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What if we had an Advertising ID API in the browser?by@andraganescu
1,356 reads
1,356 reads

What if we had an Advertising ID API in the browser?

by Andrei DraganescuMay 20th, 2018
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If I had an <a href="https://hackernoon.com/tagged/advertising" target="_blank">advertising</a> ID that the browser allows me to manage, and which would be common across all browsers, there would be definitely no need to have that much effort thrown away at identifying <a href="https://hackernoon.com/tagged/internet" target="_blank">Internet</a> users with all kinds of trickery.

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With an Advertising ID I could be in charge of the things I want tracked about myself, an opt in participation, not only a generic yes or no, instead, a detailed approach on tracking.

If I had an advertising ID that the browser allows me to manage, and which would be common across all browsers, there would be definitely no need to have that much effort thrown away at identifying Internet users with all kinds of trickery.

It would be quite plain:

  1. I just provide this advertising ID to all advertisers by default.
  2. Then I choose what I want tracked. THE BROWSER then tracks said items in an anonymous mode, transmitting non identifiable information only (such as product names, SKUs, Page contents, even links but say in a screwed up order).
  3. Then I can ban advertisers or networks that show me crap. One by one.

It would be a shared effort.

The user will do some work, but they will have the tools required for the work. The banning and defaults will be scriptable and people could solve 80% of the problems with easy scripted actions (via browser extensions and such). Advertisers will have to work with anonymous details, but they will be able to precisely target people, after they solve the math involved with working with irregular data sets.

Advertising is the financial engine of the Internet and all this rage against it won’t make it disappear or behave nicely. Browser vendors need to work together and they need to do so in the same way they did it for so long: to implement open web specifications.

Advertising is just another kind of technology that the browser needs to support!

Advertising ID would be a solid base for all the freemium content to have the legitimacy required to block users who don’t provide a way in for advertisers. Once we get technology that is as safe as the Internet overall is, we can then teach people how to use it, and shut out sociopathic behaviour of money crazed folk to the obscure corners of forsaken random domain names.

The Better Ads Standards is just talk. We need tech that supports it and it should be a browser implementation of an open standard with an Advertising ID API. People will flock to the best support of a good standard. Everybody wins and competition stays healthy.

It is illogical to rip off the internet of it’s best lucrative asset: the capacity to target advertising with great precision. It is dangerous that for the same reason should the Internet become the looking glass of Big Brother. And the tech to stop this from happening, while maintaining money flow for Internet growth is easily achievable.

Do you thing an Advertising Standard with an Advertising ID API would make the Internet better?