Facebook (and others) do this by tracking everyone all around the web. They track the ad click and then they track you going back to the website the next day, and they know it's the same person.

Ad attribution directly depends on pervasive tracking.

oconnore4y ago

You can do that with first-party cookies though.

Allow some facebook supplied javascript to set a first party cookie when the user hits website.com/ad-34, and then reference that 1st party cookie the next day when the user returns. Phone home when they buy something. Facebook can now correlate (1) the ping they received to begin with, (2) the user session cookie they initiated on the first visit, and (3) the user session they observed when a purchase was made.

I'm sure things get easier with 3rd party tracking, but fundamentally you can do it without cross-site tracking.

jfim4y ago

Out of curiosity, does attribution also work if the ad is not clicked?

For example, I bought a product the other day after seeing a Facebook ad, but I didn't click on the ad itself and rather went searching for it on DuckDuckGo, then after reading a bit about it online, bought the product.

I'm curious as to whether that got attributed to the ad impression or not.

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GekkePrutser4y ago

I'm sure that's what inspired my hard line against ads. I block ads and tracking where I can. And I've become so used to an ad-free web that I don't think I'll go back anymore.

If they'd only listened to us this before things got totally out of hand this could have been avoided.

hn_throwaway_994y ago

> 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.

oconnore4y ago

Why does ability to attribute an ad depend on the ability to track individuals?

yuliyp4y ago

CrazyStat4y ago

You do not understand correctly.

Ad attribution directly depends on pervasive tracking.

oconnore4y ago

You can do that with first-party cookies though.

I'm sure things get easier with 3rd party tracking, but fundamentally you can do it without cross-site tracking.

jfim4y ago

Out of curiosity, does attribution also work if the ad is not clicked?

I'm curious as to whether that got attributed to the ad impression or not.

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