Attribution is dying, clicks are dying

Overall sentiment toward “attribution is dying”

• Many are openly happy that tracking-based attribution and adtech are weakening; they see it as a win for privacy and user experience, not a tragedy.
• Common framing: adtech “poisoned the well” with surveillance and hostile UX, so it has little moral right to complain about its own decline.
• Some worry that as ads become less effective, more content will move behind paywalls or into closed platforms, further fragmenting and enclosing the web.

Privacy, tracking, and regulation

• Users credit ad blockers, privacy laws (EU, California, etc.), and Apple’s anti-tracking measures with breaking granular attribution.
• Several note that even paid products now often track and monetize users (cars, OSes, streaming services), so “paying = respected” is not guaranteed.
• There is frustration that public companies’ shareholder pressure pushes them toward ever more data extraction regardless of business model.

Effectiveness and legitimacy of online ads

• One camp: attribution was always pseudoscience that inflates ad prices; clicks are mostly accidents, bots, “lizard people,” or kids.
• Another camp (practitioners) reports statistically sound A/B tests showing that people do click and buy from ads and email, especially on platforms like Meta/Instagram/Facebook.
• Discussion distinguishes “push ads” (intrusive, resented) vs “pull ads” (searching for hotels, restaurants, products), which some find useful.
• Multiple comments describe the ad ecosystem as full of misaligned incentives, fraud, and obsession with “engagement” rather than real sales.

User experience collapse and the rise of blockers & AI

• Many say they avoid clicking because modern pages are packed with ads, malvertising, cookie banners, newsletter popups, autoplay video, paywalls, and SEO padding.
• Heavy SEO has produced low-value, repetitive content (notably recipe sites); some users now prefer books, RSS, or offline archives.
• Some increasingly use AI tools to summarize pages or generate recipes directly, acknowledging this further disincentivizes original publishing and breaks traditional SEO/attribution.

Future of marketing and the web

• Predictions of more spend on influencers, partnerships, embedded/community marketing, and “brand where people actually hang out.”
• Skepticism: many see “community” and “trust” language from marketers as thinly veiled manipulation.
• Several hope the ad-funded web shrinks, replaced by subscriptions, freemium, or hobbyist content—even if that means less, but higher-quality, material.