[samwillis]

This is it and is how the online advertising industry has worked for over 25 years.

In its simplest form the pixel is used to attribute an ad view/click to a conversion event. At the beginning of the online ad industry that’s all it did, advertisers for the first time had the ability to directly, in real time, see the effectiveness of their ads. The economic value and GDP generated due to this innovation is immeasurable, the internet economy is literally built on it.

At the beginning there was no profile building, combining with PII and data gathered from social media or even your gmail emails (yes the content of your emails). And it was magical!

It’s the innovations since that have moved the entire industry through a grey area into the blank where the way they operate is questionable at best.

The point is, this tracking pixel on its own is incredible what it unlocks. It’s the way that data is then used that we have to call into question.

Personally the simplest form of attribution to me is fine. It works and I don’t believe it’s invasive if they aren’t then combining it with pii and profile data. Sadly that time has passed and all advertising networks now rely so heavily of ML/AI that it’s impossible to manage them, as an advertiser, in the way you used to. Hopefully regulation will push the industry back to where it was.

[kmeisthax]

This is also why even Apple and Mozilla (companies with a vested interest in harming the ad ecosystem) are pushing for various privacy-preserving ad attribution technologies. Nobody objects to UberEats knowing that their Tiktok ads are working or not - they object to Tiktok cross-referencing the data from UberEats and everywhere else to build an interest profile on them.

[jahewson]

That’s not really how it works though. Uber would never allow TikTok to take and sell Uber’s own data, that’s just bad business. Secondly the only data that TikTok would have access to in such a scenario would be whatever campaign data Uber send them in the conversion request, which again, is not licensed for reuse. All anyone cares about is knowing how many conversions occurred and which targeted “audience” those users were in. Oftentimes it’s the advertiser who is bringing those with them - say, a list of emails or phone numbers they want to target. Again, the ad platform is not just taking that data for themselves, because they would not have customers for very long if they did that.

[divbzero]

> Uber would never allow TikTok to take and sell Uber’s own data, that’s just bad business. Secondly the only data that TikTok would have access to in such a scenario would be whatever campaign data Uber send them in the conversion request, which again, is not licensed for reuse.

Is this based on your knowledge or experience in the ad industry? Or just your intuition on how it should work? What I see in OP is UberEats loading a tracking pixel directly from TikTok servers, where the “pixel” is actually a full events.js analytics script that could send user data straight to TikTok.

[xico]

As a user I have the complete opposite objections: I do not see why I would have Uber run JavaScript on my machine just for them to know how well their campaigns are working, while I totally want advertisement that is highly targeted to me.

[matsemann]

They don't have to run some weird JS, it's often just a 1px img with some query params loaded at the confirmation screen. In itself nothing annoying, the problem is how that data is combined with other data and profiling users.

[kayodelycaon]

I haven’t seen any codebase with an actual tracking pixel in my entire career. (11 years at this point) It’s always some massive javascript file doing God-knows-what on the page.

[kshdeo]

If they know how their campaigns are doing -> they can target better and earn more money and in turn give you more discounts. So it’s just good karma to let them run the tiny js script which does no more harm than 100 other services running on your machine, which you never used either.

[rhizome]

Aside from how well targeting works (it doesn't), it's a bit presumptuous to assume resources on a user's machine are free for the taking, much less justifying it with an assumption about "unused" services running on that machine. At the same time, and I imagine this might be the vantage point you're speaking from, it wouldn't be the first time advertisers played fast and loose with user resources and activity.

[rscrawfo]

You don't feel like targeting works? I feel like I'm a moderately careful person (who hates ads), I use stricter browser settings and ublock origin, but I still get somewhat targeted ads when I do see them. My wife, who isn't as careful, frequently gets very targeted ads. Friends and family often remark that the phone seems to be listening with how targeted the ads are. Exposing your brand to those who are interested is very powerful.

[kshdeo]

I would rephrase what I said - this is one of the ways how tech companies make it affordable for us to order ‘food’ from the comfort of our home while someone is running on a bike in a snow storm to get our favorite pizza before it gets cold.

On the other hand, you always have a choice to not use UberEats(or most others) and order by phone/walk-in and save your resources.

And it would be a bit of exaggeration to say targeting doesn’t work - It’s obviously far from perfect but it generates billions everyday for a reason.

