“Consent or Pay”: a gift to MFAs and old ad tech agendas

Alessandro De Zanche

Apr 2, 2024 — 5 min read

“Consent or Pay”, which excludes user opt-out unless they subscribe, is a gift from quality media owners to Made for Advertising (MFA) websites and apps and a wrong turn on their path to self-reliance.

This tactical initiative reminds me a lot of premium media companies’ commoditisation era, where they often acted as Trojan horses for the ad tech sector, rather than as gatekeepers for their audiences, heavily reducing their potential and revenues in the process.

Today, many ad tech companies are still hungry for media owners’ assets (i.e., consent and data) to support their withering business models, and many media owners are still falling for it.

I believe the approach should be firmly rejected as it goes in the completely opposite direction a media company should take to make the best of the opportunities that the first-party web is opening.

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