Thing is, internet adtech involves a rock paper scissors evolution.
It's not just a advertisement and a viewer, it's also the bots.
Adtech is where it's at now just cause it wants you to see it but because a industry of faking viewership built up around it.
No other advertisement has really had to deal with how ads are bought on per viewer basis.
All the targeting tech is equally a response to "personalization" as it is to "fraudulent botters"
You can then understand that if ads reverted to the old static billboard or tv commercial state, there's probably be little incentive to harass the user.
I agree that it's an arms race, but I consider static advertisements (billboard/tv type) an improvement.
I think that the only way to get to the endgame I want, which is "advertisers simply give up, the sites sell the ad-space directly, with no tracking necessary and no sharing of information between sites" is for everyone to click on more ads for things that they aren't interested in.
Make it a browser plugin: the plugin works quietly in the background, and clicks on every single advertisement it sees, going as far as possible in the funnel, all the way to checkout, but without doing the final payment.
Until the signal/noise ratio of adverts are 99.999% noise, we're still going to have this arms race.
It's not just a advertisement and a viewer, it's also the bots.
Adtech is where it's at now just cause it wants you to see it but because a industry of faking viewership built up around it.
No other advertisement has really had to deal with how ads are bought on per viewer basis.
All the targeting tech is equally a response to "personalization" as it is to "fraudulent botters"
You can then understand that if ads reverted to the old static billboard or tv commercial state, there's probably be little incentive to harass the user.