There seems to be a really strong disdain on HN for AdTech in general, which I think is misguided, and comes fundamentally from a "web consumer" mentality. I think that it would be valuable to reframe the question from the producers point of view:
1) I am a niche small business - how do I let people know that I exist?
2) I run a website and would like to monetize it - how can I get paid for the content that I produce?
The ad-tech solution is actually quite elegant in theory - if you can show ads only to the people to whom they are relevant, then, as a small business you can let people know you exist without blowing your ad budget, and, as a content producer, the more valuable an ad-view is, the more you can charge for it.
The current movement to avoid tracking is an extremely powerful centralizing force. The large platforms know a lot about you already - Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, etc. So, in a way, "we're not going to let AdTech track users" = "we're going to make only ads on large platforms effective", which means that both content producers and advertisers will prefer them, and then people ask "where did the old internet go"?
The AdTech system isn't ideal, but it would be great if the people who criticize it came up with something other than "fuck the small businesses and content producers".
The ad-tech solution is actually quite elegant in theory - if you can show ads only to the people to whom they are relevant, then, as a small business you can let people know you exist without blowing your ad budget, and, as a content producer, the more valuable an ad-view is, the more you can charge for it.
The current movement to avoid tracking is an extremely powerful centralizing force. The large platforms know a lot about you already - Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, etc. So, in a way, "we're not going to let AdTech track users" = "we're going to make only ads on large platforms effective", which means that both content producers and advertisers will prefer them, and then people ask "where did the old internet go"?
The AdTech system isn't ideal, but it would be great if the people who criticize it came up with something other than "fuck the small businesses and content producers".