What Happens When the Attribution Cartel Meets Advertising's Halo Effect?

A proposed standard now under discussion at W3C, dubbed simply “Attribution” aims to redefine how ad effectiveness is measured across the web. This proposal would centralize measurement of ad effectiveness under the control of major platform players, including Google, Apple and Meta. While “Attribution” is framed as a privacy win, in practice it would shift more advertising onto low-trust content and AI-generated slop.