The dismantling of digital advertising based on personal data and cookies is reshaping revenue plans for ad and tech industries, publishers, and small companies
Brian X. Chen / New York Times : Tweets: @glenngabe , @ohmdee , @carnage4life , @carnage4life , @pt , @joefav , @nytimes , @brave , @marshacollier , @nytscience , and @rob See also Mediagazer Tweets: Glenn Gabe / @glenngabe : The dismantling of digital advertising based on personal data & cookies is reshaping revenue plans for ad & tech industries, publishers, & small biz “Everything came to a screeching halt”, In June, the bakery's revenue dropped to $16Kfrom $40K in May" https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... @ohmdee : “Increasingly, media publishers and even apps that show the weather are charging subscription fees [due to the shift in ad revenue]. Some e-commerce sites are considering raising product prices to keep their revenues up.” How convenient - for Apple! Just what consumers needed... https://twitter.com/... Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : Apple decided to destroy online ads businesses on its platform in the name of privacy. Google has been pressured to follow suit. Tech media slowly realizes lots of businesses are and will be hurt not just Facebook as their initial reporting claimed. https://www.nytimes.com/... Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : Tech media's inability to grasp that tech is an ecosystem and reducing narratives to a good guys vs big tech narrative means people are constantly unprepared as obviously damaging decisions are made. Requests for government intervention will have similar unintended consequences. Parker / @pt : This is all part of Apple's master plan. If they can make small businesses non-viable in America, they'll have a ready labor supply when unemployed voters elect a populist that makes them to onshore their forced-labor manufacturing. 10D chess. https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... Joe Favorito / @joefav : Important read from @bxchen in @nytimes on the changing privacy laws & issues with consumer data for brands & platforms going forward. Says 1 “answer” is more subscriptions. umm...no. lol. https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... @nytimes : As internet titans enact privacy changes and dismantle the digital ad industry, a battle is intensifying that will reshape the “free and open web.” https://www.nytimes.com/... @brave : “Website creators may eventually choose sides, so some sites that work well in Google's browser might not even load in Apple's browser. It will be a tale of two internets,” said @BrendanEich. Story: The Battle for Digital Privacy Is Reshaping the Internet https://www.nytimes.com/... Marsha Collier / @marshacollier : The Battle for Digital Privacy Is Reshaping the Internet As Apple and Google enact #privacy changes, businesses are grappling with the fallout, Madison Avenue is fighting back and Facebook has cried foul #tech https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... @nytscience : An intensifying battle over how the internet will operate is reshaping what is known as the “free and open web.” https://www.nytimes.com/... Rob Schutz / @rob : Good read on privacy & the cascading impact on the digital advertising landscape https://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
This piece lands mid-arc in a fight that opened in December 2020, when Facebook took out full-page newspaper ads attacking Apple over the iOS changes that would gut data gathering and targeted ads, and when the ad industry was still just bracing for Apple's IDFA restrictions and testing new targeting methods. What was then anticipation is now measured damage: the NYT reports small businesses like a bakery watching monthly revenue fall from $40K to $16K once personalized ads stopped working.
The follow-on coverage confirms the disruption stuck — by early 2022 advertisers were absorbing Meta's ad-price increases and shifting budgets toward Google, Amazon, and TikTok, and by August 2022 many small businesses were simply cutting marketing spend as customer acquisition costs climbed.
First-order effects
- Publishers and app developers are moving directly to subscription fees to replace ad income that cookie-based targeting used to deliver, while small businesses dependent on personalized ads — like the bakery whose revenue halved month-over-month — see immediate sales drops.
Second-order effects
- Advertisers reroute budgets away from data-constrained platforms toward Google, Amazon, and TikTok, forcing affected platforms into ad-price increases that push some e-commerce sites to raise product prices to compensate for lost ad revenue.
Third-order effects
- If website creators keep choosing sides between Apple's and Google's privacy regimes, the open web risks splitting into a 'tale of two internets' — paywalled, subscription-funded properties on one side, walled-garden ad ecosystems on the other — with Madison Avenue's targeting infrastructure permanently restructured around whichever gates win.
The trend: Platform-controlled privacy defaults are dismantling third-party-data advertising, pushing the web's economics from open ad targeting toward subscriptions and first-party walled gardens.