What would happen if legislation were passed to ban all tracking, across the board? Perhaps also inclusive of limits on targeted advertising also (to reduce the incentive to gather personal data). It seems this kind of universal disarmament (so to speak) still leaves FB in the same dominant position from an advertising perspective. It has the same huge audience, and it’s advertising product is the same as everyone el…
1) Digital is taking over all ad-channels
2) Digital ads can be tracked and attributed ways that were never possible with traditional media
3) It turns out most non-targeted ads aren't actually that effective, and aggregate ad spend is falling.
FB ads are effective and high value because of tracking. If tracking goes away, FB ad revenue will fall to that of banner advertising at roughly 1/100th to 1/10000th the price per impression that FB currently receives.
Such a change would effectively force a rethink of the entire consumer technology business, and see FB/GOOG re-structure to some form of subscription revenue or shutdown large feature sets and product offerings which would no longer be tenable.