[Nursie]

> they can target better

I don't want to be targetted.

> So it’s just good karma to let them run ...

No. It's my machine, not theirs, they don't get to use it to track me. Not one single cycle. It certainly isn't "good karma" to allow advertisers free reign like that, it's letting the fox loose in the hen-house.

[kshdeo]

As I replied in the other comment, if you don’t want to be targeted or a single cycle of your machine to be used by developers, don’t open their website. no more foxes in the house :)

[Nursie]

Not sure I see a reply to another comment of mine!

>> Don't open their website

Sure, or just don't allow them to load these things.

Honestly I'm moving in the direction of not visiting. Instead of a useless do-not-track header, I'd much rather send a "will-not-render" header. I'd be quite happy to tell your server that under no circumstances will my browser be participating in tracking or even rendering your ads. If you'd rather not serve me the page at that point then cool, lets go our separate ways.

I imagine a company like uber eats, who I am actually trying to pay when I visit their site, might still like to serve me the page. Ad-supported content less so.

[throwthere]

> This is also why even Apple and Mozilla (companies with a vested interest in harming the ad ecosystem) are pushing for various privacy-preserving ad attribution technologies.

Really? I thought Apple's newly-implemented ATT was exactly what made attribution impossible for things like app store purchases.

[kmeisthax]

https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-att...

This is the specific thing I'm referring to.

[madeofpalk]

My understanding is Apple imposed no additional technical restrictions, apart from nearly a consent pop up. In-app attribution is still possible, if the user approves.

[jefftk]

How does Mozilla have a vested interest in harming the ad ecosystem?

[Nextgrid]

Just FYI, Mozilla's commitment to privacy is smoke and mirrors. You need to install uBlock Origin and opt-out of Mozilla's telemetry and similar BS to get any meaningful privacy in Firefox.

[GavinMcG]

How does including telemetry for a product make a commitment to privacy from unrelated companies' tracking "smoke and mirrors"? There's a difference between the privacy I expect from a direct service provider and from various random agents seeking to build a profile on me.

[Firmwarrior]

Your argument is literally exactly the same argument Facebook uses to justify all its spying. It's not a solid ideological base to build upon. I don't want ANYONE spying on ANYTHING that I'm doing, even if they think it's for my own good and it's not crossing a line.

> How does including interest-based tracking for a product make a commitment to privacy from unrelated companies' tracking "smoke and mirrors"? There's a difference between the privacy I expect from a direct service provider and from various random agents seeking to build a profile on me.

[GavinMcG]

There's a difference between Facebook collecting data when I'm on their site and collecting data from embedded trackers. Draw the line wherever you want, just don't conflate different things just because they're both disagreeable to you.

[mst]

At my first ever job where I was actually hired as a programmer (December 2000) my first project was to build a web stats system. I knew little enough that I flailed for the first week or two, then independently invented the tracking pixel from first principles - backed by an unbelievably ugly perl CGI script - to enable data collection.

It collected only pages visited, browser versions and referer (sic) headers - it didn't occur to me to collect anything else - and yet provided vast amounts of business value to our customers as well as a vast amounts of experience at scaling for me (though, uh, given how badly the early versions of that code scaled, not necessarily at the same time).

> The point is, this tracking pixel on its own is incredible what it unlocks. It’s the way that data is then used that we have to call into question.

I entirely agree with this statement, and what's happened since saddens me.

I'm going to pour another drink and take a moment to feel old now.

(edited to add: 'tracking pixel' seems to mean that class of instrument to many other commenters, I'm specifically talking about an <img> tag that loaded a single pixel transparent gif ... I also made bar charts for the analytics users' UI using HTML tables with a pair of <td> tags per row, one with a coloured background, one clear, using percentages to provide relative data. 2001 was a different world)

[black_puppydog]

> It’s the innovations since that ...

Nice illustration of how "innovation" != "progress"

[judge2020]

Innovation is simply building something better. (Societal) progress is subjective, which is why you could probably run a survey and any respondents with marketing degrees would likely indeed call this "progress" towards a better-understood society..

[chinathrow]

> This is it and is how the online advertising industry has worked for over 25 years.

Rotten to the core.

[pc86]

If you have a better way to do it people will literally never stop throwing money at you.

[austhrow743]

I’m highly sceptical that they were calling it rotten to the core because they found it economically ineffective.