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From the website's tracking/ads/monetization perspective GDPR is a diabolic dilemma: * no tracking: no money * tracking without consent: GDPR fine * tracking

From the website's tracking/ads/monetization perspective GDPR is a diabolic dilemma: * no tracking: no money * tracking without consent: GDPR fine * tracking with manually clicked user consent: adds friction, nudges users to go elsewhere * tracking with automatically clicked user consent: removes friction, but allows preconfigured blanket refusal ...For the time being, third option might still appeal, but at some point might they finally infer that people just don't want to be tracked/spammed/monetized/targetted?

al_borland 2y ago
Why can't there be money without tracking if the site still has ads? Advertising without any type of user tracking was the norm for the history of marketing until recently. Simply target the ads based on the content of the site. Is it a site that covers fishing news? Show ads for fishing related stuff. Is it a blog for new moms? Have ads for stuff new moms need/want. Is it a more general purpose site with a lot of topics? Have keywords on the article dictate the ads. This doesn't seem that complex, and the ads are still targeted based on the type of person who would want to interact with the content. No user tracking needed. This type of targeting gives us terms like soap opera. Those shows have been running for decades, it must work well enough.
- pipo234 2y ago
  Great point! Yes! And this is how (most) of traditional podcast ads work as well. You know, the ads that actually guide you to interesting products. One thing to note, though, is that tracking is also used by the bean counters. Pre internet (newspapers, billboards, tv) accountability was always answered by: "trust us" or coarse-grained estimates. Individual user tracking promises a transparent way to separate checks from balances. Evidently, this is a bit of a false promise in practice. And that is why there's this cat and mouse game where advertisers are tracking "genuine user agents" and sifting out the robots. While I'm sure the advertising eco system is nothing but lies, damn lies and statistics it seems that in terms of click-trough and conversion user targeting is more profitable than content targeting. ...That being a common belief, I suppose we're left with simply prohibiting user tracking altogether, or making it prohibitively expensive. GDPR, ad and cookie blockers are stones thrown into the pond of the latter.

al_borland 2y ago

Why can't there be money without tracking if the site still has ads? Advertising without any type of user tracking was the norm for the history of marketing until recently. Simply target the ads based on the content of the site. Is it a site that covers fishing news? Show ads for fishing related stuff. Is it a blog for new moms? Have ads for stuff new moms need/want. Is it a more general purpose site with a lot of topics? Have keywords on the article dictate the ads. This doesn't seem that complex, and the ads are still targeted based on the type of person who would want to interact with the content. No user tracking needed. This type of targeting gives us terms like soap opera. Those shows have been running for decades, it must work well enough.

pipo234 2y ago
Great point! Yes! And this is how (most) of traditional podcast ads work as well. You know, the ads that actually guide you to interesting products. One thing to note, though, is that tracking is also used by the bean counters. Pre internet (newspapers, billboards, tv) accountability was always answered by: "trust us" or coarse-grained estimates. Individual user tracking promises a transparent way to separate checks from balances. Evidently, this is a bit of a false promise in practice. And that is why there's this cat and mouse game where advertisers are tracking "genuine user agents" and sifting out the robots. While I'm sure the advertising eco system is nothing but lies, damn lies and statistics it seems that in terms of click-trough and conversion user targeting is more profitable than content targeting. ...That being a common belief, I suppose we're left with simply prohibiting user tracking altogether, or making it prohibitively expensive. GDPR, ad and cookie blockers are stones thrown into the pond of the latter.