And I’d like an answer for once other than the super literal “Because their server returned the status code 200”
Because sure, it did, but if we’re turning this into an ideological discussion of how you feel you haven’t given permission, why even feed the system with your view.
Even using an ad blocked you’re still adding views to the page, and the powers that be will simply view you as a customer, albeit one they’re being cheated out of with a pesky ad blocked.
To me you are consenting the moment you decide to use services and websites that cost millions of dollars to maintain and expecting and paying little to nothing compared to the real cost of those services. If you used paid sites you’d see less ads (maybe not no ads because often times the cost you pay still isn’t the “real cost” of that service”) and my guess is this tracking would seem a lot less intrusive.
Example: Sometimes I use sites to watch foreign films that show several tabs of ads for each click. You need to click on each hyperlink about 3 times, each time opening a new ad, some of which are the “Update flash” malicious type. I don’t ad block them (anymore, for a short while I used ad-block on sites like this and then thought better if it) because hosting 100s of HD movies costs money.
Sometimes I run out of patience and instead of playing up my entitlement and just saying “I deserve this because reasons” I just... close the page. If no one views the videos, no money will be made, and either the hosting service will shape up, or it will close. There won’t be an arms race of anti-ad-blocker vs ad-blocked.