Netscape released cookies technology 28 years ago on October 13, 1994. This spawned a vast industry that some call surveillance advertising (more politely referred to as targeted advertising or behavioural marketing) that powers the Internet that we use every day.
The blowback from 28 years of cookies advertising technology will start with 3rd party cookies (aka tracking or targeting cookies) that originate from a third party such as an advertiser (not from the website operator). Third-party cookies are either spookily accurate, which prompts consumer backlash, or hilariously wrong, which prompts advertiser rejection. 28 years on, we have more spooky accuracy and many big tech companies with browsers such as Google/Chrome, Apple/Safari and Mozilla/Firefox have committed to drop support for third-party cookies. These vendors are getting ahead of consumers who are using adblockers or just ignoring ads because they don’t like the time-waste and privacy-invasion and regulators who want to protect those consumers.
The advertisers who have been hurt by lots of fake traffic are cheering these moves.
Subscriptions alone cannot monetize all the online content we want to consume, so we need a win/win advertising model.
Photo by Mae Mu on Unsplash
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