The fix is in for the attribution cartel…or is it?

Previously: Arguments for the attribution cartel

One more point being made in favor of standardizing on Big Tech’s built-in ad tracking for web browsers: in the EU, the fix is already in. Supposedly, someone over in Europe (maybe the same crooked politicians in Ireland who help Big Tech evade taxes?) are going to allow attribution cartel tracking without consent, and make everyone else who wants to collect advertising data do the annoying “cookie banner” thing.

I’m not buying it. Do people really expect regulators and politicians in the EU to be all,

Gosh, thank you for the new awesome tracking system, Big Tech! Even though it’s a big risk, your elegant math and “privacy” branding will make us totally accept it without consent!

And do they expect regulators to give special treatment to the attribution cartel even when that would mean giving a problematically USA-centric tracking system—and Big Tech ad inventory—an advantage over European adtech and publishers?

That’s not the way things are going over there. Nick Heer explains a recent German competition authority (Bundeskartellamt) decision about Apple ATT, in After Regulator’s Investigation, Apple Will Make Changes to App Tracking Transparency Prompts in Germany. The definition of tracking Apple uses is self-serving, which would not matter so much if it did not also have a parallel desire to grow its advertising business.

Apple makes it easy to turn off “tracking” by non-Apple apps, while Apple’s own “personalization” and “privacy preserving ad measurement” are harder to find. (turn off advertising measurement in Apple Safari) But now they have to cut out the self-preferencing. From the English version of the decision:

Apple is allowed to provide for a level of protection for its users that exceeds the minimum legal requirements. However, if Apple sets up additional rules within its ecosystem for the use of data, these rules must, under Germany’s special abuse provision for large digital companies, not treat its own offerings better than those of its competitors. This is precisely where our competition concerns arose. Apple will now align the consent requests much more closely and give third-party app providers more freedom to combine the necessary requests in a sensible way.

More coverage by Ana-Maria Stanciuc: Apple bows to Germany and rewrites its tracking-consent rules, ending a self-preferencing probe.

So even if Irish regulators try to get special treatment for the attribution cartel, different from what all the other online ad companies get, eventually the rest of Europe will catch up with them.

Bonus links

Why Social Media’s Ad Dominance Is A Billion-Dollar Measurement Illusion by Vicky Chang. When a platform owns the measurement, it is more likely to push the narrative that the ads are working. The measurement models make that easy to do. Last-click and view-through attribution routinely take credit for conversions that would have happened anyway.

Ad Tech’s Trust Problem Isn’t Going Away. We Just Stopped Talking About It by Chad Hickey. We’re in a chaotic environment right now, and a lot of businesses are struggling. That kind of pressure leads to bad behavior. Companies start trying to monetize in any way they can, whether that’s out of need to survive or just plain greed….I’d tell anyone in this industry right now: Take the healthy pause. Look at what the data actually says instead of what the panic is telling you to do. It’s not enough to just protect the trust you’ve already built. The companies that figure out how to actually build more of it, not just defend what they have, are the ones that will pull ahead.

Western Europe Is Richer Than the US by Matt Bruenig. Germany is the most extreme case in the group, as it has a higher GDP per hour than America, the highest overall employment rate, and the lowest number of hours worked per worker. Germany is not poorer than the US. It has just chosen to cash out more of its productivity in the form of free time than the US has. The other Western European countries have made similar decisions.

Hello Local Business, Your AI Ads Are Costing You Customers by Luke Plunkett. [I]t shows that you’d rather prompt something into a machine than hire a local graphic designer, artist and/or photographer, which tells your potential customers that you don’t give a shit about the community you’re a part of. Or that you’d rather offload the cognitive effort of coming up with a new poster to a glorified autocorrect, instead of just coming up with something cute, simple and personal yourself. Even the corniest blackboard trivia, or small A4 sign taped to a window made using MS Word on a yellowing printer in the back office, is preferable to an AI-generated ad, because at least you made it.