It's A Wonderful, Trackable Life

[Commentary] What would the Internet be like if there was no tracking at all?

Much like the “It’s a Wonderful Life”’s hypothetical town that would have existed if Jimmy Stewart’s character had never been born, Pottersville – crass, sleazy and utterly unappealing. Not a pretty picture for anyone involved: publishers, advertisers or consumers. To begin with, the Web would be cluttered with many more ads. Why? Because without the ability to target ads to specific audiences, brands will have to compensate by running more ads in the hopes of reaching customers, effectively substituting quantity for quality. On the flip side, consumers will experience a wild decline in relevance. The ads they see will have nothing to do with who they are, what they are interested in or what matters to them. The next impact to consider is that removing tracking capabilities will mean significantly reducing a publisher’s revenue. Without the ability to assure advertisers that they can reach the specific audiences they want, the value of inventory will drastically decrease. And while the cost of advertising inventory units may go down – potentially a boon for advertisers – the ROI on these units will plummet even faster if advertisers can’t be confident that they are reaching their target consumers. With less advertising revenue coming in, publishers will need to find new sources of revenue which would likely mean more and taller pay walls, subscription models, etc. – more paid content. Consumers have come to expect a wealth of free content, but without the support of advertising revenues, publishers simply won’t be able to sustain the current model.

[Gieron is he Business Development Strategist at AdTruth]