a more attractive one would be the ending of invasive tracking. according to those involved in ad tech, there is no market without the tracking, so...the alternative is no ad tech
> Strange how there are ads in magazines, on billboards, TV, and radio, without tracking.
But are they?
Magazines are dying, and ads placed in them do their best to make you hop into digital realm, where you can be tracked - think QR codes, "visit https://...", etc; billboards likewise. TV manufacturers are forcing "smart" TVs down customer throats, proper radio is a thing of the past - to the point that people get away with calling web streaming "radio", as if that bore any relation to broadcasting EM waves. Entertainment is generally consumed on-line, and legacy media are either dying or are retrofitted to be mere shells of legacy experience around the on-line core.
It's a subtle thing, really, that people too often miss. Yes, the leaflets are still the same dumb, analogue paper they were 30 years ago. But that QR code on them, should you scan it, is what plugs you into the surveillance economy.
> and ads placed in them do their best to make you hop into digital realm, where you can be tracked
So, the ads themselves don't track you. You're primarily concerned because... it encourages people to do things that could result in them being tracked?
This seems like a bit of a stretch to me. The original statement I was replying to was the lament of ad tracking still existing. Even if ad tracking didn't exist though, you would still be constantly confronted with non-tracking ads that are potentially even worse. The proof is across every highway and Nascar wrap and back-date newspaper you collect: we put ads on damn near everything. Tracking or not, people just pay to put content in places. Publishers think it's a fair deal. Unless the Free Market creates a more attractive alternative, you're more helpless than the people in hell begging for ice water.
> So, the ads themselves don't track you. You're primarily concerned because... it encourages people to do things that could result in them being tracked?
Given that majority of the population does not understand any of this, it's effectively the same.
That's irrelevant. The existence of non-tracking ads, ever, proves it is a viable business mode, absent competition from tracking ads (if e.g. regulation banned them). That magazines and TV are not competing well with websites and streaming does not affect this.
