The issue with server side 3rd party ads is that the advertiser has no way to assure the impressions are real.
From my perspective, good. Advertising is toxic even when it's not invading my privacy, and maybe if we make it less effective people will do less of it.
1. Find out about content I want. Decide to pay for it. Pay for it. Receive content. A simple, fair transaction where everyone gets what they want with no bullshit.
2. Find out about content I want. Receive content, along with ads that spy on me, distract me from the content I actually cared about, and tell me my girlfriend isn't hot enough, my car isn't fast or luxurious enough, my house isn't big enough, my family isn't safe enough, etc. Under the barrage of this constant psychological attack, I'll occasionally fall for it and end up spending much more money on things that I don't need than I would have spent on the content. And yet the content that I actually cared about and wanted to pay for only receives a fraction of those profits.
This is exactly what happened during the first dot com crash when we went from $35 CPM banner ads to $1. Suddenly, ads were slathered on every page or websites simply disappeared. What we really need is a deal that works well for all three parties: advertisers, consumers and content providers. Google Adsense was this perfect solution for a while (until it got optimized to max profitability).
Maybe online advertising is like social networks and can only enjoy brief moments of relative balance before the cycle starts anew.
I don't think such a thing actually exists. I mean, there is a way to do advertising that doesn't require spying on everybody -- contextual ads -- but advertisers seem to consider that a bad outcome, and instead are spending a lot of time and energy trying to figure out how to continue to spy on everybody.
The problem right now is that it's all mingled together.
Sure you can. "Use check-out code 'newspaper1' to get 5% off any purcahse!" or something.
As I understand it today, I can view an ad on a random site and have a cookie with my unique ID in it saved. If I view other network ads, they know it's me and update my profile. Then when I check out, the site I'm buying from reads this cookie and reports back that it worked based on impressions.
AFAIK this won't be easy to replace if a random eCommerce store is blocked from reading Facebook et al cookies, it won't be able to report back reliably. You could do something like submit their email address or other data to Facebook and see if you get a hit, but that's probably illegal in many places without permission. And in most cases, the cookie from the ads will be blocked as it's third party (but would be able to be written for ads shown on-platform, which doesn't really matter since they can track server side anyway).
But clicks are very easy, you just tie a unique ID to the ad URL and have the landing page and checkout page track that. No cookies needed. It can report back in real time or later to update stats.
The browser will not make cookies from other sites available to the e-commerce site. There is no chance for the e-commerce site to take a look at what is in the Facebook cookie
I meant the 'page' (including the FB pixel JS on it) could read the pixel but the problem is of course the page is composed of resources from multiple domains and parties.
I'm pretty sure these days the default is just a JS ping to an endpoint, but the eponymous pixel exists under noscript tags for legacy support.
Which is of course the intent.
AFAIK, all that matters is how many conversions you get from $ spent. Both of those are perfectly visible, no tracking needed.
Maybe it helps society to go back to such models over destroying privacy.
(And as answer to the question: Statistical methods by comparing areas/times with no ads vs. with ads etc.)
As much as many HN readers would love to see ads and even the most benign forms of tracking to disappear, if you're aiming for something realistic (e.g that would still allow ads to exist and be a minimum profitable for all involved) you cannot just go back to the dark ages, and show the same ads to everyone.
Ads are pollution, and need to be treated as such. Information providers need to develop business models which do not depend upon advertising revenue. (foundations, Patreon, whatever).
Short term: Less tracking is good. (Not only for privacy, but also since I don't want to see "optimized" content – I want to be surprised, contradicting opinions etc. like in a good newspaper)
You can - without detailed tracking - identify rough location of the user. (IP etc.)
You can pick ads based on the content, not based on the user. (A site with beauty tips probably has different readers from a site on woodworking; a site with celebrity news has different readers than deep political analysis)
And yes, Google and Facebook would make less money (disclaimer: I have a handful Alphabet shares in my portfolio and probably funds containing those) and yes spread would be higher, but this could still pay a lot of bills and interestingly could lead to revert from clickbait to proper content, as readers of proper content are more likely the target audience for high-paid ads.
Not willingly, but perhaps they can be forced through legislation. In any case, as long as the industry insists on spying on me, I will continue to fight them tooth and nail.
The one thing that you can't reliably do, browser privacy or not, is gathering the useless number ad-companies currently rely on.