Tracking and Commonplaces đ
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On tracking
Jeremy Keith recently published some thoughts on tracking.
If the outputs generated by tracking turn out to be inaccurate, then shouldnât they lose their status?
But that line of reasoning shouldnât even by necessary. We shouldnât stop tracking users because itâs inaccurate. We should stop stop tracking users because itâs wrong.
Itâs hard to disagree with that.
Whatâs interesting to me about the changes to Apple Mail are that they might be the factor that finally forces companies and marketers to stop building logs of user location and other things.
Chris Coyier wrote a follow-up on CSS Tricks:
Iâm interested not just in the ethical concerns and my long-time complacency with industry norms, but also as someone who very literally sells advertising. I can tell you these things are true:
- I have meetings about pricing where the decisions are based on the historical performance of what is being sold, meaning impressions and clicks.
- The vast majority of first conversations between bag-of-money-holding advertisers and publishers like me, the very first questions Iâm asked are about performance metrics.
That feels largely OK to me. When I go to the store to buy walnuts, I want to know how many walnuts Iâm going to get for my dollar. I expect the store to price the walnuts based on normal economic factors, like how much they cost and the supply/demand for walnuts. The advertising buyers are the walnut buyers â they want to know what kind of performance an ad is likely to get for their dollar.
What if I said: I donât know? I donât know how many people see these ads. I donât know how many people click these ads. I donât know where they are from. I donât know anything at all. And more, you arenât allowed to know either. You can give me a URL to send them to, but it cannot have tracking params on it and we wonât be tracking the clicks on it.
Would I lose money? I gotta tell you readers: yes. In the short-term, anyway. Itâs hard enough to land advertisers as it is. Coming off as standoffish and unwilling to tell them how many walnuts they are going to get for their dollar is going to make them roll their eyes and move on. Long-term, I bet it could be done. Tell advertisers (and the world) up front, very clearly, your stance on user tracking and how it means that you donât have and wonât provide numbers via tracking. Lean on supply and demand entirely. Price spots at $X to start. If other people have interest in the spot, raise the price until it stops selling, lower the price if it does.
This highlights the dilemma for publishers. If we agree that advertisers are valuing the wrong metrics, how do you change the narrative?
Itâll get there but there are first-mover costs. And by the way, UTMs are probably the best privacy-respecting metric right now.
Jason Kint categories âtargetingâ and âtrackingâ as separate things. âTargetingâ and measuring ads is possible in a way thatâs privacy-focused and within consumerâs expectations (reasonable people can disagree on whether email spy pixels fall under this, but the ICO is quite clear that users need to consent).
âTrackingâ across vendors/services, that users wouldnât know about or expect, falls outside of this. (Apologies to Jason if this mischaracterises his position in any way).
And thereâs yet more to this topic: many people donât realise whatâs going on under the hood. Email spy pixels are a good example: marketers know they can collect the data, but might not realise what data is collected, how or the implications of it.
From Chrisâs piece:
As I write this, Iâm poking around in the reporting section to see what else I can see. Ughghk, guess what? I can literally see exactly who opened the email (by the personâs email address) and which links they clicked. I didnât even realize that until now, but wow, thatâs very super personally identifiable analytics information. Iâm going to look into how I can turn that off because it does cross an ethical line for me.
Now, Chris is a smart cookie. He knows code, he knows marketing, he understands how the web works in a way that many people donât. And he didnât know this stuff is going on.
This isnât to say that naĂŻvety makes tracking ok, but there will be lots of people innocently collecting this data without realising it.
[tracking] is just a prettier word for surveillance.
As Jeremy highlights in his piece, âanalyticsâ can often be substituted for âtrackingâ. And, as Bob Hoffman notes, â[tracking] is just a prettier word for surveillance.â
No prizes for guessing which of these words features in most SaaS advertisingâŚ
This is part of the drive behind Below Radar: help business owners, marketers, freelancers make better choices, understand the options.
Yes, itâs grassroots stuff, but we have to start somewhere.
Below Radar
There are now over 100 small business owners and freelancers in the Below Radar community. Every one of their situations is different, but theyâre all hoping to take positive steps in their business.
The site has expanded to feature an Inspiration page. This contains recent articles and links to stories about companies that are taking the sort of action members of the community are working towards.
If youâd like to join our community, it would be great to see you there.
Commonplace
My personal site now features a Commonplace. Iâd been looking for a place to collect notes and quotes across a wider range of topics, along with a place to store less well-formed thoughts.
In a recent Unoffice Hours, Joshua Galinato introduced the concept of Commonplace Books to me. It seemed absolutely perfect.
I wrote about the idea and implementation on my site, or you can check out the Commonplace directly.
Absorbing
Interesting links from the web.
Surveillance Report
A great podcast to keep on top of the latest news from the privacy world. Hat tip to Ben Mounsey-Wood.
Right-Clicker Mentaliy
Cory Doctorow finally explains the appeal of NFTs in a way I can understand.
Tracking-industry body IAB Europe told that it has infringed the GDPR, and its âconsentâ pop-ups used by Google and other tech firms are unlawful.
A major mechanism used by Google and others for collecting âconsentâ to track users has been found to be illegal. Quelle surprise.
A great summary of where weâre at with surveillance advertising and GDPR in the UK
Another perfect summary from Cory Doctorow.
Unoffice Hours
Just two more Unoffice Hours until the end of the year (four calls in total). If youâd like to chat before the year end, nowâs a good time to book.
If you run an Unoffice Hours, you might want to join the Unoffice Hours Webring.
If you have related links that might be of interest, or thoughts on any of these topics, Iâd love to hear from you: just hit reply.
Until next time,
Dave