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Comment by whimsicalism | Hacker News Reader

> functioning markets that are free from undue influence of any individual participant. the "invisible hand" of the market would drive it iteratively toward more privacy (assuming this is valued by more than minor segment, greater than ~15% of the market)

The market is for advertisers, and advertisers - whether they are small or large businesses - value tracking and measurability of their advertising investments.

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advertisers value a way of determining ROI, which doesn't necessarily require pervasive tracking (see: nielsen ratings of yore).

in any case, my point was about the consumer electronics market, which is apple's core industry, and which, in a healthy and well-functioning market, also has a key stake in this conversation (driving it toward non-distorted, optimally efficient outcomes).

> doesn't necessarily require pervasive tracking

I disagree. Incrementality studies (which measure ROI) as advertisers want them are basically impossible with ATT. You need to be able to pass an ID between apps.

yes, but you haven't shown that that translates into more precise and accurate ROI. marketers and advertisers believe it should, but there's no solid proof. that's because markets (and any human endeavor) is complicated beyond our ability to model (and solve) it deterministically. attribution models (such as incrementality studies) can sometimes give you clues, but can't really tell you why any given person bought something with any certainty. it's the old adage of half of advertising dollars are wasted, but you don't know which half.

Before ATT happened, FB has a tool that would run experiments to assess incrementality of your advertising. It's possible, but there are a bunch of privacy trade-offs..

right, but again, those are very likely probabalistic, population-level models that make assumptions about how to attribute credit--does it all go to the first view/click? how likely is the first view/click really the first view/click? do you instead apportion credit across clicks/views? how? it's somewhat useful at a population level, but not at all at an individual level, especially not for the tradeoff in privacy, anonymity, and autonomy.

but the kicker is, is it better than just doing studies without the more invasive attribution data, especially in relation to the higher price and market consolidation? very unlikely. ad monopolization means more of the value in the value chain goes to the monopolist regardless of the proportion of value they provide in the chain.

> is it better than just doing studies without the more invasive attribution data,

Absolutely, as the controlled incrementality study is impossible without either attribution or some group-based approximation of attribution (ie. federated cohorts, etc.)

> right, but again, those are very likely probabalistic, population-level models that make assumptions about how to attribute credit--does it all go to the first view/click? how likely is the first view/click really the first view/click? do you instead apportion credit across clicks/views? how? it's somewhat useful at a population level, but not at all at an individual level, especially not for the tradeoff in privacy, anonymity, and autonomy.

So the idea is that you run the experiment, and this can then help you understand where you should attribute value, as you know that the only difference between the two groups was the exposure to FB ads.

Now, to be fair, unless FB is most of your spend, you still have a bunch of problems, but they'll wash out equally across conditions (theoretically, at least) so the estimate should be good.

> there's no solid proof

I think modern incrementality studies give solid proof of the value of an ad on the basis of a good model of how the world works. Of course, models can be wrong - it could turn out that solipsism is true, physics is false, and the world outside of your own mind is a figment of your imagination!

That the world is complex and models are inherently wrong does not mean that nothing of value to businesses was lost with ATT.

no, there's a belief of value (and fomo), but not concrete proof. there's little correlation between the price of an ad and the value of attribution beyond the value of the ad itself.

Incrementality studies provide concrete proof of how your ad impacts behavior. How you value that behavior change is up to the business and reflected in the price they are willing to pay.

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