Comment by burkaman
1 year ago
> Ad revenue depends on tracking
No it doesn't. Surveillance revenue depends on tracking, but people have profitably sold ad space for hundreds of years without any tracking.
1 year ago
> Ad revenue depends on tracking
No it doesn't. Surveillance revenue depends on tracking, but people have profitably sold ad space for hundreds of years without any tracking.
The reason why all adspace isn't priced equally is because of tracking either done by the seller of the adspace or the buyer of the adspace. This has been the case for hundreds of years. The buyer wants to make sure that their ad spend is reaching the maximum amount of people who are likely to end up in an conversion.
We are specifically talking about individual-level tracking in this conversation. You can also track the efficacy of an ad by, for example, placing a special link in the ad and watching how many people use that link, but that's a completely different subject and not what we're talking about here. That type of "tracking" is not dependent on whether website users are logged in or surveilled in any way.
Half the utility of the "global town square" was that anyone can read it. I guess a town square requires an account.
Ads WITH tracking sell for a lot more.
Yes, of course, because it's two products bundled as one. You're charging for ad space in addition to a service where you track your visitors individually and build profiles about them. But obviously many people continue to make money by just selling ad space without providing this accompanying service.
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