[HN Gopher] The Attribution Stack: How to Make Budget Decisions ...
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The Attribution Stack: How to Make Budget Decisions in a Post-iOS14
World
Author : hammer_mt
Score : 49 points
Date : 2022-04-14 09:06 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reforge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reforge.com)
| username223 wrote:
| I always feel strange seeing these walls of pseudo-scientific
| marketroid babble. Their fundamental purpose is to make some
| fraction of people choose Crest over Colgate, or vice versa, but
| they've fallen so far down the rabbit-hole of this mundane task
| that they can come up with competing "models" and multi-thousand-
| word articles promoting and explaining them.
|
| From an ordinary human's perspective, it's like shopping for
| groceries and getting side-tracked into a discussion of the
| natures of free will and the fundamental building blocks of
| matter. I just want to buy some decent-tasting apples, not grasp
| the neural correlates of my apparent "choice," or the string-
| theoretic basis of their multicolored skins.
|
| That's not to say there aren't useful nuggets to be gleaned. For
| example, the fact that "third-party consumer data" and "customer
| matching" are the highest form of marketing surveillance tells me
| they're buying data from credit card companies and shady "data
| brokers," and correlating that using whatever identifiers they
| can. So I should probably keep entering fake phone numbers, zip
| codes, and email addresses when I can.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > Their fundamental purpose is to make some fraction of people
| choose Crest over Colgate
|
| Their fundamental purpose is to convince their boss or client
| that they are indeed making consumers choose one over the other
| and make up data and/or theories to support that assertion so
| they can justify their fees/salaries/bonuses. They don't
| particularly care whether consumers are actually choosing the
| product.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Good to see that Apple's anti tracking features are having a real
| world impact on the cyberstalking done by marketeers. Clearly the
| war isn't won yet, but if Apple can keep thinking up new privacy
| features to advertise their products with, things can only get
| better.
| pete_nic wrote:
| > The truth is we're in a post-truth world, where more than one
| opinion is valid. You should never trust just one single source
| of information, without validating what it's telling you, and
| thinking about the potential motivations and incentives behind
| that conclusion.
|
| Wisdom applicable beyond the topic of this article
| throwmeariver1 wrote:
| There was never a truth world it was always a world of trust
| and the trust got eroded in the last decades but it's still
| there. If you trust your business partner or your life partner
| you can make decisions without checking them. If you trust no
| one, your decision making is so hampered that even if you come
| to the right conclusion it's most certainly too late.
| iinnPP wrote:
| One side effect I noted in working through the mentioned iOS
| upgrades was how it impacted various groups.
|
| Our marketing efforts began seeing a skew towards groups more
| likely to own either an older iPhone or an Android device.
|
| The product has died, thankfully.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| It's hilarious how they call privacy features "apocalypse." Kudos
| for Apple for making the lives of these folks more difficult.
| pete_nic wrote:
| Perhaps a bit idealistic but I aspire for a world where
| companies can segment and target their market while consumers
| maintain a level of privacy.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| If we assume that privacy is 100% respected, "segmenting and
| targeting" is still not something that benefits consumers.
| pete_nic wrote:
| Do you believe privacy is 100% respected in the offline
| world? A billboard for a personal injury lawyer on the
| highway or an ad for headphones at a subway stop are all
| examples of segmentation and targeting we experience in the
| offline world.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| How is that disrespecting privacy? The billboard (so far)
| is not doing facial or license identification and
| recording that I drove by the sign at 2:23 on Monday at
| 63 mph.
| theamk wrote:
| The equivalent of this is showing gaming keyboard ads on
| ign.com, and bank ads on bloomberg.com. As long as same
| ads are shown to every visitor, this is no problem at
| all.
|
| The people hate it when their actions on one site affect
| ads on completely unrelated sites. Real wold equvalent
| would be a salesman saying "I was passing by your house
| yesterday amd noticed you got a new bed.. Want to buy
| some bedsheets at a great price?". I think we agree this
| would be super creepy.
| pete_nic wrote:
| Contextual advertising
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/contextual-
| advertising....
