There’s an adage dating back to TV advertising in the 1970s: “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.” And while Netflix and Disney+ advertising tiers will not quite be free, viewers will be able to subscribe to the services at discounted price points as long as they can tolerate a few ads.Browsers, including Safari and Firefox, have barred the installation of third-party trackers that follow a user’s every move, with Google Chrome in 2024 following suit.Amid the shifting tides, one thing has become clear: Hollywood giants, including Netflix and Disney+, will look to profit off the more reliable troves of personal information that they can directly collect from subscribers, also known as first-party data, with their new streaming tiers (services without ads still collect data, but are far less likely to share that data outside their own platforms without a clear need to do so).He adds that the company is “extremely conscious and careful about managing consumer data privacy and security purposes,” while acknowledging the need for agency and brand partners “to be able to work across the ecosystem beyond NBCU for things like crossplatform agency and crossplatform measurement.” Disney will launch its ad tier ($7.99 a month) Dec. 8 and initially plans to sell ads based on viewer age.At launch, Netflix is telling marketers that it will only offer extremely limited targeting abilities (based on geographic location, or its most popular shows), but multiple high-level ad world sources expect that to change over time as advertising becomes a more important part of Netflix’s business model."