> AdTech engineer here (some 13 years in the industry).
How do you even plan to explain it to your grand-children?
How do you even plan to explain it to your grand-children?
But sure, "free content cos adverts", you keep believing that for as long as you can, I jumped ship after 13 years of it, which ironically appears to be how long you've been in the industry.
Let me just say though - adverts can still support free content without all the absolutely scummy things the adtech industry does. You don't have to track users across everything you can possibly track them across to still make money - my former company at one point was going to partner with Shazam to track people via transponders in bus-stop / train station billboards.
That's not "supporting the free Internet", that's "making some amoral shareholders richer".
Hopefully you'll figure out the difference with a few more years under your belt.
If anything, the ad industry helps kill honest contributions because they financially reward dishonest ones who are better at playing the SEO game or other such tactics than they are at giving visitors what they are actually looking for.
And at the end of the day, ad-supported content isn't free at all because we all pay for it in the end - and much more than what the website receives because there are entire industries inbetween that take their cut.
After all, this website doesn't have (traditional) ads