[bloubi]

You mean, by spamming you every ten minutes with random ads between crappy shows? The premium content (Netflix, HBO, Hulu...), people are willing to pay for it.

It's the same trade-off for the web: if you want good content, either you pay for it (NYTimes), or you have to deal with targeted ads.

TV networks don't target ads not because they don't want and prefer their own business model. They don't do it because they can't.

And anyway: targeted ads are also way better for the user experience. If the advertiser know you're blind, it won't show you 1000 times an ad for sunglasses.

Tracking and ad targeting mean less ads across the web.

[kvb]

Sure, there are definitely benefits to tracking, and if TV advertisers could do it I'm sure they would. I just wanted to address the contention that DNT implied that ads would be blocked. And I wonder how much benefit tracking cookies really have - even without them you can target based on a site's rough demographics, just not on a particular user's. Personally I find it creepy when ads follow me around after searching for a product, for instance.