Someone should just invent a standard cookie that people can use if they are comfortable with it and that’s all ads can see. I’m comfortable telling advertisers my age group, gender, 3 hobbies and my zip code.

I’m not comfortable with ad networks deducing those very same parameters from my browsing habits.

That is an awesome idea! I really like it, one thing I do know if you dig in the the ad settings for most provides you can find a page where they display this info and you can edit it.

Unfortunately short of some type of mandate I don't see how this could work, because it would be next to impossible to get 90% of the population to fallout the cookie.

My company actually did a bunch of research on collecting consent from users to show personalized ads, (aka what everyone is doing right now)

Only 25% of the the users read the 3 sentences before clicking on a selection. 25% did not read anything many thought our privacy dialog was in fact an ad. :(

Many people said they didn't want personalized ads because they thought it would mean filling out a survey like the one you just described even though it obviously (to us) did not.

One person actually said, "I'm okay with them using my browser history to show ads but, I don't want them to use my personal data like my banking records or my medical history." This is very ironic because we presented the option to do exactly what they wanted by they didn't understand what it was because they did not consider the browser data to be "personal".

I really wish that when you first opened a browser their was a dialog about hey these or the things you need to know about how we pay for the internet. Though I have no idea how get to that spot.

> I really wish that when you first opened a browser their was a dialog about hey these or the things you need to know about how we pay for the internet. Though I have no idea how get to that spot.

This sounds horrible, sorry.

My girlfriend bought several menstrual cups because I heard about them on the Internet and suggested them to her.

There are always untracked situations like that, but the ROAS for your demographic will so drastically different it’s like throwing money in the garbage to target you.

How likely is a man reading Cosmo to care about tampons vs cups relative to the average man?

How likely is a Cosmo reader to be a cis man?

Alternatively: How likely is a Cosmo reader reading an article about menstruation to be interested in a female hygiene product?

The death of tracking-based ad targeting doesn't mean you have to show the same ads everywhere like an animal. You can still make the ads contextually relevant. And you don't even need to disguise them as native content (which, btw, is illegal in some EU countries already).

Unless you're trans.

Or you're doing the family shopping and aren't grossed out by hygiene products.