Personally, I think I'm fine with that, provided the paywalls get cheaper—right now, they're all very clearly more expensive than what you'd make in ad revenue. Of the two options, paying content creators for what they produce seems much more "healthy" for society.
> or put 10x more ads on their page.
If the site becomes impossible to browse, I will leave.
> And those ads will frustrate you even more, because they aren't targeted to you.
I don't find targeted ads any less annoying than untargetted ones.
I like targeted ads, but I want them targeted to the content I'm consuming, not me personally. If I'm reading a blog or article on rock climbing, then, yeah, show me ads for all the gear. I'm interested. But don't show me an ad for an Instant Pot because I googled it last week. That's creepy.
That’s how Brave works—using zero-knowledge proofs, it uses your browsing history to inform its opt-in ad network on what ads should be shown to you. That info doesn’t leave your device.
Contextual targeting is happening, but it doesn't perform well as behavioral one yet while the risk is much higher for advertisers/publishers with the current technology (e.g. gun ads on a mass gun shooting news). With a sufficient technology, the situation can improve though.
Personally, I think I'm fine with that, provided the paywalls get cheaper—right now, they're all very clearly more expensive than what you'd make in ad revenue. Of the two options, paying content creators for what they produce seems much more "healthy" for society.
> or put 10x more ads on their page.
If the site becomes impossible to browse, I will leave.
> And those ads will frustrate you even more, because they aren't targeted to you.
I don't find targeted ads any less annoying than untargetted ones.