[lapnitnelav]

This isn't just about trusting the traffic, it's about being able to optimize which creative is the most effective, what's the optimal threshold of #ads served for a user to convert - and conversely, being able to not overspend on someone who's clearly not interested.

The other part of that is those kinds of ads (dumb ads as you say) are going to be mostly useful for branding. Which is fine when you are Apple or Coke, but if you're a smaller player, you'd rather make sure your ads only get in front of the right eyeballs.

[alkonaut]

Yeah - What I want is effectively having the effect that no small site can have ads and no small business will advertise. It would also likely mean the death of more than half the sites and content on the internet, as well as the loss of millions of jobs in the ad industry and at those sites. And I still hope it happens.

[lapnitnelav]

Well actually I think it's going to be different.

SMBs will only leverage Google, Facebook and other big platforms because I believe they'll have the ability to keep being relevant given their "walled-garden" model despite GDPR-like legal framework.

Every small publisher, aka 99% of them will likely collapse one way or another.

As counter intuitive as it might seem, while this would hurt their bottom line, Google and FB would benefit the most from this.

I'd rather see indie ad-networks with an emphasis on anonymity -no PII / control -delete profiles who works with publishers in a fair trade like model. But I'm not naive :(

[alkonaut]

> I'd rather see indie ad-networks with an emphasis on anonymity -no PII / control -delete profiles who works with publishers in a fair trade like model. But I'm not naive :(

That would be great. I think browsers could push this. A simple standard data structure that people volonteer to provide for themselves. If I want "relevant ads" I populate it thuroughly and honestly. If I don't want that, I don't populate it at all, or even ask my browser to randomize it. But info used for targeting it should be info that the browser (i.e. user) provides and not info that the industry scrapes together.

Second: identity. I think step one must be making sure users can't be tracked or fingerprinted. Browser vendors need to make absolutely 100% sure that no font rendering or other fingerprinting can be used.

Obviously point #2 means that point #1 can't be too detailed, or can't be transferred verbatim every time. If you have narrow enough interests you can be fingerprinted.