I really hope advertisers are unrelenting in their attack on Apple over this, at least until Streisand hears about it. How dare Apple give users the tools to staunch the flow of their data?
We all know that newspapers could never have existed without all that tracking of which ads readers saw. And broadcast TV was a universal failure in reaching consumers with advertising. The idea of advertising without tracking is just unprecedented.
The advertisers arrogance and tone deafness here is just unfathomable.
From the outside, it appears tracking benefits aggregators more than these ad agencies. Without tracking, it makes a good agency even more important as they keep track of which sites generally have which audiences and target ads based on those trends instead of relying solely on doubleclick's data. Google and FB have a lot to lose here, not advertisers nor ad agencies, imo.
I think the end of pervasive tracking would not kill internet advertising, it would just make value-add middlemen more valuable. I know I'm ignoring re-targeting, but gawd the reason I didn't buy your widget while I was on your site is not because I forgot to put in my CC info. Re-targeting is not something humanity should be proud of (even though it's hard to run certain internet businesses and be competitive without it as long your competition is using it).
It almost feels like a luxury that when you examine an item at Best Buy and decide against purchasing that a store clerk doesn't jump in front of your car asking you to reconsider as you're trying to pull out of the parking lot. Or follow you home...