| jen20 wrote:
| People can do that kind of online targeting without the
| need for privacy invasion. For example, if I wanted to
| target Apple users who probably have some disposable
| income, I'd buy an ad slot on John Gruber's blog. If I
| wanted to advertise to frequent travellers, I'd advertise
| on FlyerTalk. That kind of thing.
| trurl wrote:
| And still folks think that if side loading is forced on Apple,
| that companies will not force us to start side loading their
| apps to escape this "apocalypse".
| glowingly wrote:
| I agree. We only have to look 3 years ago to see exactly what
| happens when those same companies get sideload access.
| Facebook did something very similar, using their Apple App
| Store Developer certificate to enroll users as "employees,"
| allowing them to defacto sideload their market research
| application.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19033451
|
| I also fully expect the last browser holding against Google's
| browser monoculture - Safari - to die soon after.
|
| I hate this state of affairs, where Apple's sheer greed is
| the main force stablizing this fragile environment.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Those instances show that Facebook is willing to do that to
| small incentivized groups of users- in that case,
| volunteers offered monetary benefit via gift cards, but
| difficult to say such a model is accomplishable on a wide
| scale. This is a situation where the users were self-
| selecting.
|
| Certainly, companies will misuse and abuse the freedoms
| associated with sideloading, but I disagree that it's as an
| easy task as people think. First they actually have to
| build competing app stores that are compelling enough for
| users to overcome the friction of switching. I don't think
| these companies, other than game platforms like Epic, and
| perhaps tech companies in politically sensitive markets
| such as China or Russia, have it in them:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30808926
| trurl wrote:
| I don't understand why you think building alternative app
| stores is somehow a limiting factor. If you want to use
| some software, and the company wants to bypass Apple's
| protections, they'll just put a download link on their
| website. Why go through the hassle of registering with
| any "app store" at all?
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Because Apple still wields control over iOS, which means
| they can also curate how the sideloading experience. I
| don't believe that even if legislation and regulator
| action forces iOS to permit sideloading, that it
| necessitates sideloading to be done in as casual a
| process as it is to download and install software on
| macOS, Windows, or desktops in general. Apple will still
| be able to determine how sideloading is done. And they
| can make the process very guarded, with multiple
| disclaimer screens and agreement menus that the user must
| assent to before they are allowed to sideload. Even on
| Android today, enabling sideloading is a multiple step
| process:
|
| https://techcult.com/sideload-apps-on-android/
|
| Furthermore, I believe that Apple can choose to shape the
| experience even after sideloading is enabled. They can
| add badge icons that single out sideloaded apps. They can
| force sideloaded apps to be on specifically marked pages
| on the springboard. They can add alerts and popovers
| galore that ask the user "Do you really want to do that?"
| wrt the sideloaded apps. Apple is a master of UX and
| branding - if they can influence millions of users via
| the blue iMessage bubble vs. the green SMS chat bubble
| dichotomy, they can find a way to subtly single out
| sideloaded apps as worthy of concern. Emergent user
| behavior then follows.
|
| Finally, as I have mentioned in the previous link, Apple
| still controls the operating system that all apps,
| whether sideloaded or not, exist on. If they wanted to
| harden its security and strengthen entitlements in such a
| way that even sideloaded apps cannot bypass certain
| privacy or security safeguards, they can probably find a
| way. At they very least, they can introduce a similar
| notarization process that they _already do_ on macOS on
| non-Mac App Store apps.
|
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/notari
| zin...
| trurl wrote:
| Yeah, I figured someone might try this argument.
|
| Everyone seems to keep forgetting, there is already an
| option on iOS for developers not wanting to go through
| the App Store: web apps. I believe WASM can even be used
| these days. Except that Safari doesn't offer developers
| some privacy sensitive APIs other browsers do. The
| current side loading pressure has very little to do
| avoiding Apple's cut and everything to do with bypassing
| Apple's restrictions.
|
| So I expect should Apple introduce a heavily sandboxed
| side-loading experience, we'd be seeing developers
| complain they are not adhering to the spirit or the law
| or lawsuit.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| PWAs have long failed to reach adoption on mobile- not
| just iOS, but also on Android- because of technical
| limitations that they have compared to native. And
| perhaps, lack of sufficient interest both from
| independent developers and from larger tech corporations.
| That interest is probably orthogonal to the sideloading
| battle.
