[brandnewlow]

The news and other content we all enjoy is underwritten by tracking. The ads lose value without the tracking. The two are inextricably linked.

As someone who works in the industry I understand and respect the desire of privacy advocates to push back against practices they disagree with, but the view advanced by many that the ad industry would work just fine if ads could not be targeted based on behavior seems willfully wrongheaded.

If advertisers can't target based on behavior, they can't get high enough click rates and conversion rates. If they can't get those, their advertising is unprofitable. If their advertising is unprofitable they will stop buying it.

[kibwen]

This scenario assumes that the value of ads would be driven completely to zero if tracking were not possible. For any non-zero value advertisers will still back out as they stop seeing returns, at which point ad-space-sellers will be forced to lower to their rates. This is still fully capable of effectively driving low-margin ad-supported websites out of business, but it's not a doomsday scenario.

[brandnewlow]

"This is still fully capable of effectively driving low-margin ad-supported websites out of business, but it's not a doomsday scenario."

Right. That's a scenario I wish the privacy advocate folks at places like Mozilla were more up front about.

[narrowrail]

Broadcast television still works and doesn't have these granular tracking abilities. I wonder if the principles they've used could be a blueprint to follow. The example will only be more relevant as market share shifts from broadcast tv to web-based alternatives.

[Animats]

Right. Also, the cost of computing has dropped so much in the last decade that running a social network without ads or tracking, such as Ello, is now possible. What we may see is a major social network that's like Craiglist - very cheap, a very small organization (30 people!), and very popular.

You can now beat "free with ads" on price. This is important.

[cpeterso]

> The ads lose value without the tracking. The two are inextricably linked.

[citation needed]

[brandnewlow]

Fair's fair. I can only speak from experience having built a business selling behaviorally targeted ads and now working at a company doing so at a much larger scale.