[danielheath]

Assuming tracking works (I have my doubts it boosts conversion), there has to be an equilibrium price, right?

That is, advertising camping gear on a camping review site (without tracking) still has some nonzero commercial value even if facebook tracking exists and works.

[EMM_386]

> That is, advertising camping gear on a camping review site (without tracking) still has some nonzero commercial value even if facebook tracking exists and works.

Precisely this. Go back to the advertising model where you place the advertisements in relevant locations. It's like going into the local pizza parlor and seeing an advertisement for a local plumber.

"Joe's Pizza" in Somewhere, NY can still say "I only want advertisers who want their ads shown in 30 mile radius of Somewhere, NY".

Flip the entire thing on its head and go back to camping sites showing camping ads, and auto parts stores showing ads for the latest amazing oil filter. They don't need to know who the user is at all. They are on a camping related site, they probably want to see camping related advertisements.

[TravisLS]

Tracking definitely works, at least in my experience. That's why Google and Facebook have completely taken over the entire digital ad ecosystem. They just have much better data, and your spend is an order of magnitude more effective than buying directly from publishers.

Take the camping example. If I sell camping equipment, I can try to reach out to blogs directly, but I will have to place hundreds of campaigns for $100 each, track and monitor them all separately, and count on each of the blogs to deliver them accurately in good positions with no fraud. Or I can just buy one massive campaign with Facebook that runs across Facebook and Instagram and targets people who are interested in camping and maybe even expressed purchase intent. That's the better option every time. The transactions costs of dealing with individual websites are prohibitive.

Google (and the other tracking companies) just distribute that same option across the open web. If you get rid of it, Facebook wins absolutely.

I like the idea, as one commenter expressed, that the open web would be better without advertising. But I think the reality of an infinitely powerful Facebook is that the open web would be a wasteland and afterthought.

[ece]

There is nothing stopping Google or Facebook from offering content-based advertising to advertisers, publishers and users--sidestepping any issues with multiple small ad deals. A regulator could demand it if they wanted, and together publishers and advertisers could too. Individual users just don't have the same power, and resort to adblockers--which is pretty much their only option if they don't want to be tracked when a site doesn't have a subscription option.

[TravisLS]

Fair point. If you prohibit everyone, including walled gardens, from targeting based on user behavior or user data, that seems like a plausible solution.

It's a purely regulatory solution, though, not technical as the top level comment suggested :)

[ece]

Opt-in user targeting could still be fine (like offline loyalty programs), and it would be healthier than the current norm of opt-out through ad-blockers.

[Guthur]

Tracking is not necessarily about boosting conversion, though definitely an aspect of it, but it's also about trying to prove the value of the advertising spend to begin with.

If I wanted to be generous I could point to the fact that advertiser revenue allows companies to realise a revenue stream other than having to directly charge a customer, be that subscription or increased prices. And so it could be argued that as a consumer you get an indirect benefit from advertising dollars, it's not clear that it's actually exploitive in that sense.

Full disclosure, I run adblockers and used to work for an adtech company.

[ece]

I have the same reservation about ever more tracking increasing conversion, but I would guess in reality the equilibrium price might come as more people use adblockers vs those who would turn them off if they could be assured they weren't being tracked and only being served some form of a content-based ad.

For a large site like Facebook, adblockers might have a small effect, but for smaller sites seeing 30-50% adblocked traffic, their choices might be direct ad sales, and likely little else. I saw a post about ethical-ad-server recently, and maybe such ad servers should be the ones default unblocked by adblockers.