[earthboundkid]

Or we could make all of that illegal and have an ad ecosystem that works for publishers and consumers as it does in every field except for the web (print, broadcast, podcasts, billboards—all work without JS and are great for consumers). Web is the one weirdo market with tracking. Make that illegal and it will be good like all the other markets.

[akira2501]

> Or we could make all of that illegal

I don't see a good way to do that, at least.. a way that's practical to actually enforce. As it is, the FTC is fairly toothless and is better at offering guidelines than policing.

> as it does in every field except for the web

Well.. that's just because they have dedicated account executives and sell advertising through a combination of direct solicitation and much smaller amount of "walk-in" business, that's not practical for all creators or formats.

> Web is the one weirdo market with tracking.

This has always been the holy grail for advertising, the other industries put up with statistical "audience modelling" only because they have to; however, working in one of those 'other fields' I can tell you.. our account executives will take as much direct tracking data as they can get. e.g. "Have you installed our Radio App?!"

> Make that illegal and it will be good like all the other markets.

I feel like we lost the fight a long time ago.. I remember when the 'Flash Blocker' plugin was a great tool. Unfortunately, too many modern sites are entirely reliant on JS in a way they never really were for Flash and the idea of using 'Script Blocker' that's on by default makes navigating the web exceptionally difficult.

It's too bad, because it's probably the right solution.. why should the sites we visit have the right to execute programs on my computer by default?

[jefftk]

Offline isn't as different as you might think:

2012-02-19: Almost every major retailer, from grocery chains to investment banks to the U.S. Postal Service, has a “predictive analytics” department devoted to understanding not just consumers’ shopping habits but also their personal habits, so as to more efficiently market to them. “But Target has always been one of the smartest at this,” says Eric Siegel, a consultant and the chairman of a conference called Predictive Analytics World. “We’re living through a golden age of behavioral research. It’s amazing how much we can figure out about how people think now.” -- http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.h...

2016-02-28: Pass a billboard while driving in the next few months, and there is a good chance the company that owns it will know you were there and what you did afterward. Clear Channel Outdoor Americas, which has tens of thousands of billboards across the United States, will announce on Monday that it has partnered with several companies, including AT&T, to track people’s travel patterns and behaviors through their mobile phones. -- https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/29/business/media/see-that-b...

2019-03-07: Location-tracking technology can now monitor people so precisely that retailers know, for instance, which customers visited a fitting room but never made it to the cash register. -- https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/08/how-retailers-can-track-your...

[19870213]

Oh, that is coming to non-web as well, there are already billboards with cameras. Although for now, one 'test' in the Netherlands was declared illegal (for now) due to privacy concerns.

[pas]

The GDPR does that. It doesn't matter if you have the data in your own DB, you can't utilize it for purposes you haven't secured informed consent for.

[earthboundkid]

GDPR is a good first step.

[takeda]

California's version, CCPA, should take effect starting January.