'users who clicked on also clicked on' is at the core of a lot of the tracking Apple is banning in many cases. This is why Google is pushing FLOC and 'anonymous' cohorts in Chrome.

This happens on every single HN thread on this topic. I'm not a total expert but there is a lot of arm chairing that's wrong.

Tracking is profitable and more so than contextual for a lot of direct response in a lot of industries.

Not in all cases, e.g. usually not for brand advertising. But it works.

For my clients is the direct data I have - and we have extensively tried every single other option. FB is the only platform that delivers strong ROI and we use the targeting iOS blocks. And yes - it's always retorted - I know 100% the donations come from the ads, it's incredibly simple to track even as simple as making a new page or individual product only linked from that ad.

So far this change is definitely effecting our ads and FB seems pretty buggy with the new ads manager changes. But they 'always find a way.' But so far it's not as bad as I originally thought it would be.

Plus you can still upload offline conversion data. most purchases have full contact info. We'll see if Apple comes after that, but they would then have to go after the entire ecosystem including Visa.

Why would it affect Google's stock? Google has Android, and is pretty upfront about the fact that they're collecting literally everything you do on your phone. Android still has the largest installed user base, and is still feeding tons of info to FB.

FB's stock prices hasn't changed because we haven't seen if this really impacts revenue to FB. We know that banner ads are extremely ineffective. So if FB ads are still more effective than that, they will continue to capture the lion's share of ad revenue.

Google makes 4 times as much on iOS as they do on Android.

And that's because iOS users are more valuable in general. They tend to be wealthier, and have more disposable income.

Not a huge fan of Google, but have to defend them here.

They have a pretty huge privacy section in android settings where you can see exactly what data they have on you and how to opt out and/or delete existing data.

When you set up android, it ask you if your want in or out. You can even set up a new android device without a Gmail account and disable all Google services including Gmail and search. I don't belive you can do this with iOS.

You are not wrong. But not right either.

All those nice settings (for google and everyone else) are only for the minimum they are required by law. That means anything that they can claim to be "anonymized" is fair game and not visible to you in any way.

...are they? In the US?

One thing I really do appreciate about Google products is that I'm able to fully disable personalization. My Youtube homepage is completely depersonalized, because I went through their privacy settings and switched off everything. I can't say whether or not Google is still secretly tracking me, but my biggest concern is actually that algorithmic recommendations put me in a filter bubble. Google lets me turn off the bubble.

Amazon, by contrast, does not let me depersonalize my recommendations. Neither does Netflix. There was a period of several years where I would periodically go through my Amazon history and manually mark everything as a gift. This worked for a time, but abruptly stopped one day. I assume Amazon decided I'd marked too many things as gifts and my selections should be ignored.

Google gives you the illusion. Ads are still targeted just fine.

Did you receive any ads in spanish or chinese recently? did you see any political ad to a party you vehemently oppose? All that is still decided by your profile and history. Just with hocus pocus anonymization on the front end.

So google is not that different from netflix and amazon. they just give you a blanket.

iOS can also be set up without a Gmail account, no Google services required either.

You can set up an iPhone without an Apple account.

Although, since you won't be able to install any software or use much of the preinstalled software, I don't think it would have much utility...

That is mainly used to rescue a device, you can't really use it as your daily phone that way.

(Yes, I know there are some hacks to get around that )

I wonder if we are not overestimating the value of tracking and underestimating the value that Google brings by forcing some "quality advertisement" from their clients.

Google still has search intent to provide most of the value without tracking anything and it's by far the most effective thing anyways. FB still has their internal profile data.

> All the personalized tracking shit can be replaced with a simple "users who clicked on canon printer also clicked on cheap ink refill kits" type of model

That was how it was done for a long time. Advanced tracking was just a way to try and keep increasing revenue.

Whether it worked or not, only the higher ups at these companies can tell... probably.

And as an advertiser, I confirm losing a lot of money trying to advertise, not seeing revenue. Choosing to advertise 25-34 males (in addition to being the definition of sexism/ageism) who type “Jira time tracking” (because “Jira” keyword is reserved anyway) is useless. I want to put an ad on websites that talk about Jira. And that requires no tracking at all.

It's only a big issue if you try to advertise a specific item on a generic platform; but if you can target websites that cater to your specific business, you really don't need anything more. Of course it means ad networks lose out since they can't just target specific people, they have to only target specific websites or apps.

Personally in the old days of newspaper ad's, I always wondered what the point was of anything smaller than a whole page; what is the point of a 1x1 inch ad in the midst of 200 others. Even today I ignore 99% of what's on the page other than the content.

Point of those ads generally is that people were looking intentionally at them for a plumber, sparkie, piano tuner, gramophone polisher, used tap shoes or what ever else newspapers used to advertise.

In fact many people only bought the paper on ad day.

Whole different kettle of fish.

Because while FB definitely doesn't like that this is happening, it will certainly cement their position. 3rd party ad services that are less tech/ML-forward are way way more reliant on the ID tracking than Facebook is, and this actually will probably cement them as the only game in town. This is a very complicated situation.