Linked: “The Coming War: Browsers Against Advertising Pollution”

via Monday Note: (A Medium Blog)

The other big announcement last week is Apple’s plan to block advertisers’ ability to track users from one site to another (details here). Called retargeting, the tracking feature is a powerful booster for advertisers. As an example, you search the web for a pair of running shoes, spending time on various e-tailer sites. This creates a kind of footprint, no pun, and, for several weeks, almost anywhere you go, you’re bombarded by ads for sneakers — even if you actually did buy a pair — because the system has no way to know if and when you completed the transaction. This is one of the most potent boost for ad blockers.


As for Google, leveraging its dominant ad market position, the company is beefing up its efforts to clean up the ad ecosystem with two initiatives: the integration of an ad filtering system, and the deployment of a new system called Funding Choices, which is an iteration of the Contributors program. Both are experimental ways to compensate publishers for the loss of ad revenue stemming from the deployment of ad blockers — a great idea that suffered from a shaky implementation (I will detail these features in a coming Monday Note).

Apple and Google are fighting against advertisements and trackers but Google’s EPS is largely based on revenue derived from advertisements and trackers. Apple’s is not. I wonder who will actually give a shit about the end user in implementing these safe-guards.

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