Re:Ad Blocking: The Unnecessary Internet Apocalypse
by mbubb on Wednesday September 23, 2015 @08:52AM
(#10264685)
Yes, succinctly put. The 'hard choice' though is between suffering though bad or irrelevant ads or being tracked. I do not think there is another way of targeting ads. We haven't evolved past the DoubleClick/ Google way of doing things.
So no - I don't think the ad industry is capable of going away from pervasive tracking. I do not know how else they would do it.
Re:Ad Blocking: The Unnecessary Internet Apocalypse
by SmellyGeekBoy on Wednesday September 23, 2015 @09:43AM
(#10264921)
I think it's pretty easy to determine what someone is interested in at any given moment - base the ads on the actual content of the page! If I'm reading about some exotic location, show me ads for holidays to that destination. If I'm looking at web development stuff, show me ads for programming courses or hosting. I don't understand why the advertising industry fail to grasp this.
Re:Ad Blocking: The Unnecessary Internet Apocalypse
by mbubb on Saturday September 26, 2015 @10:21AM
(#10283162)
Yes - I get your point. Actually targeting adverts based upon search came out of a similar crusade against spam in the late 90's.
If you went to a website about exotic locations and asked for information - you would then get an avalanche of spam. Targetting started out as an (initially) less intrusive method.
I do not want you to build a dossier of everywhere I go on the web. I don't want to be tracked by dozens of shady javascript includes on each page, the way it is now. I don't want to be tracked by a nice efficient consortium either. Do not want.
If the ad industry isn't ready to give up pervasive tracking, they're not facing up to the hard choices yet. And if they think the only way to support the modern web is with a massive database of everything everyone reads, then yeah, their apocalypse is coming.