[phh]

> First, if you can’t measure conversions and tie them back to advertising, then how can you know if it’s effective?

I don't think Coca Cola needed attribution to know their ads were effective in 1900, maybe we should ask them?

> Second, if you can’t measure effectiveness how to A/B test your approach?

You can still use either time, geographical or UA-based AB testing without requiring attribution

> Finally, without labeled data how you train ML models?

Are you saying the final objective of tracking is actually to feed AGI as most data about our world as possible? That's an interesting point of view, I never thought about ML modeling as an end-goal.

[ruhdgjns]

I don’t think you’re engaging in good faith. You can answer your own retorts if you think about it from the view of a modern advertiser.

[phh]

I agree that I'm being snarky, sorry about that.

However, I do think your points are moot, and my real understanding of targetted advertisement is that attribution is required only to steal the attention of the people paying for the ads, because unique attributions means you can send new numbers every single day, or even make a new mail at every conversion.

So in my understanding, losing attribution only reduces ad buyer's attention, but it doesn't actually decrease effectiveness.

Edit: But I totally agree that I have a very poor understanding of advertisement, so I'm genuinely interested in hearing more

[AnIrishDuck]

In the advertising world, there are roughly speaking two major objectives:

- Creative: also known as "brand awareness". Keep the given brand top-of-mind for as many prospects as possible. The hope is that they will then choose products under the given brand at some future opportunity. This is the type of advertising that Coke ads are. They aren't attempting to get you to buy a Coke right now; they are trying to brand "buy coke, it makes you happy" on your brain.

- Directional. These ads are trying to get you to do something as soon as possible. One obvious example is the annoying "you just looked at this thing, still want to buy it?" ads that follow us all around online. Presumably these ads are somewhat effective, otherwise they wouldn't exist.

From this perspective, removing attribution barely effects creative advertising. On the other hand, it is obviously quite destructive for directional ads. Whether this is a good thing is arguable; I personally find the desired objective of "creative" advertising to be more disturbing.

[titusjohnson]

I think the argument is that _you_ are not engaging in good faith, as you are assuming that the _views of the modern advertiser_ somehow appear on anyones list of things to even consider.

The individual you are replying to is giving you good indications that all the things you are worrying about _are not necessary_ for you to do your job. They're a crutch. Go back to the fundamentals.

[mparr4]

I don't agree with you that ruhdgjns is not engaging in good faith. He's engaging with my comment. Given that I am a D2C business owner and therefore a modern advertiser, that's a pretty reasonable view for him to consider.

Re: "go back to fundamentals" and "not necessary", I wish it were so simple. In my comment I mention that it makes selling niche products much harder, which is absolutely the case. Some businesses just can't exist without good targeting. Maybe we as a society don't want those businesses to exist, and that's fine, but it's not as simple of a matter of these businesses needing to be better at advertising. With good targeting a business can exist that only has a small subset of customers in the world. A business like this likely can't afford to acquire customers via traditional advertising.

This makes many D2C businesses much harder and a subset of those businesses won't be able to succeed at all in this climate. Again, I'm not passing any judgement on whether that's a good thing or a bad thing for society, just that it is the case. Good targeting is absolutely necessary for some businesses.

[GekkePrutser]

Couldn't you advertise or sponsor user groups, forums, clubs etc? Niche brands are not a thing of this century alone. I think there's other ways to reach your audience without having to use targeted ads on generic sites and apps.

Also don't forget that ads are being minimised as a phenomenon by users, not just by Apple. In Europe tech sites are already seeing more than 50% of visitors blocking ads. Most quote pervasive tracking as the reason.

In many ways Apple is following the trend, not leading it, and trying to take away the reason for user objections to ads.

[mparr4]

> niche brands are not a thing of this century alone

Sure, but targeting ads enabled a massive increase in volume of niche brands.

In particular, brands whose target customer is fairly specific (so totally untargeted ads, like TV commercials, magazine ads, etc, wouldn't have positive ROI) and whose product isn't already known to the customer (if it were known, then content marketing/SEO could work).

> Couldn't you advertise or sponsor user groups, forums, clubs, etc

Yes, just like before. However targeting ads dramatically expanded the audience and effectiveness of marketing spend. Finding the right clubs/groups and figuring out how to advertise to what are probably unique groups is hard. Flipping a switch on a FB campaign is easy. And not everyone is in a club, but just about everyone has a FB account.

> Also don't forget..

I'm not saying anything about who is leading or whether it is good or bad, just that the iOS14 change was like taking a sledgehammer to many businesses like mine.

Prior to the change we had tried a handful of sales channels and only found positive ROI in FB ads. And those FB ads experienced a step change w/ the iOS14 release. Judging from the D2C/PPC communities I'm a part of, my experience was not unique.

Like it or not, FB targeting enabled a certain category of businesses to exist, and now that category is reduced. As I said in another comment, this isn't a judgement about whether we as a society are better or worse off, just that this is the cost of that decision.