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Then it becomes like any other industry where there are ads and they target the demographic instead of the person. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure ou

• eli 11y ago
  That would rally hurt small publishers. For example, American Express is more or less willing to buy ads that appear pretty much anywhere so long as the the viewers have a certain income level. Absent an ad network, would ever publisher have to work with AmEx individually to try to convince them they have an appropriate audience? The industry's dirty little secret is that for all the hand wringing about tracking and targeting, the tech is still really in its infancy and doesn't work very well. Network ads already don't pay very much (IMHO) and removing the ability to build profiles on demographics would make them worth much less. You're right that it's not a dealbreaker -- my startup would be OK since we ads direct to clients -- but mostly people aren't in a position to do that. It takes a team of ad sales and support staff, and a very particular kind of niche content.