As a user I really don't care whether they can measure what they want. The adtech business must realise they've undermined consumer confidence so much that the only reason they're getting away with it is that it's so hidden.

Though personally my trust is so far gone that I really want the whole advertising industry to die. But I'm pretty sure most people would still be OK with it, if it is proven to be done in a non-malicious way. I still hear a lot of "targeted ads are more useful because they annoy me less" from people around me :)

But really they have a LOT to make up for.

And hopefully that will become "was" at some point.

> it is not about being creepy

The ad industry is a poor judge of what's creepy; their interests are not aligned with user interests.

> A 3 month period will allow all actors in the advertising industry to integrate and come up with solutions that protect the user's privacy.

The advertising industry has had a very long time to come up with solutions to protect the user's privacy. The only way it'll ever happen is if it's inflicted upon them. The less ready they are, the better.

But is is creepy, regardless of the reasons behind it, and some people might not be comfortable with that. Collecting that data also creates an ever-growing liability with the risk of the data eventually leaking and falling into malicious hands (including intelligence agencies) even if the original owner of the data wasn't misusing it.

I know I'm looking at this too simply but, fundamentally, is it not an increase in sales that defines the success of a marketing campaign? If the other methods of measurement are click-throughs, or verified views, or whatever else there may be, aren't these all essentially of meta-value only in comparison to actual sales?

That's the perspective of a company that actually sells "things" though, do you mean from the perspective of an advertising company?

There's a lot of meta going on. I guess that, from an advertising company perspective, they need stats to prove their campaigns are more effective then those of their competitors, which means they need to have more accurate or complete data on the various markets - and the more accurate and complete the data, the more invasive and present the tracking must be. What a race to the bottom.

> There is a whole industry that depends on tracking IDFA to function

Just because an industry exists, doesn't mean it's right. There's a whole industry that depends on the US voice carriers taking no action on spoofed number scam phone calls too.