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Quite possibly. Google and the other major players are reluctant to do that because it's much, much harder to do a server side integration solution without comp

Quite possibly. Google and the other major players are reluctant to do that because it's much, much harder to do a server side integration solution without compromising user privacy by handing the third party owning that server a lot of intimate knowledge about the ads being served to a customer. Under the current system, your privacy is protected because the only place that integrates your browsing habits and the ads you're seeing is actually your browser. I'm sure that such intimate server side integration will eventually result in legislative pushback for privacy protection, and the measure-countermeasure game will continue.

tzs 4y ago
> Google and the other major players are reluctant to do that because it's much, much harder to do a server side integration solution without compromising user privacy by handing the third party owning that server a lot of intimate knowledge about the ads being served to a customer. They might be able to address this by flipping things around. Instead of the ad service providing ads to the content provider for the content provider to them embed in the content and server, have the content provider provide content to the ad service which then puts in the ads and serves the content. Let's say content provider foo.com wants ads from Google. One way this could be done is for foo.com to organize their site so that any pages they want ads on come from content.foo.com. They would set content.foo.com to point to a server run by Google. That server would provide a way for foo.com to put their content there, with some mechanism for Google to do the ad integration and then serve the pages.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  In the current status quo, there is a data détente that keeps either solution from happening: advertisers don't want to give third-party websites intimate knowledge of ads vended because they don't want to compromise user privacy (or more cynically: they don't want to give third-party sites so much info about what ads are run to what users that those sites cut out the middle-man and just broker adds to run for users directly). But third-party sites don't want to give intimate details of users of their site to ad companies for symmetrical reasons (Google has dipped its toe into social media before). If the industry moves to a place where only server-injected ads are profitable, something will surely give here. The end result will be more large conglomerates knowing more about us than ever before, unfortunately.
Hizonner 4y ago
Sorry, I do not believe this. I do believe that Google doesn't want ads served through the site that's actually being visited, because it reduces Google's visibility into what's going on, which affects both Google's semi-legitimate interests, like being able to detect click fraud, and Google's total control over information that might be used for targeting. I also believe that many of the sites don't want that, especially the smaller ones. It'd be more complicated for them to set up, and would mean they needed more bandwidth. I do NOT believe that Google actually cares enough about user's privacy per se to do much about it. If that were the case, Google itself wouldn't collect about 95 percent of what it actually does collect. User privacy sounds good as an excuse, though.

tzs 4y ago

> Google and the other major players are reluctant to do that because it's much, much harder to do a server side integration solution without compromising user privacy by handing the third party owning that server a lot of intimate knowledge about the ads being served to a customer. They might be able to address this by flipping things around. Instead of the ad service providing ads to the content provider for the content provider to them embed in the content and server, have the content provider provide content to the ad service which then puts in the ads and serves the content. Let's say content provider foo.com wants ads from Google. One way this could be done is for foo.com to organize their site so that any pages they want ads on come from content.foo.com. They would set content.foo.com to point to a server run by Google. That server would provide a way for foo.com to put their content there, with some mechanism for Google to do the ad integration and then serve the pages.

shadowgovt 4y ago
In the current status quo, there is a data détente that keeps either solution from happening: advertisers don't want to give third-party websites intimate knowledge of ads vended because they don't want to compromise user privacy (or more cynically: they don't want to give third-party sites so much info about what ads are run to what users that those sites cut out the middle-man and just broker adds to run for users directly). But third-party sites don't want to give intimate details of users of their site to ad companies for symmetrical reasons (Google has dipped its toe into social media before). If the industry moves to a place where only server-injected ads are profitable, something will surely give here. The end result will be more large conglomerates knowing more about us than ever before, unfortunately.

Hizonner 4y ago

Sorry, I do not believe this. I do believe that Google doesn't want ads served through the site that's actually being visited, because it reduces Google's visibility into what's going on, which affects both Google's semi-legitimate interests, like being able to detect click fraud, and Google's total control over information that might be used for targeting. I also believe that many of the sites don't want that, especially the smaller ones. It'd be more complicated for them to set up, and would mean they needed more bandwidth. I do NOT believe that Google actually cares enough about user's privacy per se to do much about it. If that were the case, Google itself wouldn't collect about 95 percent of what it actually does collect. User privacy sounds good as an excuse, though.