[ljm]

There are more histrionics in this reply than the person you’re responding to.

The parent makes an excellent point: it’s easy to argue the other models (micro transactions, subscriptions, paywalls) failed because they were in competition with an industry that has safely operated with little to no regulation for a decade or two.

The ad industry in this situation has an insane advantage because it can make money from end-users without them even being aware that they are involved in a transaction. They don’t have to see a banner ad in order for dozens or hundreds of other businesses to learn about them.

There is no explicit contract between the website and the user in the way that there is when you agree to pay the business money in exchange for the value it offers.

So GDPR levels the playing field by removing that advantage. If an advertiser or another business runs above board they don’t have a problem. More to the point, if they can convince a user to opt in, then they have a serious value proposition to the user too.

Advertising itself is an easy and almost fallacious target. People know about adverts so they use Adblock. People have no idea what a business will do with all of the data that reaches their servers without any JS required.