@res260 @bradley @bagder Contextual worked as well IMO, and the online ad business is a giant scam. Who does well online? The Financial Times. Why? You have to buy ads directly from them at a rate which was the norm in the late 1990s, and they donʼt use any of the dodgy ad companies that are all over the web who cut into their share of the money.
Bob Hoffman covers the scam in his books, e.g.:

https://www.amazon.com/ADSCAM-Advertising-Historys-Greatest-Democracy/dp/0999230743

@res260 @bradley @bagder I thought the point was, regardless of how well tracked ads work, browsers and users don't need to bend over for it. It is not on the consumer to provide companies with what they want. It is the other way around.

If all users didn't support tracking from their end by choice, advertisers are left with only non tracked ads regardless of their preference. Advertisers, in theory, would still spend the dollars on ads without tracking, if that's all they could get, because it will be better than no advertising.

I thought the point also was, it's not very nice to sneakily add something to a browser that tracks you and turn it on without giving users any notice. Something that users clearly often don't want. Double so when you have features added in the browser reasonably recently to specifically avoid tracking. Erosion of trust there.

Some companies seem to get narky when some users support tracking and some don't and said companies base charging and revenue models on invalid assumptions that all do support it. The real problem here, as I see it, is the invalid assumption and nothing else. All involved need to understand that the tracking isn't always avaliable and work that into their systems, not try and sneak more tracking in users back doors.

Yes, I am mixing two different sorts of tracking here. I think the bend over and back door things apply to them both.