|
| Seeing as how Epic was the first company to launch a
| lawsuit against Apple's control of the App Store, and
| they certainly care more about avoiding Apple's cut, and
| little about privacy restrictions, that would seem to
| contradict your point. We haven't exactly seen Meta or
| Google throw in with Sweeney's crusade. Instead, the
| companies who have publicly supported the suit have all
| been companies that want to bypass the 30% cut, such as
| Spotify or Tinder.
|
| Finally, if Apple introduces a heavily sandboxed
| sideloading experience (hopefully they will also
| introduce more privacy sensitive APIs to Safari as
| well!), then perhaps the courts will recognize that as a
| reasonable action and beneficial to consumers and the
| public interest, and will not press the matter further.
| There's only so much back and forth this sort of thing
| can wage on in the public, anyway. Lawsuits are costly in
| time, in attention, and in fees. If Apple does something
| in good faith, unlike what they've been doing in response
| to Dutch legislation (0), then presumably our systems of
| democracy will appreciate it.
|
| (0) https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/14895954171174
| 83010
| trurl wrote:
| I agree that having to rely on Apple here is not great, but
| no other ecosystem is even trying.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| If side-loading or alternate app stores are allowed I fully
| expect a "Facebook Store" to appear which includes (and
| mandates) Facebook malware in every app and most mainstream
| apps eventually moving over to it.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I think if this was a decade ago, when Facebook was
| younger (newly post-IPO!), hungrier, and had a better
| reputation with the public, that might have happened.
|
| But nowadays Meta is older and much more disreputable,
| many of their new products seem to be clones of other
| things that exist, from Clubhouse to HQ Trivia, and users
| are far more jaded towards the company.
|
| Not to mention, mobile and tech in general has matured to
| a state that a brand new app store, at least from a tech
| giant everyone knows about, coming to iOS isn't as
| exciting as it used to be. What does another mobile app
| store offer the average consumer? They barely download as
| many new apps from the actual official App Store. Having
| to deal with another platform account, even if expedited
| through Facebook login would be another friction point
| for users, another set of confusing permissions to
| juggle, another payment system to hook up to, another
| downloads history to keep track. Users are already
| getting burned out by having to deal with so many video
| streaming platforms that piracy is making a comeback, why
| would they be willing to put up with a Facebook Store
| just to get Instagram? At least signing up for Paramount+
| lets you watch the Halo television show, what does
| signing up to the Facebook Store do besides let you use
| Facebook- which you already can?
|
| No, I believe that even if Meta really does launch such a
| store, they would not be willing to pull their official
| apps away from the actual App Store. They will hedge
| their bets because it is unlikely that all, or maybe even
| most, Facebook users will switch to their app store. If
| forced to have to use a whole new store for no good
| reason, many consumers will just stop using Facebook, and
| find substitutes to Instagram instead.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > What does another mobile app store offer the average
| consumer?
|
| The fact that most of the apps they use moved over to it
| because it doesn't have the pro-privacy restrictions that
| the official App Store has.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Yes, and they would be angry at the people who make their
| apps for doing that for no apparent reason, the users who
| are more tech savvy will recognize that this is a ploy to
| harvest their data by forcing migration to platforms with
| fewer privacy restrictions, there will be big public
| backlashes on social media, people will boycott these new
| app stores simply because of the hassle, the companies
| will be forced to reverse their decision and put their
| apps back onto the App Store, and it would be an
| expensive waste of time.
|
| One can even imagine that if the app getting moved is
| sufficiently widely used and utility-like, such as
| WhatsApp or Messenger, or even Facebook itself, the
| courts might start antitrust investigation into _Meta_ ,
| and that company would face pressure to keep those apps
| available on both their own Facebook Store and on the
| official App Store (where the majority of users are).
| After all, antitrust provisions apply not only to Apple,
| but to all companies.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > You've probably had this experience: you spend some time on
| the whiteboard mapping out your marketing funnel and growth
| loops, and you're really fired up ready to grow your business,
| but then the ultimate question hits you like a sledgehammer:
| "How are we going to track this?".
|
| No, I have not.
|
| One wonders how Sony in the 1950's (as an example) "tracked".
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