design-reviews#1229: WG New Spec: Attribution

#1229: WG New Spec: Attribution

Opened

May 13, 2026

https://

The WG's request for this TAG review: https://github.com/w3c/patwg/issues/86
Previous early design review, if any: N/A
An introduction to the feature, aimed at unfamiliar audiences: https://w3c.github.io/attribution/#s-attribution
A description of the problems that end-users were facing before this proposal: https://w3c.github.io/attribution/#goals
Alternatives considered: We have reviewed and iterated over a number of alternatives including discussions around present tracking solutions, third party cookies, and a variety of proposals, both in the WG and CG.
Examples of how to use the proposal to solve the end-users' problems: https://w3c.github.io/attribution/#user-benefit
What do the end-users experience with this proposal: https://w3c.github.io/attribution/#collective
User research you did to validate the problem and/or design, if any: The CG, it predecessor the Improving Web Advertising Business Group (WebAdv) and the WG.
- https://github.com/patcg/docs-and-reports contains much of this collected data and presentations
- https://w3c.github.io/web-advertising/dashboard/ contains many of the issues reviewed with WebAdv, many of whom's participants advanced to PATCG and PATWG with this knowledge.
- The repo itself at https://github.com/w3c/web-advertising/ contains much of the research we did with stakeholders.
Web Platform Tests: In-progress

Follows the Web Platform Design Principles.
Includes Security and Privacy Considerations sections based on answers to the Security/Privacy Questionnaire.

GitHub repo: https://github.com/w3c/attribution/
Primary contacts:
- Aram Zucker-Scharff (@aramzs), The Washington Post, Co-chair
- Sean Turner (@seanturner), sn3rd, Co-chair
- Andrew Paseltiner (@apasel422), Google, Editor
- Andy Leiserson (@andyleiserson), Mozilla, Editor
- Benjamin Case (@bmcase), Meta, Editor
- Benjamin Savage (@benjaminsavage), Meta, Editor
- Charlie Harrison (@csharrison), Google, Editor
- Martin Thomson (@martinthomson), Mozilla, Editor
Organization/project driving the specification: PATWG
This work is being funded by: N/A
Primary standards group developing this feature: PATWG
Incubation and standards groups that have discussed the design: PATWG, PATCG, WebAdvBG

Active horizontal reviews: TBD (Submissions in-progress)
Multi-stakeholder feedback:
- Chromium comments:
- Mozilla comments:
- WebKit comments:
- No formal comments yet, but we have put it out to stakeholders to author formal feedback on this specification. We will edit as it comes in. Notably, Chromium, Mozilla and WebKit have all worked on early versions of private attribution code indicating an interest in a specification.
Major unresolved issues with or opposition to this specification:
Status/issue trackers for implementations: None yet.

No response