I think you're missing the point that's being made in the parent post. It's not that enhanced privacy will cause advertising to implode, it's that as the indus

I think you're missing the point that's being made in the parent post. It's not that enhanced privacy will cause advertising to implode, it's that as the industry has gained more knowledge and understanding of advertising it's becoming apparent that advertising isn't worth what they thought it was. I saw a similar up-ending of an ad-dependent industry 15 years ago with newspapers. Advertisers for years assumed a certain value based on the circulation numbers as reported by ABC. There was no real way to directly measure that value other than inferred activity within a geographic region that could arguably be tied to newspaper advertising. With the internet advertisers began to be able to track specific value for ad campaigns based on click-thrus, cost-per-action, etc. Those values were lower than the assumed value of newspaper advertising, which began a shift in where money was spent. Combine that with the fact that ABC numbers started to show that they were far less accurate than originally assumed, due in part to gaming by the papers themselves, and revenue started seriously shrinking. The last firewall that newspaper had was classified, which quickly folded in the face of job and real estate sites and of course craigslist. Internet advertising has been suffering the same game-playing by sites that newspapers pulled with ABC circ numbers, and as advertisers gather more and better performance data about the value of ads and campaigns they're realizing that value is less than they thought and seems to be trending down. Regardless of whether there's more or less privacy for users/consumers, the indications are that advertising is becoming less and less valuable.