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DuckDuckGo has advertisements and is profitable. Nothing about the free-ad model for apps requires tracking users.

• adrr 5y ago
  Search ads you don’t need user targeting. You target on the search term and most likely it will be relevant for the user. Only standard display ads need targeting to be able to show relevant ads to the user.
  • lanstin 5y ago
    Content based ads still seem valuable. If I am on Don’s how to fix something pages, then add for something fixing tools seem possible to sell without involving my data
  • criddell 5y ago
    There's always the context of the page on which the ad will appear. If I search for "teach your kid how to read", the search engine can display ads based on the query and the destination page seems like it should show the exact same types of ads.
    • warkdarrior 5y ago
      How would the destination page know the exact type of ads to show, other than getting some info from the search engine? And wouldn't that be tracking?
      • criddell 5y ago
        There are non-tracking ad networks that will analyze the content of the page and insert relevant ads.